Aaron Winborn

For anyone interested, here's the latest mockup for the Media module, courtesy of Maarten Verbaarschot (mverbaar) of the D7UX team!

(original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mverbaar/3632702590/in/set-72157619245872526/)

You can see more screenshots at the D7UX Microproject - Media Library for D7 issue.

And Jon Stacey (jmstacey) is doing a bang-up job of helping to realize this vision, via the Google Summer of Code! He's been hard at work with Andrew Morton (drewish), another co-mentor, to make this happen for Drupal 7. (And yes, we're also continuing to back-port this work into 6.)

Make sure to attend the Media Sprint Update Panel and join the Media Sprint 2009 at Open Media Camp in Denver, on April 18-19!

The presenters of this panel, including Aaron Winborn (aaron), Arthur Foelsche (arthurf), and Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (Alex UA), will discuss the ongoing efforts of the Media Sprint by the Drupal Media working group to bring to fruition the Media module and related work.

This panel will begin with a demonstration and discussion of the current state of the ongoing development of the Media module, and a thorough examination of the concept for its extensible API. Finally, we'll discuss the near and far-term plans, including the Media Sprint planned for the next day of the Open Media Camp.

Here's the video for the Drupal Multimedia panel at DrupalCon. Presenting were Arthur Foelsche, Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, and myself.

By the way, the dev version of Embedded Media Field now supports Archive.org. Hopefully the Drupalcon site will install the module so we can see all the videos directly from that site; even if not, I'm sure it won't be long before someone takes advantage of it and posts a DrupalCon wall of Video...

Video: 

I've started work on the Media Transcriptions module today. This module will allow the attachment of Transcriptions (or Closed Captioning) to video and audio files. The initial version in CVS is from some work by Jonathan DeLaigle (grndlvl), who is a co-maintainer & developer of the module.

For full functionality, you'll need to wait for Drupal 7, because of the long-awaited hook_file and Fields in core issues.

However, there will be releases with limited functionality for Drupal 6, and even a teaser for Drupal 5, with a promise of smooth upgrading as things progress.

Read more to Find out What this Means for your Multimedia!

I sometimes hear a complaint that jQuery Media can't be used for both audio and video on the same site, because it makes the player too large.

This is not true at all. Although it does currently require some finagling.

I plan to reconfigure the module soon to make it easier to pull in the proper configurations for audio and video. Meanwhile, here's a quick hack.

1. Enable the FileField module and create types for your audio and video clips.

2. Enable the jQuery Media module, and configure it for your custom video node type. We won't turn it on for the custom audio type, because we'll be calling it manually, coming right up.

3. Make sure you have a media player installed in the file directory and configured properly at /admin/settings/jquery_media (or /admin/settings/jq if you're using the jQ module). I suggest JW FLV Media Player for now, as Drupal's Media Player doesn't yet support audio. Just stick it in the site's root directory to work automatically, or put it wherever you want and configure jQuery Media with the proper folder.

4. In your theme's template.php, create the following function, replacing 'custom_audio_type' with your site's custom audio content type.

(Note: we need to copy the $variables['file'] to a new variable because of a known bug in Drupal 6 at http://drupal.org/node/297952.)

5. Create a filefield_file.tpl.php file in your theme directory, with the following code:

That's it. It should work automatically after that. Note that this tutorial assumes you're using Drupal 6.4, CCK 6.x-2.0-rc6, FileField 6.x-3.0-alpha4, and jQuery Media 6.x-1.4-beta1.

Note that I write about this in more detail in Drupal Multimedia (pre-order now)!

Drupal Media Player. Splash screen.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

(Image credit reway2007)

Sadly, my plans for August don't include Drupalcon Szeged. Already too much travel this summer, and the dates conflict with a training my partner is doing, so that would be hard on our 4yo.

Back in June, I made a list of personal project plans, so I figure I'll revise that list for the rest of the summer.

