Spam: The other white meat

In the last round I showed a proof of concept. This time we're moving rapidly toward something functional- we've got a browser actually attached to a filefield, a pseudo UI, a much clearer idea of where our direction needs to go, and some eye candy. Checkout the screencast!

This quick video shows some of the progress that was made at the NYC Media Sprint last week. While it departs from some of the earlier mockups that we did this past spring, this is functional in terms of browsing and is quite a bit better thought through- thanks to all the smart folks sitting around the table.

Using the Antiword program, Media Mover now has its first text converter. Antiword can take Microsoft doc files and convert them to pdf, ps, and txt files, giving site admins the ability to get rid of those pesky MS files- or at least provide alternate formats.

For sites that have a number of doc files already on the site, Media Mover can batch convert these for you. For sites that want all uploaded files to be in the same format, Antiword gives you a good way to have your users files converted.

Here's a quick report back on work that got accomplished today. Lots of code, coffee, and keyboards.

Here's the report back from the beginning of the third day of the media sprint here in NYC. You can see some improvements to the GUI. Today we're going to be working on several pieces- admin, formaters and stream wrappers.

This is a quick demo of the functionality that we've been developing here at the media sprint. This is obviously not polished, but it does show some of the pieces of functionality that we want to finish- functionality that we outlined earlier today on the uploader proposal on the interface group.

Since my last screencast looking at the functionality of FFmpeg Wrapper, I've done quite a bit to improve the interface for transcoding. I've added an AHAH layer for file information which I think is really helpful for inspecting files. If you want a fast introduction to how to transcode files in Drupal, give it a peek.

I just committed a rather nice piece of functionality to the FFmpeg Wrapper module. Files that are attached to Drupal nodes can be transcoded multiple times by a simple interface. Once you find settings that you like, you can attach your transcoded file back to the original node.

Whether you need to create a file for download, create a web-friendly format from a file, or just want to offer a high or low bandwidth versions, any file that is attached to a Drupal node via the upload form and can be transcoded with this tool.

FFmpeg Wrapper puts a link on the file attachments list to the FFmpeg Wrapper testing tool on files that FFmpeg can transcode- which helps identify bad file types quickly.

Asset is the obvious choice if you need your users to be able to easily upload content and place it within WYWISYG editor. Media Mover is probably on the other side of the spectrum- tones of options, lots of arcane settings that will not make sense if you are not familiar with the ins and outs of rich media- further if you just want to get your transcoded media on the page.

The problem is that Media Mover is more of an API than it is an interface. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to really call it an interface if you’re an end user. A while back, I released the Auto Run module for Media Mover which runs Media Mover configurations when a node is created or updated. This really set the groundwork for starting to move toward running Media Mover configurations on specific user interactions- the ones that I think a majority of people are looking for. This approach- the transcode on create/update content- while workable, still does not give the end user control of how page layout works. For some, this is a fine middle ground approach, for others, unworkable. From my perspective, Asset provides a solid way for users to add content to their nodes. Of course WYSISYG editors are problematic, but they are not going anywhere, and hopefully, their HTML will just get better. Asset goes along way toward improving the integration between WYSIWYG editors and Drupal. Media Mover can remain a work horse for rich media, but it can also play nice when it comes to offering up its services.