I've been doing some work recently with the Miro Community software. It creates a community video website which can center around a geographic location or topic. It is very awesome. I have begun pulling video from PEG TV stations and got off the ground pretty quickly (see ACMNE.mirocommunity.org .)
I have started finding that many PEG TV stations that use even Drupal may not be as easy to pull into a system as those on Youtube/Blip/Vimeo. It really got me thinking about the backend storage for these video files. It has led me to take a much closer look at Kaltura.
I'm just throwing this out to the sharks but what about Kaltura as a backend for video storage for PEGTV. And let's say that each station had to pay something for that. What would it be worth for what you would get? Well, what would you get?
With proper integration and support we can have:
1) Transcoding of files to ACM standards
2) A local branded video player for individual station websites. (The Blip/Youtube thing)
3) A tool for unprecedented video collaboration ( an exclusive Kaltura feature)
4) A growing archive for regional community media
5) Seemless integration in your CMS site.
Is this a plausible idea? I'd love to hear some feedback.
Comments
Miro and Kaltura are both
Miro and Kaltura are both great solutions and I don't want to come off as putting down anything that isn't Open Media. If I thought either of these was a better solution for PEG than what we've been working on I'd give up on Open Media and move on to another challenge. I love the Miro Community interface, but part of the reason it works so well is that it is just video. The UI/UX isn't competing for screen real estate with classes, equipment checkout, community events, etc.
That said, we put a fair amount of effort into making every project created with om_project and om_show "Miro friendly". All that's really required to feed the Miro guide or Miro community site is a Media RSS feed. It can be fed from YouTube, Blip, and/or Open Media. The big difference between using Open Media vs. Kultura/Miro is that we manage both the web/VOD side as well as the MPEG2 for broadcast. While Kultura has a Drupal solution, the really exciting changes being made in Drupal are happening with the Media module. You can see an example of Media running on drupalmedia.org. Media and getting PHP Stream Wrappers into the D7 core make adding video (or any other type of file) from Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) to a node much easier for users and developers. It will also be easier to move that initial upload from a local filesystem to Amazon's S3, Archive.org, YouTube, Kaltura, and/or any other place you'd like to store a copy of the file. You'll be able to deliver the files from either the local filesystem or the CDN of your choice.
If you absolutely have to deploy something today, Kaltura and Miro are great solutions. If it's possible to focus on building out your local RAID capacity, connecting to i2 or anything else that gets you more bandwidth for your buck, moving your member management to CiviCRM or Salesforce, and equipment checkout to MERCI, everything Drupal, Media, and Open Media will be much easier for PEG stations without a full time developer on staff to implement.
It sounds better to wait
Thanks for filling in some gaps on Drupal 7 and what to look for. Even after talking to sales people at Kaltura I'm not sold on it, they market it well, though.
What I am exploring is not a single station site but something that is shared in a region, although the scale is tbd. I'm trying to wrap my head around the relationships involved in making that work - and seeing how the OMP can play a role. I'll work on making a connection for the i2 while the basic site gets up and running. Serious media management might be starting to take shape around April. In the meantime Miro Community is a great chance to showcase vibrant content from PEG Access.