FreeForm

Overview

• Written in Python
• Uses MySQL or PostgreSQL
• Generates media as static HTML for speed
• Supports authenticated users
• Processes Media (see below)
• Multiple Forums
• Builtin Calendar
• Is a Radio Source (see below)
• Advanced Search (see below)

Examples

• IMC-Ithaca
• Indymedia Live Radio

Photo Processing

• The Process:
  1. Accepts over 20 common image formats for upload
  2. Allows user to crop photo on the web
  3. Automatically scales photo for different views + origional size
  4. Saves all views as JPEG (or PNG for transparency, soon)
• Advantages
  1. Easy to use, no experience with web graphics needed
  2. Fast, photos can be uploaded directly from digital camera or scanner
  3. "Full Size" view, images can be clicked on for full size by default
  4. All photos on the newswire and features are the correct size
  5. All photos on the newswire are viewable by any modern browser
• Disadvantages
  1. No transparency possible in published photos (because of JPEG)
  2. No animation possible in published photos (also because of JPEG)
  3. Uses more CPU to process photos during the publishing steps

Audio Publishing

• The Process
  1. User encodes audio to Ogg Vorbis before uploading
  2. Web form displays and allows change to audio comments/metadata
  3. Length is displayed (will soon support cropping)
  4. Audio is published with searchable metadata (see below)
  5. Site visitors can use JOrbis if they don't have a Vorbis player
• Advantages
  1. All audio on the site is one universal format
  2. Ogg Vorbis files can be cut and pasted without transcoding
  3. Audio can be easily searched for author, album, title, or genre
  4. Vorbis is better quality at lower bitrates than MP3, saves bandwidth
  5. Audio is ready to be used on an IMC radio stream as-is
• Disadvantages
  1. Audio publishers need to download an Ogg Vorbis encoder or plugin
  2. Does not yet support Ogg Flac for lossless audio archiving
  3. Does not yet support Ogg Speex for better speech compression

Video Publishing

• Not Ready Yet
• Will use Ogg Theora
• Any video (any format) can be linked to an article

Radio System

• Overview
  1. Radio editors build a 7-day radio schedule with many programs
  2. Each program's producer can edit the program's playlist
  3. Each program's producer can send live audio during timeslot
  4. Programs can relay another Ogg stream during timeslot
  5. Freeform sends this content as a continuous Icecast source
  6. Transcoders can provide MP3 and low bitrate alternative streams
• Advantages
  1. Radio streams do not depend on a dedicated remote source
  2. Is very stable, runs for days without loosing connection
  3. Is reliable, Ogg stream is legal unlike Icecast source switching
  4. Live feeds can come from many seperate sources, seamlessly
  5. Playlists are edited on the web and are independent of eachother
  6. Detects poor sources (ie, silent relays) and automatically switches
  7. Is a more distributed model for streaming, promotes participation
• Disadvantages
  1. All source material must be in Ogg Vorbis format (see Audio, above)
  2. Does not yet support crossfade between tracks (working on it!)
  3. Does not yet support Ogg Speex (will when more players support it)

Search System

• Overview
  1. When new media is published it's automatically indexed
  2. Searching only requires looking up words in index
  3. Does not require searching through every article to find words
• Advantages
  1. Speed, searches will take seconds no matter how large the site
  2. Less Overhead, less database and cpu consumed for search
  3. All Media, will display results of all media, not just recent
• Disadvantages
  1. Takes 0-2 seconds longer to process new articles
  2. More storage required to hold search index (20%?)

For more information, or to download the codebase to try it out, http://sv.gnu.org/projects/freeform/

-- ArcNLN - 05 Jan 2003
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