[opensuse] Anyone interested in helping me create multimedia content/courses for Linux?
Hi, Subject says it. The request is non-commercial, but for a community-based project. I've started creating multimedia learning content and would prefer not to do it alone. I'm using Flash because it should play on the web and there one has no choice but Flash. I'm thinking of also quickly supporting an HTML solution with Flash only as the carrier of the audio/video and giving the "cue points" (time info embedded in the audio/video that controls actions like animations). However, anything using Javascript libraries is much more resource intensive and much less usable on non-web devices than Flash, so I'm not sure... the planned course-technology is technology independent, content in XML and the player in "whatever", but this is just a plan and for now I concentrate on producing some content at all. So far it's not much, but writing a script alone (what to say, what to show, and when) takes quite a long time. Of course, doing an "on the fly" screencast with voice recording would be much faster, but those things are way too long for the content (with all the slow typing and mistakes and pauses) and not "nice enough". See signature, current content is just an example. No video included yet because I've just shared hosting and bandwidth is an issue, besides, for the current examples it isn't necessary or all that useful... So I like to be as open source and pro standard as possible, but I'd also like to make use of available technology, therefor for now it's Flash at the core. But writing scripts is even more necessary - what should be developed? Also, Flex (Adobe) is free so writing a player for those XML-based course format ideas is possible for anyone. Actionscript is Javascript, basically (but the class libs are a lot different of course). Anyone interested in producing learning content, for general topics (e.g. Internet Protocol stack) as well as specific ones (The Gimp screencasts - how to edit pictures or create web buttons, etc.) or help creating the web-infrastructure for the product... well I don't expect much but I'll keep asking people anyway :-) In the OpenSUSE forums my post were deleted because they claimed I had violated the no-ads policy... well, I'm trying to get a community project off the ground, how is that commercial SPAM??? The site I started DOES talk about money, but I recommend to actually READ before complaining. This is a hobby project of mine, my business is completely different and not even linked from there. Site: letexa.com Thanks, Michael -- Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ (still has Letexa logo but the site is work in progress and the name of the company not yet decided, Letexa.com will remain what it is now!) Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 06 November 2007 16:04:34 Michael Hasenstein wrote:
Hi,
Hi Michael, *very* long time, no see :)
Subject says it. The request is non-commercial, but for a community-based project. I've started creating multimedia learning content and would prefer not to do it alone.
It certainly sounds interesting. I think I would like to be involved in something like that How were you planning on generating the content? The only flash-generating software that I'm aware of is openoffice Export, but that doesn't seem good enough Anders -- Madness takes its toll -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Nochmal, offlist, weil der Listserver momentan Probleme hat On Tuesday 06 November 2007 16:04:34 Michael Hasenstein wrote:
Hi,
Hi Michael, *very* long time, no see :)
Subject says it. The request is non-commercial, but for a community-based project. I've started creating multimedia learning content and would prefer not to do it alone.
It certainly sounds interesting. I think I would like to be involved in something like that How were you planning on generating the content? The only flash-generating software that I'm aware of is openoffice Export, but that doesn't seem good enough Anders -- Madness takes its toll -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hi! First a few links to examples. I have some under http://letexa.com/ (there's a "Jobs" sign which looks like this is a commercial thing, but if people would actually READ... ;-) ). The I've another one that adds only one aspect: a small video (of me) in the top right corner. WARNING: the contents of this presentation didn't even matter when I first made it, partially overwriting another one that also didn't matter! This is just demo of how such stuff looks like in Flash. http://www.hasenstein.com/TMP/pres/presentation.html This one loads a 38MB .flv video file FULLY before starting, I coded it that way. If you start it and do something else for 5-10 minutes you'll be fine (I hope not too many people are interested ;-) ) As for generating Flash, I'm the proud owner of a small printing business (part of a Mailboxes Etc. franchise I have with a partner) and had to buy the last three versions of Adobe Creative Suite anyway - the last one because it included Flash after the purchase of Macromedia by Adobe. I've also used eval versions of Adobe Captivate and of Camtasia. BUT on Linux you can use this very nice utility to create Flash screencasts: http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/ Not everyone needs Flash CS3, the authoring environment. One can start with vnc2swf (which is the by far best way anyway to produce a Linux