WordPress.org

Make WordPress.tv

Welcome to the official blog of the TV review team for WordPress.tv

We approve and publish all videos on WordPress.tv as well as help WordCamps with video post-production and captioning and subtitling of published videos.

We use this P2 to post our progress, status reports, and occasional geeky video debates. Use the “Subscribe to Blog via Email” widget to follow along!

Want to help us?

Video Editing — You can see what videos we have that need editing in this spreadsheet. No special credentials are needed, just download the raw video file, and use your favorite app to edit.

Get started here!

Subtitles/captions — You can help us extend the reach of of WordPress.tv by adding captions or subtitles to any published video. Just find your favorite video, and follow the steps here to create a caption/translation file and submit for review.

Weekly meetings

We use Slack for real-time communication. As contributors live all over the world, there are discussions happening at all hours of the day.

We have a project meeting every Thursday at 17:00 UTC in the #wptv channel on Slack. (Find out more about Slack.)

You’re welcome to listen in, or say “hi” and introduce yourself if you’d like to help.

Recent Updates Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 8:16 pm on March 15, 2016 Permalink |  

    Programming note: Meeting time is NOT changing 

    For all our US based volunteers, we just changed our clocks ahead one hour in observance of Daylight Saving Time on Sunday.

    However, our meeting time is in UTC, which never changes, so if you are in the US, plan on joining us an hour later than you are used to (10am PT/1pm ET) but for everyone else, our time is still the same time:

    Thursday at 17:00 UTC in the #wptv channel on Slack

    See you there!

     

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 7:37 pm on February 27, 2016 Permalink |  

    Welcome Weekend Contributors! 

    We’re glad you’re here to take part in our contributor weekend challenge. Looking for info on where to get started? We have a page set up for you here: One Hour Video Challenge Instructions

    You are also welcome to leave a message in our #wptv Slack channel if you have any questions. WPTV mods will be checking in all weekend.

    Also be sure to add your name, and information on the video you worked on in this spreadsheet so we can be sure to recognize your efforts!

    Thanks for helping to make WordPress.tv awesome!

     

  • Michael 2:10 pm on February 19, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags:   

    Doc for Using the YouTube Editor for Subtitling/CC 

    This is the first draft of how-to use the YouTube Editor for subtitling/CC.

    Comments, criticism and suggestions are needed.

    Link to doc.

     

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 6:38 am on February 5, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: ,   

    Contributor Drive Planning Chat – Recap 

    We met again in Slack this week to continue our planning from last week. Again the goal is to get our handbook ready for an upcoming contributor drive at the end of the month. From last week we each processed a video (download raw file, add slides, publish to WPTV) and then came back to discuss how that went. What were some pain points we noticed. How can we make the process smoother. Here are the things we discussed:

    • It wasn’t clear if I could use the iMovie software that comes on my mac, so I downloaded the other one, which took a long time. If people need that software they should install before contributor day
    • We are almost done with an iMovie video to edit WordCamp videos
    • point of confusion #2 was which videos might be good to try and cut slides into. It’s not obvious which ones need it, and which just need simple edits
    • if the slides are already clearly visible in the video, they probably don’t need to be cut in, so that’s probably another thing to note there in terms of which ones need it.
    • I poked around awhile to find the instructions just on cutting in slides and felt like they were buried in lots of things I didn’t need to know for that particular task
    • overall what would make it easier is to have some sort of task based workflow, like 1) do this 2) then do that 3) do that other thing, like a clear map or checklist of what need to be done.
    • @ajhill shared notes about how we might document this process in this Google Doc which is a great start for a task based guide to post-processing.
    • if the idea is to ensure contributor success during the drive, we may want to line up a list of videos that makes the entire process far faster and less painful. (e.g. videos where the slides are partially visible so that they can time based on the visuals)
    • one little note – there is some jargon in there that I didn’t understand, for example, “codec” here: “Any video editor can be used for editing and processing the videos as long as it has a good codec to process the videos”
    • @bethsoderberg volunteered to help copy edit (as a non video expert) to help catch those, and @ubernaut volunteered to help with “non-jargony” alternatives
    • For videos that are already on WPTV (published) but could benefit from edits to add slides, we need a set of instructions on how to access the file and subtitles on WPTV
    • One thing I noted (thinking like a user) is that the spreadsheet is pretty confusing. Not sure how to make it simpler, but I imagine its hard for a new contrib to know where to start
    • @jerrysarcastic added a list of potential things that will trip new contribs up, in this Google Doc.

