Video Editing
Right now the monitor coordinator (MC) uses iMovie for video editing. iMovie has proved very easy to learn and use, and we have not found such a simple alternative that runs on Windows. This has made a Mac a requirement for the monitoring work, which adds an expense, and few people in Peru know how to use a Mac, although it is much simpler for the Achuar to learn.
Monitors are gathering a lot of video, sometimes more video than photos. In the current workflow the MC downloads the video from the SD card, and then will trim and combine a few clips. These might include a pan of the spill, a close up, and a piece to camera by the monitor. This could easily be improved with training.
The video editing requirements are actually pretty simple. We just need to edit the video down to 3-5 minute pieces that can go on Youtube. We could help with story-boards (see the Small World News / Guardian Project app that guides people through this).
HTML5 technology has improved enough that a video editor should be possible just running in the browser, particularly for our simple editing needs: select some clips, select the best bits and trim, and edit them together in one sequence. This would remove most hardware requirements and not require any software installation - it would just run in the browser on a tablet or a desktop. It would not work well as a web service given the slow internet, but could work as a local service.
I discovered this tool, HTML5-videoEditor which is a prototype/proof of concept based on a node.js backend and a frontend built on Backbone and JQueryUI. Project creation, asset upload, and initial editing works, but streaming of video was not working on my machine. I haven't yet found other projects that do something similar.
Node installs fine on a Raspberry Pi. FFmpeg also installs and can transcode at 3-5 fps. The Pi has a fast GPU that supports hardware encoding, but ffmpeg does not currently support that.
- Install customized HTML5-videoEditor on top of nodejs and ffmpeg on the Raspberry Pi.
- User connects SD card to Pi, automatically downloads video into asset folder for HTML5-videoEditor, transcoding if needed.
- User connects to HTML5-videoEditor over the local network from a laptop or tablet. Can browse videos, add attribute information, and edit short piece.
- Pi encodes edited video, places into "pending upload" folder.
- Rsync uploads video whenever a connection is detected. Support for partial uploads.