desktop screencast - apart from using Camtasia in Windows with Linux in a VMware window). What is even more important is the creation of good concepts and scripts for production. I'd quite happily resign to only do the last step of producing output if I'm given good scripts by others. I just put an example for a script online, usually I do that with the course but I'm producing it following that script right now, while not answering emails... there are other scripts on the Letexa site but this one is the nicest one I've done so far I think. Link: http://letexa.com/courses/15/script.php Not to mention the site itself. You see "php", but I'm using it only for header and footer insertion. I haven't put the courses into a database yet. Several reasons: There are very few courses so creating content is a priority for me (if I showed empty pages and said "but I've got a beautiful backend code!", how interested would anyone be?). My shared hosting account costs very little and includes everything and the kitchen sink ($9.89/month for 150GB of space, ssh, mysql, etc. etc. etc.), but PHP is done via CGI and what performance can I expect of shared hosting anyway... so I didn't want to also add database queries if I didn't have to. And there's still LOTS of explaining to do about the weird and crazy concept... ;-) Michael Anders Johansson wrote:
It certainly sounds interesting. I think I would like to be involved in something like that
How were you planning on generating the content? The only flash-generating software that I'm aware of is openoffice Export, but that doesn't seem good enough
Anders
-- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Or with other (and less) words : I want to do something cool, multimedia is cool, and I don't want to do it alone! Doesn't have to be serious boring learning content, let's create cool ideas in multimedia for and maybe with Linux! And let's not use somebody else's commercial website, like Youtube, making others even more rich, and let's also not do it all for ourselves each on our own little websites. Let's do it on ONE site, as ONE project, and if there's money to be made (and there is!!!) it would be REAL fun. Michael Anders Johansson wrote:
How were you planning on generating the content? The only flash-generating software that I'm aware of is openoffice Export, but that doesn't seem good enough -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 20:55 +0100, Michael Hasenstein wrote:
Or with other (and less) words : I want to do something cool, multimedia is cool, and I don't want to do it alone! Doesn't have to be serious boring learning content, let's create cool ideas in multimedia for and maybe with Linux! And let's not use somebody else's commercial website, like Youtube, making others even more rich, and let's also not do it all for ourselves each on our own little websites. Let's do it on ONE site, as ONE project, and if there's money to be made (and there is!!!) it would be REAL fun.
Michael
Anders Johansson wrote:
How were you planning on generating the content? The only flash-generating software that I'm aware of is openoffice Export, but that doesn't seem good enough
Sounds like a great and bold initiative. I think interactive media has its advantages, but not always. Sometimes text beats the heck out of multimedia. What are your plans for managing and structuring tutorials? Who sets up the categories, outlines, etc.? If you have free-flow, throw tutorials in willy-nilly, it will fall apart. There has to be hierarchical structure to the plan. Can you give us some ideas? And who are you aiming towards? End-users? Administrative users? Command-line users? KDE/GNOME users? Oh, and one other thing. If you're going to have voice-overs, please include captioning for the hearing-impaired, like other sites are moving towards these days. -- ---Bryen--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Bryen wrote:
Sounds like a great and bold initiative.
Yes indeed. And that's why failure is extremely likely - and therefore I try to set it up so that even failure is success, meaning if we create SOMETHING and have fun it doesn't matter if the somewhat communist-capitalist stuff doesn't work out ;-) Actually, I've been thinking about this for many, many years. I started making concrete plans when I still worked at SuSE (in San Francisco and @Oracle).
I think interactive media has its advantages, but not always. Sometimes text beats the heck out of multimedia.
True again. I myself very much prefer Wikipedia in text and the Mozillazine Knowledgebase over my own content. And yet, there's stuff that even I, lover of manpages, liked seeing as video. My very first steps with the Adobe Creative Suite, some special Photoshop stuff, and last but not least some entertaining tech and game TV (although I myself don't play!!! only watch e.g. while eating dinner, watching news *again* is boring). Actually, some sort of such more entertainment oriented tech TV would be nice too ;-) Imagine such game TV, but with explanations for how to PROGRAM something like Warcraft instead of just playing it :-) And you get a weapon upgrade only if you can explain a HLHSR (hidden line/hiddensurface removal) algorithm ;-)
What are your plans for managing and structuring tutorials? Who sets up the categories, outlines, etc.? If you have free-flow, throw tutorials in willy-nilly, it will fall apart. There has to be hierarchical structure to the plan. Can you give us some ideas?