First, the status report on the projects from June:

• I finished writing Drupal Multimedia! And we're about half way through the editing process. The book is scheduled to be published in September, and can be pre-ordered now.
• The Embedded Media Field port to Drupal 6 is still in process. It's ready for testing on new installations now, but I still need to write an upgrade path from Drupal 5.
• Morbus Iff and I have made strides with the engine for 5 Second Game. The module allows character creation and the combat engine is nearly ready for play.
• Except for some experimentation with audio metadata, I ended up not really working on GetID3. I'll probably end up waiting till the fall to work on this, unless I get new inspiration.
• I haven't written any tutorials yet, but hope to do that regularly once the book has been published and I have more free time available.

New projects of mine in progress and on the horizon:

• Media Player, which I've already blogged about a couple of times. This is an exciting project. Once it's mature, I plan to hook it into jQuery Media and Embedded Media Field for optional support as a start, and write patches for other media modules.
• I want to tie YouTube API into Embedded Media Field.
• More Drupal 6 upgrades, including Views Slideshow and a couple of other modules that need attention.
• Jump more into Drupal 7 development, especially for media handling, such as with the hook_file patch.
• Presenting at DrupalCamp NYC 5!

That's all for now.

Here's a sneak peek of the new flash Drupal Media Player, developed by yours truly with OpenLaszlo!

Obviously, it's still rough on the edges, and all the options in the theme function aren't hooked up yet. Although it works already (after a fashion), don't use it yet unless you're willing to suffer the consequences.

When it's done, this module will come with its own player, fully GPL'd, and will support others out of the box as well, such as JW Flash Media Player and Wimpy. But who's going to want those anymore?

The module adds theme functions and a simple API that should be easily usable by other media modules, such as Embedded Media Player, jQuery Media and whoever else wants to jump on board. The other modules won't need to worry about where a particular player lives or how to invoke it; the theme functions provided will be robust enough to handle player colors, sizes, icons (including placement, layout, and other customization options), splash screens, playlists and more. Administrators will be able to override any of the defaults, including player of choice. Additionally, it'll be easy enough to invoke manually as well:

print theme('media_player_player', $filepath);

And best of all, since it's in OpenLaszlo and GPL, with the source included in the module, it's easy for developers to modify even the player, without even needing a Flash IDE. (The whole thing is created with an XML.)

Kudos to EclipseGc for nudges and encouragement to get this project going!

Next on the list: volume controls, playlists, override color/logo/splash options, settings pages, pull in the other players, youtube/blip.tv/other provider support, tie into other media modules

(Cross-posted at gdo.)

So my brother in law (Erik Gecas) has an art exhibit, Painting Physical Presence, that's just opened in Las Vegas! Particularly exciting for me (though admittedly only slightly relevant to the world of Drupal) is that I created his web gallery a few months ago, with Drupal of course. The show is in tandem with Ayako Ono.

The web gallery is largely created with Views Slideshow (for which I still owe a port to d6). In fact, it was largely for this site, which makes a small appearance in Drupal Multimedia, that I beefed up development for that module (and the Magnifier module, that is also used on the site, though not in the book).

The Media Code Sprint has been a great success thus far! We have built a fairly comprehensive test suite for hook_file. It still needs to be rounded out, so that, for instance, all the cases for file saving are covered. However, validation is fleshed out, and the framework is pretty much usable and ready for testing gurus to go in and run it through its courses.

Jonathan Hedstrom (jhedstrom) of OpenSourcery joined us this morning, and created the FileDirectoryTest class, finding and fixing some flaws in the current file api in the process. His help was invaluable. And we all quashed other minor bugs and problems in the documentation, so it's been a most successful sprint thus far.

Tomorrow should prove to be productive as well. It's my last day in Portland before heading back east to Pennsylvania, so I plan to make it a great one. Thanks to Advomatic for sending me out to the media code sprint! It's great to work with a company that recognizes the value of Open Source, and reinvests in the community.

Drewish and I will be taking a break in the early afternoon to present a remote session for DrupalCamp Colorado on Drupal Multimedia, where we plan to talk about the state of the art and our recommendations for Drupal 6, as well as a brief overview of the successes of the Media Code Sprint, and what that means for the future of Drupal. See you there!