Tech Forum

There was a discussion a year and a half ago about having a synchronized download repository for LDS Videos.

It was immediately pointed out that possible copyright infringement issues existed

You may not post material from this site on another website or on a computer network without our permission

This concern has been widely recognized which has led to the development of the currently popular private effort to provide an index of church videos that can be bulk downloaded to a USB drive and then played on Roku (or similar) devices that connect to a TV.

However, copyright terms have changed in regards to certain media (which appears to cover most - if not all - of the Come Follow Me material). It clearly states at the top of the media library page that

Specifically for material in the Media Library, you may post material from this site to another website or on a computer network for personal, church-related, noncommercial use unless otherwise indicated.

Thus, I would like to revisit the idea of having a local streaming media server that not only stores Come Follow Me media, but also has the capability to sync directly to church repositories and download the latest content available.

Perhaps this could be a community development project:

• Develop a standardized set of hardware and software components that comprise the streaming media server.
• Work with church employees to add metadata to media files such as title, intended organization (ym / yw / ss), suggested month of use, cover art, etc. This would allow streaming media software to automatically organize and present media available for consumption.
• Work with church engineers to migrate or mirror copyright available media to a specific directory / set of sub-directories on church servers and then create secure / fire-walled connections that allow authorized streaming servers to communicate directly with said media repository via rsync or other similar technology.

I know this idea is a rough draft only and would need a lot of refinement or possibly even a change of direction but I wanted to throw it out there to generate some discussion. Any initial thoughts?

The church has something in development and has been testing this year... Might be nice to know about before another effort was made. Its unfortunate that something like the Tech Conference isn't going to be used to release the news. We're definitely getting late in the year to have it available for 2015. Sometimes I despair of how LONG it takes to get something like this put together.

So, the implied recommendation is to sit tight / stick with currently available tools for the time being?

Well, that's the problem.... Not sure. We've been waiting a very long time.

@raklet This project has been up and running for awhile now to hold us over until the official release. This will do what you would like to do. I would be happy to get you and anyone else up and running. Visit http://meetinghouselibrary.com for the latest information.