[OSM-talk] adding Wikimedia videos to OpenStreetMap objects

[Oleksiy Muzalyev]

Dear fellow mappers,

It is possible now to upload to the Wikimedia Commons the videos which 
illustrate Wikipedia articles. On Saturday I went to the highest summit 
of the Swiss portion of the Jura mountains, Mont Tendre 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Tendre> , and filmed a short, 4 
minutes, video about it.

Then I added this video to the respective Wikimedia category and to the 
Wikidata page, and added wikidata=* and wikimedia commons=* tags to the 
OSM node of the summit: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/343335042

I used for filming the cameras Sony RX100 V and DJI Osmo, and for the 
aerial footage the latest DJI Phantom 4 Pro+ quad-copter. The Wikimedia 
accepts videos in the free open WEBM format, so I converted the MP4 file 
into WEBM with the ffmpeg <https://ffmpeg.org/> command line tool.

The quality of the resulting WEBM video:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mont_Tendre_Jura.webm (select at 
least 1080P resolution in the player for viewing)

is comparable with its Youtube version:

https://youtu.be/pgNiCYzr7sg

The DJI Phantom 4 Pro+ has got a camera with one inch image sensor and 
improved lenses. In my opinion, it is the first aircraft of this class 
capable to film really useful aerial photos and 4K aerial videos. 
Creating a good video is not a trivial task, still there is a lot of 
information on it, and the quality equipment is readily available.

And it is kind of interesting. In fact, we could climb on the Mont 
Tendre only from the third attempt. Two first attempts failed due to the 
snow, wind, low outside temperature, and the remoteness of a location 
(it is also the most isolated mountain of the canton of Vaud), besides 
we had to carry the equipment. Probably, I would never did it in winter, 
if it were not for filming.

A video may convey much of significant information about a location. It 
may provide not only ground and aerial footage, but also some practical 
advice and insights via a microphone. Perhaps, in future we may think 
about creating a video=* key for direct linking to the videos with a 
Creative Commons license. But even now it is possible to do it via 
wikidata=* and wikimedia_commons=*.

With best regards,

Oleksiy

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