@Aklapper Hey, I am Nikita, an Outreachy applicant, I am applying for "Documentation improvements to the ~20 top 70 most viewed MediaWiki Action API pages on-wiki" project. Since all of the microtasks are taken and I have already worked on my tasks. @srishakatux has suggested us to look for any tasks here "https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/987/". Can I work on this task?

Hi and welcome @Nikitrain! This task feels pretty big to me, but maybe I overcomplicate things. :)
We have a few short videos on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management already but they just cover one specific aspect in Phab. This task is more about creating one video that is longer and covers all basics how to use Phabricator, in one video.

Do you have experience in making videos and experience with Phabricator and its functionality?

Potential items related to this task:

• Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyGJiUIMGpw again how to make good videos :P
• Choose and install video editing software (cross-platform?), probably PiTiVi?
• Learn how to create screencasts (fullscreen vs browser window, lower screen resolution first or zoom in the browser zoom so it's possible to read things?)
• Increase the mouse pointer size (under Settings > Universal Access > Seeing > Cursor Size)
• Is there a desktop setting that allows creating a visual circle or such whenever a mouse click is performed, to make it clear to the person viewing the final video? (for the GNOME desktop, in Tweaks, "Keyboard & Mouse 🡒 Pointer Location" exists by pressing Ctrl)
• When to use a screencast vs a static screenshot in the video to show/explain something?
• In the video editing software, learn how to split raw videos, how to move around raw videos on the tracks
• Learn how to use subtitles, maybe external, maybe even instead of any audio? (PiTiVi text overlay video)
• Highlight certain areas via some square as a PNG file with a transparent alpha channel, as an overlay to fade in and fade out? Or in the video editing software, maybe learn how to zoom in to a certain area?
• In the video editing software, maybe learn how to resize rendered area to have space at the bottom for subtitles? (Record 16x9 but make video 4x3? :P ) - https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pitivi/issues/2360 ?
• Sort out in which codec and resolution to render the final video
• Sort out where to store (and share) raw videos, to allow others to remix / update?
• Find a way how to locally set up Phabricator to look like Wikimedia's production instance on phabricator.wikimedia.org, as we likely do not want to "play" / manipulate real data
• Write a script what to cover and show in that video; cover what's in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Introduction-to-Phabricator-WikiCon-2016.pdf and probably some more things from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management
• Either have a good microphone, or play with Audacity's noise reduction after some test recordings

@Aklapper First off, thank you for all the explanation on this task! and what a great explanation of the task! This indeed is a complicated task :) .I didn't realize this task is this complicated. But I am positive about this.
I have some experience in making videos and I have some experience with phabricator.
I can improve my skills by the resources suggested by you.

In T214522#5008731, @Aklapper wrote:

• Find a way how to locally set up Phabricator to look like Wikimedia's production instance on phabricator.wikimedia.org, as we likely do not want to "play" / manipulate real data

I need some help with this. How can I locally set up Phabricator.

Also my machine have i5, 7th gen and AMD Radeon (It isn't much powerful) graphics card. Is that enough for this task?

This project seems big which might require even a month or more with my university course work (correct me if I am wrong) and I have 1st midterms now (they will end on 12 March), 2nd midterms (theory +practical) in April and finals (theory +practical) in May that's why I might not have that kind of time. What can you suggest about that?

In T214522#5008916, @Nikitrain wrote:

In T214522#5008731, @Aklapper wrote:

• Find a way how to locally set up Phabricator to look like Wikimedia's production instance on phabricator.wikimedia.org, as we likely do not want to "play" / manipulate real data

I need some help with this. How can I locally set up Phabricator.

Also my machine have i5, 7th gen and AMD Radeon (It isn't much powerful) graphics card. Is that enough for this task?

Are you familiar with MediaWiki-Vagrant? It has a separate phabricator role, which you can enable with vagrant roles enable phabricator once you've setup vagrant. I've successfully run it on a computer which specifications lower than you've listed.

There's also https://phab.wmflabs.org/.

Pavithraes mentioned this in T226018: GSoD Proposal: Improve documentation for Wikimedia’s technical documentarians and videographers.

@Aklapper Please excuse me for including this task in my proposal before getting a confirmation. Would it be ok to work on this in Google Season of Docs?

@Pavithraes: See the subtasks... I think we first need a script and I'm not sure when I'm going to get to working on that.
What's your experience with video editing and Vagrant?

@Aklapper I have played around a little with Phabricator locally, set up using MediaWiki vagrant roles.
As for video editing, I've referred to a few resources on screencasting including a handbook and the WTD video mentioned in your first comment, though I haven't yet created a complete screencast.
Taking inspiration from the same comment, I'd proposed updating WikiProject Screencast in GSoD and was hoping to create a screencast for MediaWiki before proceeding onto the WikiProject.
Srishti has asked me to check with you about this particular screencast saying you might have plans of working on it. :)

• Some more instructions in dormant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Screencast/How-to
• A friend recommended OBS for screencasts, but I might go for ffmpeg for cutting, cropping, concatenating and encoding.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Screencast exists but I personally did not get much out of it

Upload all related material to create videos (steps, script to create data, static video content) to https://gitlab.com/aklapper/phabricator-lorem-ipsum/

Files are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series

• Upload videos to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard under Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series (linked in videos) and Category:Videos about Phabricator and Category:Screencast videos of free software. License videos under the CC0 1.0 Universal License.
• Manually edit the file page on Commons that Phabricator itself is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
• Upload corresponding subtitle files to Commons
• T262217: Review existing videos on Phabricator Help pages on mw.org

• Update https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator to link to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Phabricator&type=revision&diff=4140649&oldid=4089099
• Link from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help : https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Phabricator/Help&type=revision&diff=4140650&oldid=4121382

• Announce in WMF internally
• Announce on wikitech-l@ mailing list : https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-September/093911.html

Just viewed some of the videos from the series and loved how they are clear, crisp, consistent, and of good quality :) My favorite frame is the "report the broken pipe.." task :D

One thought for now or future–to have a contribution process in place for receiving translations for subtitles, documentation on how one could contribute translations, and how they will get used.

In T214522#6506343, @srishakatux wrote:

One thought for now or future–to have a contribution process in place for receiving translations for subtitles, documentation on how one could contribute translations, and how they will get used.

Something like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Timed_Text#Internationalization ?

Pageviews stats for the related pages on Commons up to today:

Source: https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=commons.wikimedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2020-09-28&end=2020-12-09&pages=Category:Phabricator_Tutorial_Series|File:Phabricator_-_Basics_and_Environment.webm|File:Phabricator_-_Individual_Productivity.webm|File:Phabricator_-_Projects_and_Workboards.webm|File:Phabricator_-_Searching_and_Listing_Tasks.webm|File:Phabricator_-_Tasks.webm