Pad.ma Frequently Asked Questions
1. General (Name, Philosophy, Current status)
Q 1.1: What is PAD.MA?
A 1.1: PAD.MA is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. For more information, see the About page.
Q 1.2: What is currently in the archive?
A 1.2: The PAD.MA project was lauched in February 2008. It currently has 11 days 4 hours 58 minutes 11 seconds of footage, in 567 "events". The archive is growing quickly, so it is hard to describe its current state with any precision. But right now, the majority of material is from Mumbai and Bangalore: documentation of changing cityscapes, street and domestic life, commercial and intellectual activity, protests, chance meetings, police raids, train-rides, horse-carriages and other transports, conversations with various community, state and corporate interests, players and agents, art works, films, film clips, "found" footage, and much more. We expect the collection to grow to more than 400 events by early 2009.
Q 1.3: What is the broader context for this initiative? Why this, why now?
A 1.3: Starting in the 90's, the "DV revolution" in India and elsewhere led to rapid changes in imaging practices previously based on film, or analog video. One remnant of this process has been large archives of DV tapes, footage that remains hard to access, or deploy. Independent filmmakers and activist, NGO, and artist's communities, for example, are now contributing this material, without the precondition of them being finished "films", to the archive. At the same time, a lot of historically and politically valuable images have been "digitised" in recent years, but do not take full advantage of digital distribution systems. More generally then, the archive expands upon the perhaps inevitable destiny of all video in digital form: that it becomes possible to distribute, share, annotate, reuse and re-interpret it, even as the original "author's" intentions expire, and contexts change.
Q 1.4: Who administers PAD.MA?
A 1.4: Currently, members of the initial groups do, by rotation. To know more about the initiators, see the About page.
2. Starting to use PAD.MA (Supported browsers, plugins, walkthrough)
Q 2.1: Which browsers do you support, on which platforms?
A 2.1: We currently support Firefox and Safari, on Linux, MacOS and Windows. We do not support Internet Explorer. However, if you wish to endeavour to make the site work on IE, please appeal to IE to support web standards in their next version.
Q 2.2: Do I need to install anything to view the videos on pad.ma?
A 2.2: Yes, currently you need to use Firefox 3.1 Beta or if your browser supports Java applets, we will use a Java applet to play the video.
Q 2.3: Why do I need to register?
A 2.3: Many features on the site, including the ability to add and edit annotations, are only available to registered users. You can browse the site and play the videos without registering or logging in. For details, see legal.
Q 2.4: Can you walk me through some of the basic sections/features of the site?
A 2.4: http://pad.ma takes you to the home page, from where you can either search, browse, or click on one of the video icons featured below. Searching for an item leads you to a search-results page. Clicking on browse on the home page takes you to a view similar to the search results page, where you get an overview of all "events" in the archive. Each event can be expanded into one of the following "views": View: Editor, in which you can play the video and add or edit annotations, including locations, keywords, descriptions and transcripts, on the timeline. View: Info, in which event metadata such as the source of the video, and an overall description, is available. (image interface?) View: Map, on which you can find locations referenced in this particular event, or find videos by location. Apart from these basic views, there are links on the bottom of each page to the FAQs (this page), terms and conditions, contact form, and preferences.
3. Viewing (Viewing video, using the timeline, search, map, info page)
Q 3.1: What are those three screens in the Editor view?
A 3.1: This interface is similar to video editing software. The screen on the extreme left is the video player, which will play video if you click it. The next one to the right shows the image at the current IN point, if it has been marked on the timeline (or the first frame if there is none). Similarly, the rightmost screen shows the image at the current OUT point. Pressing the "H" key in this view will open a help menu, which contains a number of keyboard shortcuts for navigating the player and timeline.
Q 3.2: Why do I need to mark IN and OUT anyway?
A 3.2: This is used if you want to add your own annotations (applying them to a section of the video), or to view all existing annotations over a span of video. More on this in the annotation section.
Q 3.3: Why is the video so small?
A 3.3: Mostly to ensure that the video remains playable, in low-bandwidth environments.
Q 3.4: What are the colored horizontal bars?
A 3.4: That is the video timeline. It is an image generated by using colour averages of every frame in the video, one pixel width per second. Each complete bar represents ten minutes of video. This is based on timelines in 0xdb.
Q 3.5: What is the relationship between the text columns and the video player?
A 3.5: The text boxes on the right side in the Editor view are the annotations corresponding to the current location of the play marker. You can open or fold them using the icon in the top left of each bin. As the annotations grow, there will often be places where multiple transcripts or descriptions occur at one position. This is normal and desirable, because annotations by different users are layered or stacked on top of each other. All overlapping layers at a given timecode (play marker location) can be seen in the right-hand column.
Q 3.6: I can't play any video. What is wrong?
A 3.6: You probably do not have the plugins installed. See (Section 2).
Q 3.6: Where is general information about the video, its owner, etc?
A 3.6: This is in the Info view, which you can access from the "View" drop-down menu on top of any of the event pages.
Q 3.7: Can I see the locations on a map?
A 3.7: Yes, just go to the Map view, from the View menu in any event page.
Q 3.8: What are the small image icons to the right of the map?
A 3.8: Those are the events (rounded corners) and event sub-clips (square corners) that are related to the selected location.
Q 3.9: The map says: We are sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level...". Why not?
A 3.9: This is Google's fault. In some cases they do not have clear images of your front doormat, yet. If you zoom out a little bit using the horizontal zoom bar below the map, the images should reappear.
4. Annotation (Adding/ editing textual content)
Q 4.1: What is annotation?
A 4.1: Annotation is the adding of textual information, in this case to parts or the whole of a video event. This is similar to the general concepts: comments, commentary, or marginalia.
Q 4.2: Who has put in the current annotations?
A 5.2: The first layer of annotations have been put in by the original contributors of the video event.
5. Downloading (Using BitTorrent, Ogg Theora, time)
Q 5.1: Where do I download the video?
A 5.1: On the view:Info page, you will find a link to download a 640 pixel wide (more than half of most screens) version of the video.
Q 5.2: What do I do with the file I downloaded? (torrent)
A 5.2: BitTorrent is a file-sharing protocol that is very effective for the distribution of large amounts of data among large numbers of peers, and this is what we use to share files on pad.ma. You will need a torrent client, in you open .torrent file, which then downloads the corresponding video file. Some popular torrent clients are µTorrent for Windows and Transmission for Linux and Mac OS X. To learn more about it, check out the Wikipedia article, and the many sources referenced there.
Q 5.3: Can I download the annotations, too?
A 5.3: Not during the current beta phase of pad.ma, but we plan to make an off-line viewer for annotations available soon.
Q 5.4: Can I download only a small part of this video event?
A 5.4: Not at the moment.
Q 5.5: What can I use to play the video once I have it?
A 5.5: The videos are all in .ogv format. You will need VLC or any other media player that supports the Ogg Theora video codec.
Q 5.6: Can I use this video in my talk / class / film?
A 5.6: Yes. The downloaded video is 640 pixels wide (its height depends on the aspect ratio) which is fine for viewing full-screen. This material is released under the PGL, which generally allows for non-commercial use. For more details on the license applicable to the use of downloaded video, see (legal. 3) and follow the links. If you need to use this video material with editing software or an application such as PowerPoint, you might need to convert it to a file-format that works with the application. Popular tools for such conversion are ffmpeg or Super.
Q 5.7: How much time will this take?
A 5.7: This ofcourse depends on the size of the event, and your internet connection speeds, but with torrents, downloads get faster the more people that "seed" a particular file, and they are resumable, which is a big advantage.
6. Contributing
Q 6.1: How can I contribute video material to pad.ma?
A 6.1: In the current beta phase, contributions are by invitation. A group formed by the initiators (and early contributors) is having discussions with organisations and individuals for material contributions. This is also because we do not have resources to support digitising, annotation and serving anonymous or high-volume material at the moment. In near the future, it is likely that users will be able to contribute online, but at the moment you can get in touch with us here if you have video material to share.
Q 6.2: Can I contribute images, texts or audio?
A 6.2: PADMA is primarily a video archive. Technically speaking, anything that has an image and a length in time is possible to archive, view and download. It is definitely possible to turn still images for example into such a "video format", for example as a series of images that plays like a slideshow. Texts may be put in as layers of description or transcript. Ofcourse kinds of material, if uploaded elsewhere, can be linked to from specific sections of video.
7. Legal (TAC, License, use, reuse, human-readable)
Q 7.1: If I register, do I become a "member" of PAD.MA? What does this mean?
A 7.1: If you register i.e. create a login for yourself on the website then you become a member of PAD.MA. This entitles you to certain privileges as outlined in the terms and conditions, which include the right to upload material (video, image, sound, text) on to PAD.MA. This has to be material to which they own the copyright and thus can license under the PAD.MA General License or the PGL.