Let me answer that later, that's the hard-facts question (great! shows you're at least somewhat serious. maybe ;-) ), here it's midnight and the doc's waiting for me tomorrow morning... But basically, I don't actually want to do this now, maybe ever. I would like to start the project and help others. I do what is necessary though. If it's necessary to get involved there, I'll do it. Right now I'm busy for a few more weeks producing SOME content without much structure. My various courses like the one for Actionscript (spontaneous idea after I stumbled over yet another Flash issue - even though there are thousands of pages of docs a few thousand more are missing, a modern programming language is tough because of the huge libraries that come with it) or now SMTP have nothing in common. As I said, I concentrate on Thunderbird related topics because of their link to Letexa. I try to keep the general email courses pretty much email client neutral so that they can be used standalone or in other projects. But I've no plans for NOW to start thinking about e.g. a structure for LPI I content. That's relatively easy to do anyway since you just have to go to LPI and see what's included in the exam... No, I just asked the public for the very first time, now my focus is finding people who might be interested. Nothing focuses more than a good discussion, and I had way too few opportunities lately.
And who are you aiming towards? End-users? Administrative users? Command-line users? KDE/GNOME users?
All ;-) Too broad? Yes and no (I just wrote "know" instead of "no" - I'm getting tired, as I said :-) ). *My* goal with this project is to create a very general "movement" and the infrastructure for it.
Oh, and one other thing. If you're going to have voice-overs, please include captioning for the hearing-impaired, like other sites are moving towards these days.
Have a look at my courses. Almost all have CC (if it's missing as in the Thunderbird Options Dialog course it's because that course isn't fully finished and adding CC is the last step). And have a look at the webpages with w3m - I actually tested them with it even though it seems useless when the content is multimedia ;-) Michael -- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Michael Hasenstein wrote:
Hi,
Subject says it. The request is non-commercial, but for a community-based project. I've started creating multimedia learning content and would prefer not to do it alone.
I may be interested, depending on the content. I'm not at all a flash programmer, but can help in translating to french if applicable.
See signature, current content is just an example. No video included yet because I've just shared hosting and bandwidth is an issue, besides, for the current examples it isn't necessary or all that useful...
I have some sort of fast hosting and can share some Gb
Anyone interested in producing learning content, for general topics
I have already some sort of courses in french, used three years ago as distant (internet) teaching, and do now a small course for opening open source to very newbie only knowing windows
Site: letexa.com
interesting jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2007/10/27/127022-Claire-Dodin-une-Toulousai... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
jdd wrote:
I may be interested, depending on the content. I'm not at all a flash programmer, but can help in translating to french if applicable.
Well, the content is up to you... Right now I'm concentrating on the general topic "Email and Thunderbird". Reason: I started with Thunderbird because I found there was very little documentation (no F1 help and the homepage has very little, just an *external* link on the Mozilla homepage for their own product!) but it has quite a lot of users. The Mozilla admins actually added a link to my pages (to http://letexa.com/courses/1/course.html really). Since I still have precious little contents I'm working on getting more for Email/Thunderbird, to justify the link and not loose all the visitors coming trough it. Right now most people come either through this link or through Google searches. At this point it's useless because of a lack of significant traffic, but if it picks up - and with some content it WILL pick up (I've created successful communities TWICE before, for network address translation and later at SuSE for Oracle so I think I know what I'm talking about) - I'd like to make the statistics public, including Google Analytics. Yes, a few days ago I added code for this. I had always thought it to be useless, since I've the Apache logfiles, but boy, was I wrong! Google Analytics is GREAT! Shows you everything down to what keywords people used in their Google searches to find you, what kind of bandwidth they have at home and their screensizes (very nice to know if you offer multimedia content)! So anyway, I also recorded my first Linux screencast, which was my OpenSuSE 10.3 installation in VMware on my otherwise Win XP system (Laptop is Vista with VMware), and had plans to turn that into my first Linux content. Then I discovered that link on the Mozilla pages (I actually finally looked at my webserver logfiles and the referrer info) and in a hurry started to improve the Thunderbird related stuff. Everyone should concentrate on what they like and know best. I have very good infrastructure for multimedia and Flash (good recording equipment, good video camera, Adobe Creative Suite CS3, 24" monitor ;-) etc.) and have some ideas for what to do. But alone it's little use. I don't even WANT to become an expert web- and ajax programmer, for example. Anyone who likes that part? ;-)
I have some sort of fast hosting and can share some Gb
Very welcome indeed, if traffic picks up! How many GB? I've 150 as I mentioned. Multimedia needs LOTS of bandwidth. One more reason to try to also make money with the site, to be able to afford a content delivery network ;-)
I have already some sort of courses in french, used three years ago as distant (internet) teaching, and do now a small course for opening open source to very newbie only knowing windows
Site: letexa.com
interesting
I'd like to concentrate on "enabling", i.e. general infrastructure like the Flash framework, instructions and tutorials for how to create content, the website in the background. I set up a mailinglist list@letexa.com (unmoderated, members only), but at this point it's still empty as this is the first time I went "public". I had to get SOME content up first, I couldn't ask earlier with nothing at all to show... to subscribe you have to go to this page (I just added this, interrupting writing this email): http://letexa.com/contributors.php Seems like it only works this way and not via email commands. Michael -- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Michael Hasenstein wrote:
jdd wrote:
I may be interested, depending on the content. I'm not at all a flash programmer, but can help in translating to french if applicable.
