So what is it? mint is, or aims to be, a video bloggers friend. The idea is that there are enough people around with access to video capture equipment (phones, digital cameras, camcorders), home computers and free web space to take advantage of a BBC video blogging service. The bloggers make diary entries by shooting video/audio. The clips are serialised using a filenaming convention, and uploaded to web space, provided by most home-user ISPs. The uploaded clips are linked to from an index page, and, if it's a new blogger, an e-mail is sent requesting that a new index page is added to the blog database. This index page is then "watched", and any new entries are .. well that's the next part, here's a picture:
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What happens next is that the link to the new blogger page is added to a primer page, a sort of master index of all the bloggers. This page is internal. Each night mint's Blog Gatherer wakes up, chases links, if they pass a trusted host test, they are downloaded and added to the database. Some sanity tests are applied, shorter clips are munged into bigger ones, and assets for bbc.co.uk pages are generated.
The next day, a moderator reviews incoming clips and releases approved content for distribution. Persistent abusers are removed from the trusted hosts file, or reported to their ISP if it's a shared host. New blog requests are added to the primer for the next days blog gathering.
The system is bound by bandwidth; the length of the nightly download window (in hours), and storage; the time to live for each blog (in days). The current version only supports mpeg.
Send me a link to your homepage and I'll tell the Blog Gatherer to look out for your next movie :-)
gavin.johnson@bbc.co.ukmint is built using open-source software. This prototype is supported by backstage.bbc.co.uk