Members can annotate existing material on PAD.MA i.e. add their comments, insights and information. They can also download material from PAD.MA and under the PGL are entitled to use, redistribute, display and other similar rights granted under the PGL only to members.
Q 7.2: Can I redistribute the material on PAD.MA? Under what conditions?
A 7.2: All the material on PAD.MA has been licensed under the PAD.MA General License or the PGL. This means that members of PAD.MA are entitled to all the rights granted under the PGL including the right to download, reproduce, publicly perform or distribute in part or whole, make adaptations and incorporate the Material into a work or collection of their own. However this right is limited to the resolution under which the work has been licensed under the PGL. Thus as a member you have the right to redistribute material, but this right is restricted to the material in the specific resolution in which it has been uploaded and licensed under the PGL.
Q 7.3: What is the PGL?
A 7.3: PGL is PAD.MA General License. It is the license that makes sharing, creating and collaborating for the archive possible. As a member you upload material onto PAD.MA and license it to other members to download, reproduce, publicly perform or distribute, adapt and incorporate into your own work or collection. These rights are only for the material in the resolution in which it has been uploaded or licensed. The PGL is applicable to all kinds of material on PAD.MA including texts, videos, cinematograph films, footage, photographs etc.

The license is an important document, and is a kind of permission given by the owner of the copyright to others regarding how their work can be used. Originally used by the Free Software Movement for licensing of software, the same philosophy was translated into open content licenses for music, art, documentation and other material. Open content licenses, like the PGL, aim at subverting the shrinking of the public domain because of the encroachments by media empires and rigidity of the copyright regime.

For further details, read the license here.
8. Technical Overview (software, source, torrents, online video)
Q 8.1: What languages is PAD.MA written in?
A 8.1: Python and JavaScript.
Q 8.2: Can I get the source code?
A 8.2: Yes, the code is available under the GPL. You can find out more at http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/Source.
Q 8.3: Where can I report bugs, or request features?
A 8.3: At the moment, use our contact form.
Q 8.4: When is the html <video> tag going to be implemented? How will this affect PAD.MA?
A 8.4: Recent development versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera already support the video tag. When these browsers release a version with full support, you will no longer need to download any plugins to play videos on PAD.MA.
Q 8.5: Can I use PAD.MA offline?
A 8.5: Yes, we can imagine an application where the downloaded videos and their annotations can be viewed and searched offline, but this has not been developed yet. It is on our list of things to do.
PAD.MA is not intended as a software product, but you are free to use the code to create your own instance, if you like. Obviously it would be more interesting if these instances fed into each other, if people's annotations could layer and combine rather than exist in artificially separated environments.