OLPC Ethiopia/Cultural content: Difference between revisions
DanielDrake (talk | contribs) (New page: == Background == [http://www.myspace.com/melakufendika Melaku Belay] and another professional Ethiopian dancer visited the ecbp offices in October 2008. They performed various traditional...) |
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== Background == |
== Background == |
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[http://www.myspace.com/melakufendika Melaku Belay] and |
[http://www.myspace.com/melakufendika Melaku Belay] and Zinash Tsegay (professional Ethiopian dancers) visited the ecbp offices in October 2008. They performed various traditional Ethiopian dances (featuring traditional dress) from different regions. |
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Nicholas von Wolff recorded videos of the performances. These have been cut up into various short clips. |
Nicholas von Wolff recorded videos of the performances. These have been cut up into various short clips. |
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A photographer took a number of photos of the performances. |
A photographer took a number of photos of the performances. |
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All content is being published under the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license] on the Internet Archive. |
All content is being published under the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license] on the Internet Archive. |
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The project goal is to take these resources and produce free educational resources to be distributed on the XO laptops distributed within Ethiopia. In future, we aim to complement the media collection with audio recordings. |
The project goal is to take these resources and produce free educational resources to be distributed on the XO laptops distributed within Ethiopia. In future, we aim to complement the media collection with audio recordings. |
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Andreas at ecbp on.e is the coordinator of the project. [[User:DanielDrake|DanielDrake]] started the efforts for XO content bundling and wrote much of this page. Community involvement is encouraged and very much appreciated. |
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Community involvement with these projects is encouraged and very much appreciated. |
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== Recording and conversion == |
== Recording and conversion == |
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The dances were recorded in a makeshift studio at ecbp headquarters. The files were retrieved from the camera and cut up into several short .avi files (DV video, PCM audio). These were published on the Internet Archive: |
The dances were recorded in a makeshift studio at ecbp headquarters. The files were retrieved from the camera and cut up into several short .avi files (DV video, PCM audio). These were published on the Internet Archive: |
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[sorry, there has been a complication somewhere and we have been asked to remove the videos] |
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* http://www.archive.org/details/AmharaTraditionalDance2Seconds |
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* http://www.archive.org/details/GuragignaTraditionalDance |
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The videos can be converted to a resolution and format suitable for the XO using: |
The videos can be converted to a resolution and format suitable for the XO using: |
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=== Ethiopian traditional media content bundle === |
=== Ethiopian traditional media content bundle === |
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We want to produce an interactive guide to Ethiopian media for children. On the front page, the regions are listed, with a still photo of the regional dress. We wanted to show short animated GIFs of all the 7 regions on the front page, but the XO does not have enough processing power to show 7 animated gifs at once. |
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The still photos on the front page were generated by taking the .avi videos, and converting each frame to a PNG file: |
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== Audio notes == |
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mplayer -vo png foo.avi |
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The best sound format for XO content is [http://www.vorbis.com OGG Vorbis]. On Linux I would use mplayer to convert the original sound files into .wav (assuming they are delivered as some other format), then I would use oggenc from vorbis-tools to encode .wav to vorbis. [http://www.vorbis.com/software/#windows Here is a link to equivalent software solutions for windows.] |
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Then I picked a decent-looking png file and resized it, outputting as still.png: |
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convert -resize 25% foo.png still.png |
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After you have .ogg vorbis files, you can link to them using standard <a> tags from the HTML documents. Clicking on the links will cause the music to play within Browse using the integrated totem browser plugin. |
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When they click through the initial page, they see a low-resolution animated gif of one of the dance clips, and can click through to more full-screen videos of the dance. |
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The animated gifs were produced by taking the png files, taking every 1 in 3 frames (1, 3, 6, 9, ...) and discarding the rest. Then I converted them to small gifs: |
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mogrify -resize 25% *.png |
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And then I used gifsicle to produce a looping animated gif: |
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gifsicle -O2 --loop --delay 14 --colors 256 *.gif > front.gif |
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We aim to add further regional information to each page in future. |
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Latest revision as of 18:59, 13 May 2009
Background
Melaku Belay and Zinash Tsegay (professional Ethiopian dancers) visited the ecbp offices in October 2008. They performed various traditional Ethiopian dances (featuring traditional dress) from different regions.
Nicholas von Wolff recorded videos of the performances. These have been cut up into various short clips.
A photographer took a number of photos of the performances.
All content is being published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license on the Internet Archive.
The project goal is to take these resources and produce free educational resources to be distributed on the XO laptops distributed within Ethiopia. In future, we aim to complement the media collection with audio recordings.
Andreas at ecbp on.e is the coordinator of the project. DanielDrake started the efforts for XO content bundling and wrote much of this page. Community involvement is encouraged and very much appreciated.
Recording and conversion
The dances were recorded in a makeshift studio at ecbp headquarters. The files were retrieved from the camera and cut up into several short .avi files (DV video, PCM audio). These were published on the Internet Archive:
[sorry, there has been a complication somewhere and we have been asked to remove the videos]
The videos can be converted to a resolution and format suitable for the XO using:
ffmpeg2theora -x 360 -y 288 -v 7 --nosound foo.avi
Sound was discarded as there was no music playing; these amazing dancers were dancing to silence!
Applications
Ethiopian traditional media content bundle
Memorize games
There are a number of opportunities to produce Memorize games from this kind of media. For example, one game would involve matching the music (as audio) to the dance (either as a still photo, or preferably as a short video).
Audio notes
The best sound format for XO content is OGG Vorbis. On Linux I would use mplayer to convert the original sound files into .wav (assuming they are delivered as some other format), then I would use oggenc from vorbis-tools to encode .wav to vorbis. Here is a link to equivalent software solutions for windows.
After you have .ogg vorbis files, you can link to them using standard <a> tags from the HTML documents. Clicking on the links will cause the music to play within Browse using the integrated totem browser plugin.