Padma

PAD.MA - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive for text-annotated video material. The project is initiated and developed by a group consisting of oil21.org from Berlin (associated partner in the TIK project), the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP from Bombay.

PAD.MA intends to present primarily footage and not finished films. The collection will be searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non- commercial use.
We see PAD.MA as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video- making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself… beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip.

The design of the archive makes possible various types of “viewing”, and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of “writing” on top of the image material. Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on timelines by both archive contributors and users.

original website : http://pad.ma
Okno instance for TIK : http://padma.okno.be

http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/HowTo

to upload videos :
- firefogg plugin in Firefox browzer : http://firefogg.org/
for transcription and annotations :
- install speedtrans → transcription client → annotations upload
- install padmalocalvideo (transcribing + viewing)
to download video in good quality :
- install a bittorrent client like µtorrent, transmission, …

http://padma.okno.be
tool for collective (timebased) documention of TIK (allways in development )

In TIK, padma will be used as a documentation tool throughout the process of the project. The database is publicly accessible and all interested artists can participate. All timebased material can be added to padma: video/film/animation, audio and stills (if you make a kind of slideshow). The purpose is to add as well research- as documentation material to the database. Every artist/group/collective/organisation should document their projects and upload the footage. Once online, the material can be described and annotated in differnent layers. Usually the author(s) will start describing/annotating their material, but afterwards anyone can add information. Thus a dense web of annotated visuals and sound will emerge, all related to the Time Inventor' kabinet. You can compare it to a 'visual wiki'.

Okno will propose several punctual worksessions (content gathering workshops) that can be considered as a time for production and research. Goal is to discuss the information and experience gained in the TIK project, representing multiple streams of time and information in a way that is dynamic and inspired by organic structures and different organisations. This timewriting can become a mixture of real life and fiction, memories and future, and provoke a different perception of the present.
The workshops will involve working with material from all TIK-partners, which will be digitized and annotated through padma.okno.be
Artists and writers, researchers and scientists will be invited to contribute materials and to explore ways of writing across the video material, resulting towards the end of the project into a valuable TIK-publication. …

At the end of every working session we will present the results during an EkoTime presentation. These working sessions and presentations will be spread over the 24 month TIK project and will visit alternately the above mentioned cities. The EKOTIME collective and the local-participating TIK artists will present the results in the EkoTimeMachine installation and discuss the findings with the public.

The EkoTime Machine is an interactive installation based on all TIK documentation collected in padma. TBD.

During the TIK-project we will organise a 'further development workshop' on padma, led by its conceptors: Jan Gerber and Sebastian Luettger (oil21.org, Berlin) and Sanjay Bhangar (Bombay).
The aim of the workshop is :
1. research how we can use padma as a tool for creative writing and documenting collaborative processes as TIK - starting from different theoretical approaches for writing though media files, as e.g. the grounded theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory)
2. to research how padma can be embedded in or linked to other applications, as there are blender, pd, drupal, … to name some.
3. work on specific features in padma, to make it possible tu use padma as a 'stand alone, realtime installation/documentation' project — (e.g. automatic editing based on keywords …) namely the time machine.

padma workshop dates (confirmed):
- 22 till 26 november 2010
- 21 till 25 februari 2011

What are ways to start thinking about pulling material out of pad.ma? From the onset, pad.ma has had an API (documented at http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/API), a programming interface that allows you to pull out videos, perform searches, seek to exact time-codes in any video, fetch transcript and map data, and display all this however you please. Also Pad.ma's General Public License (PGPL, http://pad.ma/license) is designed specifically for the reuse of the material on pad.ma. Through the experience of running the archive, there have been various imaginations of multiple and layered forms of time-based annotation over video, including for: pedagogical tools for learning and discussion; presentation tools that combine text and video in new ways, essays and other writing formats enabled by rich and context-specific media.

At this workshop, we hope to explore some of content/technical ideas to annotate video on the web, and new qualities for videos (decomposting, automatic editing, …) as a result of online practices. We invite all TIK-collaborators to participate. Please upload your TIK video material, texts and/or software that, combined with existing materials and tools in pad.ma, can become innovative kinds of “output”, or new forms. These would also then feedback into the archive, and how we imagine its future.

The outcome of the 2 linked workshops: WRITING TIKS and PADMA will be discussed at our first ECOCONFERENCE on friday november 26, afternoon/evening.

