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Web Standards Community Members,

Hello! This is Mike Williams, I’m the service owner for Video and
Conferencing Services. I noticed that some folks on this list have some
questions about the current state of video at the U of M, and I’d like to
provide some clarification. Here is where we stand today:

1.  YouTube is to be used for public media and for distribution through
your public websites. I would suggest that if you are sharing access to
video between several developers within a department, that you create and
use a department account.

2. Kaltura is in production and has just celebrated its first year within
Moodle. We have well over 4,000 videos published today across our courses.
If you have faculty who use media in their Moodle courses, then Kaltura is
the place for them. As for extending this platform to other use-cases that
are currently supported by Media Mill, we do not see that happening in the
near term.

3.  Media Mill and Media Magnet will continue to run and be supported until
we can find a suitable replacement for the core functions they provide.
Some investments we are making now include:

   -

   Upgrading Media Mill storage to OIT's new bulk storage solution
   (approximately 80TB) to provide greater stability. (Planned completion
   summer 2013)
   -

   Creating/identifying alternative solutions for functions currently
   provided by Media Mill. As an example, we are working on a centralized
   transcoding platform that can be used to transcode video from one format to
   another. (Scheduled release date is summer 2013)


4. Google Drive is looking more attractive every day as a place to store
media. Google recently
announced<http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2013/05/bringing-it-all-together-for-google.html>that
your drive space will be growing. Drive might be a very good solution
for those looking to host media and still maintain secure access. Drive
also will convert your media into playable formats for both the desktop and
mobile devices, and embed/iFrame code is generated along with HTML5/device
detection. If you haven't played around with this, I suggest
downloading aBig Buck Bunny
video<http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/>and giving it a
try. Of course, the original file you upload will count
against your Drive space, but the derivatives won't.

For more information about these services, or to talk with others at the
University who work with or have an interest in media, I recommend joining
our University Media Community of Practice Google
Group<http://z.umn.edu/joinumc>and community. We meet monthly in the
STSS
building <http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/STSS/> and would enjoy
hearing about your needs, troubles, and successes.

-

Mike Williams

Service Owner

Video and Conferencing Services

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