What is the new Media Gallery feature on PF and how can I contribute to it?

[Greg Bernhardt]

The old Learning Materials forum was a mess for a long time and earlier this year we scaled it down. To help revitalize our resource offering we will be unveiling a Media Gallery to hold embedded videos (Youtube etc). We have a good start, but we welcome user submissions (moderated). We want PF members to submit only the best and most interesting physics and math videos you find. The bulk are for technical tutorial and lecture style videos with the others being more fun and broad. It's all very clean and easy to use. All videos are indexed into PF search. The gallery will open later this week.
Here are a few preview shots:

Media Home Page: Shows categories and all new videos

Video Page: Watch and comment

Upload Page: Auto generates title description. Multiple add at once.

Toolbar button: Add your videos easily to posts

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The Media Gallery is now open.
https://www.physicsforums.com/media/

Please feel free to submit your favorite and most useful video links.

 

[ZapperZ]

Greg,

Are you going to have any sort of categories for these videos? I can already see that it is going to be tedious to scroll through all of them already, and it will only get worse as more and more videos are added.

I don't know if I want to start suggesting it one at a time, but I really recommend videos by Don Lincoln out of Fermilab's YouTube channel, FrostBite Theater out of JLab's YouTube channel, and to some extent, MinutePhysics YouTube channel. There are just too many to single out one at a time.

Zz.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Are you going to have any sort of categories for these videos?

Yes they are on the left. Do you see them? Look at the first image.

 

[ZapperZ]

Yes they are on the left. Do you see them? Look at the first image.

Ya, I see it now, after you mentioned it. Thanks!

Zz.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Ya, I see it now, after you mentioned it. Thanks!

Zz.

You can also watch certain categories to get a alert when a new video is posted

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Let's get this thing jump started with a contest. First three members to 10 accepted video submissions will get a $10 Amazon gift card. Easy!

 

[ZapperZ]

@Greg Bernhardt

How about adding the "Optics" category to the list? This topic probably can be broadly lumped under classical E&M, but there are things that might be clearer if they are listed under Optics, especially the video that I submitted this morning.

Zz.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

How about adding the "Optics" category to the list?

Nice video! True, but at the moment we have few videos. Maybe once the collection is larger we can continue to refine the categories.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Let's get this thing jump started with a contest. First three members to 10 accepted video submissions will get a $10 Amazon gift card. Easy!

Contest is still up for grabs!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

@Dr. Courtney is the first to 10 videos and gets an Amazon gift card. 2 more are up for grabs.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Nearing 200 videos!

 

[mohinder]

I don't really understand the point of this.. If the videos are freely available in youtube and such, what's the point of embeding them in PF? Is that even legal?

Also, will now users get banned for linking to youtube instead of PF?

 

[mfb]

Youtube accepts (nearly) everything, here we try to find the best videos, and order them in categories. Youtube allows to embed their videos in other web pages.

No one gets banned for youtube links (unless the content there is clearly not appropriate).

 

[mohinder]

@mfb In what limit does embeding videos stop being ok though?

Imagine I create a site that groups all of youtube videos under different sections. Will youtube be ok with that? I doubt it.

 

[ZapperZ]

@mfb In what limit does embeding videos stop being ok though?

Imagine I create a site that groups all of youtube videos under different sections. Will youtube be ok with that? I doubt it.

Why not? Why would this be any different than providing a list of links?

YouTube provides the embedded codes. I don't see anywhere there where it says that one has a cap on the number of embedded codes that one can have at anyone time. Rather than just speculate on your own, can you cite YouTube terms of use and show exactly where there would be a problem? Otherwise, you're just shooting in the dark.

Zz.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

If the videos are freely available in youtube and such, what's the point of embeding them in PF?

YouTube has hundreds of millions of videos (maybe over a billion now?), good luck finding the good science ones

 

[micromass]

@mfb In what limit does embeding videos stop being ok though?

Imagine I create a site that groups all of youtube videos under different sections. Will youtube be ok with that? I doubt it.

