[Xiph-Advocacy] Announcing A Digital Media Primer for Geeks

[Gregory Maxwell]

Xiph.Org announces its first documentary video production: "A Digital
Media Primer for Geeks"

"A Digital Media Primer For Geeks" is the first video from Xiph.Org,
presenting the technical foundations of modern digital media via a
half-hour firehose of information. Christopher "Monty" Montgomery, Red
Hat engineer and founder of the Xiph.Org project, guides this tour
through the foundations of digital video. The program offers a brief
history of digital media, a quick summary of the sampling theorem, and
myriad details of low-level audio and video characterization and
formatting. It's intended for budding geeks looking to get into video
coding, as well as the technically curious who want to know more about
the media they wrangle for work or play. The video features a wiki
companion site with transcripts, discussion, and further reading.

"Open Source has conquered and filled much of the original territory
to which it aspired, but the media frontier, especially video, is
still wide open and unexplored," Montgomery says. "Camera and computer
costs have come down to the point where hackers on modest budgets can
afford to participate." Members of the digital video community have
called it "[the] Uni lecture I never got but really wanted" and "Carl
Sagan on speed." The video is released under the Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-SA license for free redistribution and reuse, and was created
entirely using free and open source software.

The Xiph.Org Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
dedicated to open, unencumbered multimedia technology. Xiph's formats
and software level the playing field for digital media so that all
producers and artists can distribute their work for minimal cost,
without restriction, regardless of affiliation. May contain traces of
nuts.