Putting the Portland City Council on YouTube
Are you like me? Do you hate the RealPlayer program for showing video on your PC?
A few years ago, I noticed that Portland City Council meetings, and other city bureaucracy proceedings, were available on the city's website, portlandonline.com. Cool, I thought, and I set about to watch some. To view them, however, one had to have RealPlayer installed. Wonky guy that I was, I went through the process of downloading and installing that program.
I soon regretted that decision. RealPlayer was a nasty, invasive little program that insinuated itself into the computer's startup routine, running unwanted in the background and creating a dopey little icon that not only took up space along the bottom of the screen but also would start blinking maddeningly whenever it decided I should "update" the program by paying the program's creators money for something I didn't want.
I tried to get it to stop running when the computer started up, but the usual way of doing that wouldn't work. Finally I decided that the only way to get rid of RealPlayer was to uninstall it, and never make the mistake of installing it again. I'd have to miss the scintillating City Hall meetings, or catch them on cable TV. Such is life.
Now, that was in the days before YouTube, and due to the tremendous rise of that internet engine, things may be changing. Pete over at Our New Mind has come up with a routine that can take those Real-format videos from the city's website, convert them to a more universal format, and post them on YouTube:
He describes this project this way:
Citizen activists/journalists, take note! I’ve managed to free some City Council video footage from its RealPlayer prison on portlandonline.com, and republish it on YouTube.... Is the process incredibly time-consuming? YES!! Is specialized equipment needed? YES!! But it’s possible. And worth doing, for any 5-10 minute clip of a Council meeting that might be of interest to the public. So let me know if you need any such clips converted!I'm sure he'll get a lot of business with that offer. But the real question (no pun intended) is when the city is going to get off its duff and unlock that "RealPlayer prison." In this day and age, every video the city produces ought to be YouTube-friendly.
| Posted at 4:01 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (5)
Thanks for picking this up, Jack!
The one thing I'd add to your summary (and probably should have made explicit in my original post):
It's not just about having to have specialized software (RealPlayer). It's also about having clips that "make sense" for the context they're linked from. City Council videos on PortlandOnline are often about 3 hours long. If all you want is 5 minutes of testimony in the 2nd hour, finding it is 20 minutes of work. Even if you have RealPlayer installed, and are willing to venture outside of your web browser.
Anyway -- it's great to see so much response to this idea. I feel like we're going places!
Posted by Pete Forsyth | June 7, 2008 6:13 PM
State of Oregon has the same problem with relying on RealPlayer. But, I run a Mac so RealPlayer's invasiveness is less ... invasive.
Posted by Garage Wine | June 7, 2008 8:03 PM
Real Player is awful. Try Real Alternative instead. Lightweight, no crapware and free.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/real_Alternative.htm
Posted by chris | June 7, 2008 10:09 PM
Chris beat me to it; RealPlayer is like cancer for your computer. RealAlternative is a wonderful, small, non threatening way to give you compatibility with Real Media files without any of the BS that comes with RealPlayer. Easy to recommend.
Posted by TL | June 8, 2008 8:59 AM
Thanks for spreading a good idea Jack. I use a low-cost piece of software called TubeHunter for collecting news clips. I'll try it on the County site. I agree with Pete, "making sense" of the animations of government proceedings is the primary task.
Posted by Jason | June 10, 2008 7:37 AM