    We also discussed plans for using blog.wordpress.tv as an outlet for topical updates, pro tips, etc. This will let us keep the handbook light and focused, while allowing us to add other important tips in the blog. This gives us a URL we can point to when sharing. Also our blue welcome box on make.wordpress.org/tv needs an overhaul, and 2 hours of straight Slack meetings is for the birds. Well look to move our planning to P2 posts more as we plan going forward. Thanks for sticking it out!

    Also present: @tashan @roseapplemedia @johnparkinson @oleg

     

    • Ben Hansen (ubernaut) 7:17 pm on February 5, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      for reference codec stands for compression/decompression and it is just the format that your digital video is in, different codecs are used to produce different formats.

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 6:06 am on February 5, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: ,   

    WPTV Team Meeting Recap 2/4 

    We met in Slack today in the #wptv channel to discuss the following:

    • Our YouTube Channel now has enough followers to get a private URL. We just need to be active for 30 days and we qualify.
    • For videos we upload there, we decided on using the same “Speaker Name: Title of Talk” format for video titles that we currently use on WPTV. This will also make automating easier in the future, as we can pull the title from published posts
    • Captioning/subtitling – we decided that this activity really “belongs” under the WPTV umbrella, and with that in mind we will work to include it in our upcoming contributor drive at the end of the month.
    • We had some discussion about how YT might help with those efforts, as it provides some auto-captioning. Not perfect but may be a good head start nonetheless. Needs some testing to see if it will actually help yet or not.
    • Badges – at the moment we don’t have contributor badges for WPTV on dotorg profile pages. But we do have the ability to add them manually. @jerrysarcastic will round up a list of current contributors, and in the future we will need to be more mindful of adding new contributors.

    Full transcript here in the Archives. Please join us next week in the #wptv Slack channel (Thursdays at 17:00 UTC) if you want to help out!

    https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/wptv/p1454605248000572

     

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 3:50 am on February 2, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: contributor drive,   

    February Contributor Drive Planning Chat – Recap 

    Last week we met in Slack (#wptv) to chat about the current state of our handbooks, so we can get them ready for a contributor drive that is happening at the end of the month. You can see the things we discussed in the Slack Archive, but here is a brief recap:

    • The focus of this drive will be to find more contributors interested in post-processing raw WordCamp videos and uploading finished (edited) videos to wptv
    • if you go to our handbook now, Much of the info seems to be there, but it’s not obvious what step one is; for a new contributor it’s kinda hard to know where to start: https://make.wordpress.org/tv/handbook/
    • We also have some resources for WordCamp planners here: https://plan.wordcamp.org/video/video-post-production/
    • One goal is to encourage a new contributor to 1) get a video from the spreadsheet 2) download it to their computer and edit in slides and intro/outro if needed and 3) upload to wptv with the correct metadata
    • We discussed a bit about how we will track contributions

    At the end of the meeting we all agreed that for “homework” we would all download and process a video, and upload it to WPTV. Some of us are more familiar with the process than others, so we’ll bring our notes on how we can improve the process to the next meeting.

    If you are interested in joining us, we are having another meeting this Thursday Feb 4 at 18:00 UTC (1:00 ET) which is after our usual team meeting, at 17:00 UTC. Hope to see you there!

    Convert 18:00 UTC to your timezone here

     

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 8:13 pm on January 27, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags:   

    WPTV Handbooks planning meeting tomorrow! 

    Howdy WPTV fans. Tomorrow after our usual team chat (17:00 UTC) we will be meeting to discuss our next steps for improving our onboarding documentation, to make it easier for new contributors to get involved in post-processing.

    Here are the deets:
    Meeting place: WPTV channel in Slack
    Date: Thursday Jan 28 @ 18:00 UTC

    Convert to your timezone here

    If you are in attendance for the regular team meeting, stick around!

