Vidipedia a video encyclopedia
After introducing Teachertube just a few days earlier I received an email pointing me to Vidipedia which is a video encyclopedia, basically Wikipedia with Videos. The basic idea is of course the same: you search for a phrase or browse a category on Vidipedia and results are shown on the next page.
If only one result exists it will automatically be opened on its video page so that you can start to watch the video right away.
If a single video is found, it will be shown in video player mode which loads and plays the video automatically. Multiple results are displayed as thumbnail images on the results page along with their title, the category they have been sorted into and the number of views.
All videos can be downloaded in flash video format (flv) to your computer. Videos can be embedded into websites as well which means it offers the same basic functionality as YouTube and other video hosting websites.
Vidipedia is not the most popular of sites and does not come near the popularity of Wikipedia or YouTube for that matter. But that does not mean it has nothing to offer to you.
The site concentrates on six categories that include history, science, nature and technology which may be interesting to users who would like to watch informative videos.
While that is also possible on YouTube, it is much harder to get your hands on those videos on YouTube due to the sheer number of them that get uploaded to the site every day.
Verdict
Vidipedia is a niche site that tries to provide you with access to "knowledge" related videos. The site lacks updates as it seems and while you do get access to hundreds or even a couple of thousand videos there on it, it simply cannot provide videos for all searches that users of the site may have.
It is far away from being a Wikipedia for videos. You may have better luck finding videos on YouTube than on this site. While you may spend more time browsing through them on YouTube, you can almost be certain that you will find what you are looking for on the popular video hosting site.
Update: Who would have thought that. Vidipedia is also still alive and kicking and videos seem to be uploaded to the site regularly. While it does not offer the same amount of videos as are uploaded to YouTube in a single minute, it may still be an interesting destination if you want to learn things and not just be entertained.
The site navigation lets you pick a subject, e..g history or nature, and displays videos that have been added to that category when you click on it. From here it is a matter of clicking on a title to play it right on site. Most videos these days appear to come from YouTube though.
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Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?