media

Where is the Media module at or why I spent DrupalCon in a corner w/ my laptop

Submitted by Jacob Singh on

Like many Drupalcons, I spent nearly the entire conference preparing my presentations. This is no fun, but we’ve been so busy trying to get the new gallery feature in Drupal Gardens released that it was the only way.  Anyone else have this experience?

My Agile presentation got the pretty slides and practiced talking points.  But for my Media presentation, I decided to keep it pretty simple. No fancy slides with ironic images and silly jokes. No showmanship, no costumes, no entrance on a motorcycle jumping through a ring of fire. I just talked about the problems in D6 which prompted work on media, showed a demo and then we had a nice intimate discussion among the 200 or so people there as to what was going to happen next.

It was great and the feedback I got very much validated my original vision which was:

  • Useful, attractive and consistent interfaces whenever files are used.
  • Meta-data attached to files, no file-as-node business.
  • Secure ways to extend multimedia features to your whole community.
  • Killer WYSIWYG support.

During the discussion on the roadmap and the BoF I organized a few major features were repeated:

  1. Video and Audio
  2. A more sophisticated browser (folders, permissions,

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The future of multimedia in D7 or "You don't want me to kill the monkey do you?"

Submitted by Jacob Singh on

Hey folks,

Did you know that Drupal 7 will have a amazing multimedia capabilities due in large part to the Media module?

Hi, my name is Jacob Singh.

You may remember me from such kick-ass projects as Acquia Search (ApacheSolr), Drupal Gardens or GUI updates in core.  You may also just be dying to know what's going to happen to the monkey.  Either way, I'm here to tell you about what I've been up to along with many of my colleagues and Drupal buddies.

The Media module provides a rich interface for:

  • Managing files
  • Uploading new files or adding them from the internets
  • Browsing existing files
  • Embedding files in WYSIWYG editors
  • Adding fields and meta-data to files
  • Generally making Drupal suck less when it comes to files.

But don't take my word for it, watch me stumble through this demo (about 5 min of fast paced monkey-on-baby action)

and then vote for my media session at Drupalcon

Content | Site-Install.png

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Correction: Media module demo link

Submitted by Jacob Singh on

Hey planet,

Something strange happened where only I could see the embedded youtube video of the demo.  Sorry for the confusion.  If you were interested in a demo of the currently in progress media module, I've added a link to the demo. (It's' at the bottom): http://jacobsingh.drupalgardens.com/content/media-mania-multimedia-solution-drupal-7

Apologies, my webmaster will be flogged appropriately.

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Media Mania - The Multimedia solution for Drupal 7.

Submitted by Jacob Singh on

Most who know me know I like to take on Big, Scary, Projects and make them work.  But, I don't go in with a blueprint and a chizel, I typically go in with a bottle of whiskey, a stubborn attitude, best intentions and a sledgehammer.  

My latest baby is Media.  The Multimedia solution for Drupal 7.

I'll spare you the history, because it is quite long and involved.  It can all be read on the product page.  It is numerous heroes specing, designing, factoring, refactoring, re-refactoring.  It is the shoulders of giants like emfield, styles, field API, asset, wysiwyg and image_assist. And it is the ongoing support of companies like Acquia and Advomatic.

My ideas are simple though:

  • You never have to upload twice.  Whenever you need a file, and it's already on your system, you should be able to re-use it.
  • Files have feelings too :)  They have meta-data, they should have fields.   MP3s have genres, images have captions.  Make them 1st class entities.
  • The Internet is full of media.  You should be able to use a flickr image, a youtube video and an uploaded image in the same gallery and with the same interface.
  • Media belongs *everywhere*.  You should be able to embed media in any text area

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Mediacrity 50% complete

Submitted by Jacob Singh on

I got a little time off from "normal" sprint work since Acquia is beginning a new sprint and my baby is supposed to arrive any day now :)

So being the manic workaholic that I am, I  made some major improvements to the Media module in the past few days.  To name a few:

  • Re-wrote the browser to be more "drupally" I think it's a good compromise of convention and flexibility.  Let's see... http://drupal.org/node/697036
  • Implemented the Entity Api and type restrictions (so launch a browser to just select images)  http://drupal.org/node/697106
  • Got Media as a field working really nicely, got multi-value field support http://drupal.org/node/740546
  • Added a title and data field to the media field so that extending modules can chuck on extra information there.  Sweet! No issue for this, just a bonus.
  • Built the media_gallery module.  This is a new entity called gallery with 2 fields: Title and Media Items.  Media items is a multi-value media field with a description and link for each item.  Next step is to build the display mechanism for it.  I will be posting a video for this soon!
  • Kicked the shit out of cruft
  • Build a bulk importer which is awesome for testing, and fun for making albums: 

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