     

  • jwparky 6:41 pm on January 22, 2016 Permalink |  

    Just saw this on the WordPress.org Blog.

    https://wordpress.org/news/

     

  • Jen 5:48 pm on January 4, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: annual survey, contributors   

    2015 Contributor Survey 

    Hi video folks! Thanks for all your hard work and contributions in 2015. Could you contribute few more minutes to fill in the 2015 contributor survey? It will help us establish some baselines around the contributor experience so that we can see how things change over time.

    This is being posted to all the Make teams, so if you subscribe to a bunch of p2s and keep seeing this post, know that you only need to fill the survey in once, not once per team.

    The survey is anonymous (so you can be extra honest), all questions are optional (so you can skip any that you don’t want to answer), and we’ll post some aggregate results by the end of January. It took testers 5-10 minutes to complete on average (depends how much you have to say), so I bet you could knock it out right after you read this post! 🙂

    There are two sections of the survey. The first has questions about team involvement, recognition, and event involvement, and is pretty much what you’d expect from an annual survey (which teams did you contribute to, how happy are you as a contributor, etc).

    The second section is about demographics so we can take a stab at assessing how diverse our contributor base is. All questions are optional, but the more information we have the better we can figure out what we need to improve. If there’s some information you’d rather not identify, that’s okay, but please do not provide false information or use the form to make jokes — just skip those questions.

    The survey will be open until January 15, 2016. Whether you have 5 minutes now, or 10 over lunch (or whenever), please take the 2015 contributor survey. Thanks!

     

  • Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 11:03 pm on December 17, 2015 Permalink |
    Tags: goals, goals 2016,   

    How far we’ve come, how far we have to go 

    In today’s modchat we talked about what we accomplished in the last year as a team. It’s been pretty amazing to see everyone come together, new faces and old friends alike, to really push this team forward, and boy have we done a lot! Over the last year we have:

    • created a post-processing workflow that helps WordCamps get video to us faster, as well as open up a completely new avenue to contribution that did not exist before
    • improved our outreach to WordCamps, proactively contacting them before and after the event, to offer any any assistance we can, help improve submission quality, and reduce organizer stress
    • increased our reach, by rescuing a forgotten Twitter account, and using it to announce all videos we publish, as well as started work on a YouTube channel to increase our reach and appeal even more.
    • Put a redesign of WPTV on the community’s radar, and gotten the ball rolling for a (greatly needed) new site for WordPress lovers and learners everywhere.

    There are of course many other things we did along the way that does not get captured in the above “big 4” but in total, the efforts of this team helped WPTV to reach over 1000 videos published in 2015, an amazing feat!

    To do all these things in a year is humbling, and could not happen without your help, so thank you to everyone who pitched in this year. Many hands make light work! 🙂

    Where do we go from here?

    Another big part of our chat today was talking about 2016, and some of the goals we want to work towards for the upcoming year. Here are some of the things we discussed:

    • Transcoding/storage: Increased usage of Elastic Transcode (Amazon) and S3 storage to make raw files smaller and easier to download/work on after download. We tested this last year, this year we put it into production.
    • Automating AWS – Look for a dev to help us with Amazon’s API for automating tasks like transcoding, and in the meantime find a contributor(s) willing to “own” increased usage of Amazon services for WPTV
    • Captioning – This has been a tough one for us to add to our limited resources, but also a huge need. Currently looking for another community team to “own” this in the short term, around some planned contributor drives early in the year.
    • YouTube – One big way we can help with captioning efforts is to finalize our work on pushing WPTV content to YouTube, which does some heavy lifting with automated captioning (which can later be edited for accuracy.)
    • WPTV contributor drive – Editors (post processing) is our biggest need, so our efforts will be focused on growing that side of our team with an upcoming contributor drive, date TBD. We will need to smooth out our onboading flow to take advantage of this, so a few handbook sprits are in the works!

    That’s a pretty good list to get us going for 2016. Thanks again everyone! We have no more scheduled meetings for 2015 (due to the winter holidays) but I hope to see you all again on the first modchat of the year: Thursday January 7th at 17:00 UTC in the #wptv channel in Slack.

    Interested in helping out? Why not join us wherever you are in the world. Details are in the blue box at the top of the site!

     

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