Well, the content is up to you...
if act only as a translator, i wont :-) but 1) may be we should move to an other mailing list? 2) we must make clear what is the source material support (video, drawings, impress, source code...) making video is very long.. jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2007/10/27/127022-Claire-Dodin-une-Toulousai... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
jdd wrote:
Michael Hasenstein wrote:
jdd wrote:
I may be interested, depending on the content. I'm not at all a flash programmer, but can help in translating to french if applicable.
Well, the content is up to you...
if act only as a translator, i wont :-)
True enough... have a look at the current content (see the script links) and at the website. It's not much but I guess that can also be a plus, imagine you want to start and there are thousands of hours of text to translate ;-) Suggestion: go ahead and get yourself letexa.fr and start translating! How about it? I'd of course give you access to the current webserver. The disadvantage of my shared hosting: I cannot host anything but .com, .net, .org, .us. It's no use setting up an IP to my current webserver, because I cannot change its Apache configuration so I cannot add another name-based virtual host. That means the only way to host another domain for me is an HTML redirect, i.e. somewhere a webserver must exist that answers to letexa.other-toplevel-domain and serves the browser an HTML file with a redirect to http://letexa.com/whatever/
1) may be we should move to an other mailing list?
Sure: http://letexa.com/contributors.php
2) we must make clear what is the source material support (video, drawings, impress, source code...) making video is very long..
Basically anything as far as I'm concerned, since I can read all "standard" formats and everything from Adobe (.ai, .fla, .indd, etc.). So I'd need the script, everything the script references (pictures, sounds, texts, animations, videos) and an audio file with the spoken script. I put together the .swf, convert the audio file into an mp3 inside a .flv. Adobes video file format .flv can also serve as an audio-only container - with this crucial benefit to pure MP3: .flv's can have meta information like CUE POINTS. One thing that must be in the script is cue point information. At what time should what happen (display this picture, start that animation, hide that previously shown text, etc.)? I add those cue points to the flv, and THAT is what makes the presentation "tick". All info about when an action should start is embedded with the audio. So to get different timing, for example because someone provides a different voiceover for the same content, I don't have to change the .swf. I just recode the audio file with different cue point info! Okay, details... one of those which I have to describe. I still have lots of things to describe and lay open before you... Michael -- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Nov 7, 2007 9:57 PM, Michael Hasenstein
jdd wrote:
Michael Hasenstein wrote:
jdd wrote:
I may be interested, depending on the content. I'm not at all a flash programmer, but can help in translating to french if applicable.
Well, the content is up to you...
if act only as a translator, i wont :-)
True enough... have a look at the current content (see the script links) and at the website. It's not much but I guess that can also be a plus, imagine you want to start and there are thousands of hours of text to translate ;-) Suggestion: go ahead and get yourself letexa.fr and start translating! How about it? I'd of course give you access to the current webserver. The disadvantage of my shared hosting: I cannot host anything but .com, .net, .org, .us. It's no use setting up an IP to my current webserver, because I cannot change its Apache configuration so I cannot add another name-based virtual host. That means the only way to host another domain for me is an HTML redirect, i.e. somewhere a webserver must exist that answers to letexa.other-toplevel-domain and serves the browser an HTML file with a redirect to http://letexa.com/whatever/
1) may be we should move to an other mailing list?
Sure: http://letexa.com/contributors.php
2) we must make clear what is the source material support (video, drawings, impress, source code...) making video is very long..
