Although video has been on Wikipedia in a limited way for the past two years, it is poised to take-off with the recent introduction of Firefox 3.5 along with other imminent developments, we have learned. Over the next few months there will be the introduction of server-side transcoding technology, a new Wikipedia video player along with a set of collaborative editing tools which will allow community members to amend videos. Videos on the site are uploaded and watched in a format called Ogg Theora. It is a Flash-like program which is completely open-source. Video producers can render Ogg files in FinalCut and other editing programs by using various plug-ins. Once in Ogg, they can be uploaded to the site.Later this year, Wikipedia will allow uploads of popular file formats directly with server-side transcoding to Ogg. This plug-in is called FireOgg. For some time, these videos have been viewable with certain Java and other plug-ins. The release of Firefox 3.5 is the first time that Ogg videos can be viewed "natively" on a browser. Opera and Chrome will support Ogg soon, but not Explorer or Safari which has inflamed the open source community with Apple.Last month, we caught up with Erik Moller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation at the Open Video Conference in New York. We have published our interview today.Earlier this week, Erik told Beet.TV that Wikipedia is working on a sophisticated video player with full-screen, share and other standard functions.Later this year, Wikipedia will allow members to edit videos in a project funded and lead by Kaltura.Bandwidth Will be an IssueRight now, videos are hosted on Wikipedia servers and there can be performance issues. How can Wikipedia possibly manage to stream properly if video starts to takeoff?Erik told me that the Foundation is looking for a CDN company to provide services at a deep discount or on a contributed basis. This would be a good cause, indeed. We hope someone steps up to the plate.Watch Wikipedia Videos NowWe have some links to explore. The experience is not perfect, but you will find some interesting material. While you can't share the videos, you can download them. As mentioned above, there will be major improvements coming in the player. Stay tuned.Birds!Apollo 11 Moon LandingVideos Indexed by CountriesAndy Plesser, Executive Producer Less