Think about it logically. Youtube (owned by google) is a company and its main goal is to make profit. How does youtube make money? I think it's mostly through commercials and advertising.
Now consider a site where all videos of youtube were embedded but you had the opportunity to watch them without any advertising. Youtube would not be ok with that since investors would not have any reason to pay for advertising and youtube would lose a lot of money.
In this case, the advertising still shows up (and so does the name youtube and the link to youtube), so what does youtube have to lose here?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Imagine I create a site that groups all of youtube videos under different sections. Will youtube be ok with that? I doubt it.

Of course they'd be ok with it. They'd encourage it. One reason YouTube took off was the ease of embedding videos. As others have touched on, the videos stills stay in Google's possession and all advertising remains. All that happens is more eyes are generated for the ads. Google wins. Google wants Youtube videos to be shared.

 

[mohinder]

Think about it logically. Youtube (owned by google) is a company and its main goal is to make profit. How does youtube make money? I think it's mostly through commercials and advertising.
Now consider a site where all videos of youtube were embedded but you had the opportunity to watch them without any advertising. Youtube would not be ok with that since investors would not have any reason to pay for advertising and youtube would lose a lot of money.
In this case, the advertising still shows up (and so does the name youtube and the link to youtube), so what does youtube have to lose here?

Of course they'd be ok with it. They'd encourage it. One reason YouTube took off was the ease of embedding videos. As others have touched on, the videos stills stay in Google's possession and all advertising remains. All that happens is more eyes are generated for the ads. Google wins. Google wants Youtube videos to be shared.

Thank you for being human in your reply.

One reason why I thought that they'd not be 100% ok with this is that they may have ads in the page itself. Though I'm not sure if they do. Another reason is that it is in their best interest that users spend as much time as possible on youtube.com. By having a different site embed several of their videos, the user will not see the videos that appear on the right side of youtube, thus generating less $$.

Either way, I don't think this Media Gallery is going to be tremendously helpful in increasing PF's activity, thought it certainly won't hurt.

 

[ZapperZ]

Thank you for being human in your reply.

One reason why I thought that they'd not be 100% ok with this is that they may have ads in the page itself. Though I'm not sure if they do. Another reason is that it is in their best interest that users spend as much time as possible on youtube.com. By having a different site embed several of their videos, the user will not see the videos that appear on the right side of youtube, thus generating less $$.

Either way, I don't think this Media Gallery is going to be tremendously helpful in increasing PF's activity, thought it certainly won't hurt.

... And you have been a member since last Thursday, ya?

Zz.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Another reason is that it is in their best interest that users spend as much time as possible on youtube.com. By having a different site embed several of their videos, the user will not see the videos that appear on the right side of youtube, thus generating less $$.

Ah, but you assume these video viewers were just about to head to Youtube which is almost never the case. Those who want to be on youtube are on youtube. Those who view embeded videos are a bonus to Google because they never were going to be on youtube.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Say there's a couple of youtube channels filled with videos I'd wholeheartedly recommend in bulk. Does it make sense to add each and every single one of them to the media gallery? I don't think there's an option of embedding whole playlists or channels, but doing it piecemeal seems somehow counterproductive. For one, it's a lot of tedious work, and two - these would swamp the relevant section that'd start to look like it's just that one or two channels copy-pasted in there (which is what it'd be).

For reference, the videos I have in mind are the GreshamCollege channel's series of public lectures by Carolin Crawford, and Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics' channel, both intended for the Astronomy section of the media gallery (albeit at very different levels of expertise).

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Does it make sense to add each and every single one of them to the media gallery?

Maybe add a link to the playlist in the description

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Just wanted to give a shout out to @jedishrfu and @Wrichik Basu for adding a ton of great videos to our gallery. It's really become a great resource for finding high quality and interesting physics and math videos. One could really burn a lot of time going through the videos!
https://www.physicsforums.com/media/

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

@jedishrfu and @Wrichik Basu still adding lots of great videos. Go see their hard work!
https://www.physicsforums.com/media/