Basically anything as far as I'm concerned, since I can read all "standard" formats and everything from Adobe (.ai, .fla, .indd, etc.). So I'd need the script, everything the script references (pictures, sounds, texts, animations, videos) and an audio file with the spoken script. I put together the .swf, convert the audio file into an mp3 inside a .flv. Adobes video file format .flv can also serve as an audio-only container - with this crucial benefit to pure MP3: .flv's can have meta information like CUE POINTS.
One thing that must be in the script is cue point information. At what time should what happen (display this picture, start that animation, hide that previously shown text, etc.)? I add those cue points to the flv, and THAT is what makes the presentation "tick". All info about when an action should start is embedded with the audio. So to get different timing, for example because someone provides a different voiceover for the same content, I don't have to change the .swf. I just recode the audio file with different cue point info!
Okay, details... one of those which I have to describe.
I still have lots of things to describe and lay open before you...
Michael
-- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/
Моё терпение подходит концу!
--
Uhm, not directly related, but I'm just throwing up ideas here. The mention of Flash reminds me of Moonlight (http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight). If its something on open source, I thought it'd be more appropriate if we can present it with something that is open source as well. Of course this is assuming that Moonlight is ready. Let me state that I hardly know anything about it except from what I hear from the news and podcasts. Anyone has any updates/more info regarding it?
Hi,
Uhm, not directly related, but I'm just throwing up ideas here.
Oh it is related, don't worry!
The mention of Flash reminds me of Moonlight (http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight). If its something on open source, I thought it'd be more appropriate if we can present it with something that is open source as well. Of course this is assuming that Moonlight is ready. Let me state that I hardly know anything about it except from what I hear from the news and podcasts. Anyone has any updates/more info regarding it?
That isn't quite open source... that is Microsoft Silverlight, which is being developed by Microsoft to compete with Adobe. They do NOT open source it, and they don't really support moonlight, they just tolerate it. It is important to know that only the player(!) will be available on Linux, moonlight does not include all the tools, which will remain Microsoft-only. Adobe's Flex SDK - the Enterprise platform for Flash, Adobe Flash CS3 is the "animation oriented Flash design platform" - is available for Mac and for Linux as well, and the SDK is free (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/downloads/). Also, Adobe contributed the Actionscript 3 engine to the Mozilla team (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/). Of course Adobe does that because it wants domination and not because they want to be nice, but I'd wager to say this is better than how Microsoft tries to dominate. While I really don't like Adobe all that much (but there products are quite good - most of them), I'm not sure I would like to support Microsoft by using Silverlight. That's politics - but also from a technology point of view it doesn't make any sense. Silverlight is Beta, Flash has been out there for many years. Almost no one has Silverlight. Almost everyone has Flash. Same with available developers. So for now, I won't consider Silverlight. Michael -- Email: mh@hasenstein.com Home: http://hasenstein.com/ Project: http://letexa.com/ Company: http://mbe-nuernberg.de/ Future company: http://euramer.com/ Моё терпение подходит концу! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Michael Hasenstein wrote:
translate ;-) Suggestion: go ahead and get yourself letexa.fr and start translating! How about it?
I'll see. Be aware that I'm extremely busy and on an unpredicable manner - my daughter is a singer and need me sometimes, I can't know when and I must leave what I do for some days. I also have many works (I'm retired, the most busy category :-) but anyway I want to help, and can host some sort of files, as I own a hosted computer here http://www.kimsufi.com/ (my own is here:http://ks2829.kimsufi.com/) I can share, say 10Gb for this app as a ftp or similar, with a 100Mb bandwith (symetrical) but this is very new for me and far from being completely setup (run openSUSE 10.2) - lately it will replace my dodin.org server. I can host a domain name, but this may be too early
done
Basically anything as far as I'm concerned
well... this don't seems efficient to me. We need to have some sort of common layout.
inside a .flv.
I use flv, but only as pure video files (http://dodin.valerie.free.fr/valerie.html)
One thing that must be in the script
I'm able to pruduce a script (as in a movie production, descriptive text), but I don't think you speak of this kind of script :-)
timing, for example because someone provides a different voiceover
an other of my daughters is a voice over professional (but so don't do it for free :-(), and I just order a "zoom h2" for doing similar things http://www.thomann.de/fr/zoom_h2_bundle.htm jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2007/10/27/127022-Claire-Dodin-une-Toulousai... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (5)
-
Anders Johansson -
Bryen -
Chee How Chua -
jdd -
Michael Hasenstein