• delete files thru interface - delete your own files
• make lists, that you share with everyone resp. more finetuned group management
• make ox posterframe work
• uploading from the commandline - script usable without firefox, on a remote shell
• 'composting' files (artistic degrading of files)
• padma upload: automatic detection of square pixels (16/9 – 1:1 pixel aspect)
• padma upload : better default quality
• padma stream: better quality
• sound : gui adaptation to handle sound only files (for radio art f.ex.)
• online edit : anotations/keywords/locations … as basis for an edit list
• upload srt files /export xml files (final cut) and into padma
• display of still in 'description' (http://padma.okno.be/Veeoqm2v/info)
• possibility of working with html-tags in descriptions, annotations and transcriptions?
• html5 in+out points, display in wiki
• new layer in editor: how can we see where are the exact in-/outpoints of the first layer?
• google maps
• delete a wrong transcript or description once uploaded with speedtrans
• user defined: search text in all files: subtitles, transcriptions, descriptions, …
• user defined: link categories and keywords (synonyms)
• automatic generated: tag cloud

In the 2010 part of the workshop, we welcome all the padma developers, to work with us on implementing our TIK past-current-future documentation, ideas, etc…

Day 1: (monday 22/11) started with the usual introduction to the environment for novices, and grew into some glimpses of future changes… Meantime some items on the TIK wishlist were clarified, made, and broken again (hihi). Day two continued with the implementation of the padma link from this wiki, some examples of commandline connections, and some work on adding sound uploading/converting/annotating.

Day 2: the presentation of tuesday 23/11 : http://padma.okno.be/Vfrbmsu8/00:00:00.000-00:17:47.000

Day 3: (wednesday 24/11/2010) is happening right here, right now…

• links rechts (links to the right, left to the right, march…)

Some links _

• integration in the wiki: an exemple with code from http://code.pad.ma/padmaEssay
• and http://padma.okno.be/Vsbgqwov/00:00:00.000-00:09:48.658
• integration into other programs (for instance python): commandline upload client in python http://code.pad.ma/padma_client/
• integration with blender game engine
• integration with puredata
• streaming command :

is used for streaming from a dv cam recording localy in dv and ogg theora.

#!/bin/bash
while true; do 
   datenum=`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`
   dvgrab -f raw - | tee dvstream-$datenum.dv | ffmpeg2theora -f dv -x 320 -y 240 -V 512 -a 0 --no-skeleton -o /dev/stdout - | tee stream-$datenum.ogv | oggfwd your.streamingserv.er 8000 pass /mountpoint.ogg
done

Day 4: (thursday 24/11/2010): some extra padma applications
http://padmatexts.okno.be
http://padmafun.camputer.org

Day 5: cleaning up the code and in the afternoon the first ECOTIME CONFERENCE
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/ekotime1

Participants: Jan Gerber and Sebastian Luettger (0x2620.org, Berlin), Sanjay Bhangar (CAMP, Bombay), Barbara Huber and Michal Palenik (col-me, Bratislava), Annemie Maes and Junior vandebroeck (OKNO, Brussels)
Visitors: Shahira Issa (pericentre projects, Cairo) and Ann Mertens (constant, Brussels)

The goal of the second padma-workshop (feb.21-feb26) is :
1. install pan-do-ra, the more performant version of padma, and run some tests
http://pandora.okno.be — this is still the beta version, not all features work yet.
2. refine some of the webapplications we started working on during the first workshop (november 2010)

- the padma essays http://padmatexts.okno.be/
- the padma playlists

There are different versions of the padma playlist.
One is a commandline interface in python (see below), another one is an webinterface playlist that let you get ± the same results.

webinterface padma_playlist
http://padma.okno.be/playlist/ → application searches on keywords in transcriptions and descriptions, and returns a list of clips based on the in- and outpoints of the respective keyword.
You can edit the playlist in the browser, and export as an html-page or a JSON-file.
A small command-line script (pythonbased: padma_save_playlist (drag and drop html-file)) downloads the higher resolution clips, based on the saved html-file. In the browser, one can play locally the downloaded clips in a playlist.

playlist online possibilities

1. go to the URL http://padma.okno.be/playlist
2. put a keyword to search, and select the layer you want to search through
3. you get a list of clips that you can re-order and edit in the preview window with i(in) and o (out) points
4. update your edit
5. you can also delete some clips
6. export as HTML → this opens a new tab in the browser where the selection can be played (wait some seconds for the system to retrieve the videos)
7. you can save this webpage (extension .html) and store it as a playlist to be uploaded again in the webapplication
8. you can also hit the TIK button, which brings you to a new tab with the playlist
9. wait a while, and go back to your playlist selection. There the interface for text annotations should be appeared.
10. you can play around with the text-possibilities. Open the resulted playlist in a new tab window, or use a second screen.
11. these image/text results can be linked in realtime to incoming TIKs from the TIK-server, via a JSON-file that is saved with the playlist.

playlist offline possibilities

1. all steps similar, but first install padma_client 0.0.10, downloadable at http://code.pad.ma
2. run the application in terminal, putting following code to download the playlist-files:padma_save_playlist (drag the saved HTML-file here)
3. the files start to be downloaded
4. when finished, a tik.html file and an index.html file are saved in the folder (same name as previous saved HTML-file)
5. open first the tik.html file with firefox _> this brings you into the application
6. than browse and load the index.html file and hit the TIK button in the interface.
7. This makes run the playlist offline (open a seperate window in the browser)
8. go back to the playlist tab and start playing with the text-interface.
9. if you want to add an alpha layer, put rgba(0,0,0,0)

commandline padma_playlist (python)
let's you search padma entries via keywords and throws you out all the entries, tagged by it (inpoints and outpoints);

1. bzr branch http://code.pad.ma/padma_client
2. call the script ./padma_playlist from within padma_client/bin/
3. if it asks for firefogg, do: easy_install python-firefogg
4. if you don't have easy_install, install python-devel, python-setuptools and python-setuptools-devel
5. leave the bin directory and run: python setup.py install –prefix=/usr/local/
6. then easy_install python-firefogg and easy_install ox
7. run the script again

examples created with the webapplication padma.okno.be/playlist - textbehaviour can be controlled by TIKS from the TAKserver.

Using Pad.ma Playlist:

1. Navigate to http://padma.okno.be/playlist
2. You can search for a word, either in All fields, or only under Keyword, Description, Transcript or Location. You will be returned a list of clips.
3. You can now re-arrange the order of these clips by dragging them around and removing clips you do not want by clicking on the red X button at the top right corner of each clip.
4. You can change the in and out points of the clip either by manually editing the In and Out values and clicking Update, or by pressing either “I” or “O” while playing the Preview Video to set In and Out respectively. Once you are happy with the In and Out, click Update to make the cut.
5. Once you are done creating your playlist, you can export this as an HTML file: Select HTML → Export. This will open a new window with your playlist. You can “Save Page As”. Make sure you save HTML Only.
6. Name and place this HTML file anywhere on your computer. If you wish to edit your playlist at any point, you just need to click the Browse button on the Playlist page, select the HTML file, and click Load File. Then you can edit the clips and Export HTML again.

Making the Playlist work for offline use:

1. Once you are done making your playlist, you will probably want to download all the videos to make it work offline - this is currently accomplished by a command line python tool. This will work on a Mac and Linux:
2. To install the client: sudo easy_install padma_client
3. Then, it can be invoked simply on the command line with: padma_save_playlist <path-to-html-file>
4. This will create a folder in the same directory as the HTML file with all the resources required for the player to work offline. You can open the index.html file in your browser to watch the playlist, using offline resources.

If you want to use the “TIK” text vjing interface with the offline files the procedure is as follows:

1. Open tik.html in your browser.
2. Click “Browse…” and open the index.html file in the same folder.
3. Click the “Tik” button.
4. A browser window will open up with the playlist. You can move this window to another monitor for presentation purposes by right-clicking the tab and selecting “Open in New Window”.
5. When you switch back to the tik.html window, you will now see some controls to manipulate the CSS of the text - change CSS values as desired and click “Do” and watch the text animate in the other window.

Using the data in other applications:

1. Either use padma_client directly to fetch JSON data from the website as you are interested in (documentation at
2. http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/padma?&#padma_workshop_part02-february_2011
3. under commandline_padma_playlist )
4. Or, if you have used the above steps to fetch the data offline, you will see a file called playlist.json in the folder created. This creates a computer-friendly version of the data :).

sanjay working on the pad.ma playlist application

jan, sebastian and barb puzzled with code

(29.07.2011- newsletter padma)

«PLAYLIST»

or, a stream of (mechanical) consciousness in the age of digital manipulation

The digital archive in particular is an interesting space for the
exploration of unforeseen, accidental, and machine-made connections across
a vast range of material. Are automated mash-ups or keyword-films, which
are produced “mechanically”, inferior to the subjective authorial
productions of artists? Examples of recent films that could have been
“made by keyword” include Chrisian Marclay's 24-hour cinema cut-up “The
Clock” and Maha Mamoun's film on the pyramids as they appear in diverse
scenes in Egyptian film, “Domestic Tourism-II”. Here archival objects are
being given new form that combine, and make it impossible to distinguish,
computed and “thought” relations. The artist or editor does not disappear,
but neither does the computer.

If one were to exacerbate this situation of the distribution of the role
of the author, rather than resist or critique it, we could begin to
explore the possibilities posed by something like these playlists,
generated by keywords and searches in an archive.

The playlists consist of high quality video and might take some time to
load (Firefox)

Playlist on rickshaw, in its various avatars (10 videos)

http://playlists.camputer.org/C
Playlist on archive as footage as city (14 videos)

(excerpts of talks or interviews with Niranjan Hiranandani, Adonis,
Lawrence Liang, Tom D'Aguiar, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Rick Prelinger, Shahid
Amin, Shakeel Bakshi, Friederich Engels)
http://playlists.camputer.org/L

«SOFTWARE»

We share the application for creating playlists within Pad.ma, here -
http://camputer.org/padmaPlaylist/. It functions within the Firefox
browser; the search results for any word or keyword can be stretched,
re-ordered or deleted, to manually create a final playlist. This can then
be exported as an html link that also plays in the browser.