Pando Developer Tools

MNN, with a grant from the Ford Foundation, began a broadcast quality media sharing project called Nymapexchange several months ago. NYMAP (National Youth Media Access Project) is an innovative partnership among public access centers from across the country committed to expanding services to young people. Initiated by the MNN Youth Channel, NYMAP seeks to nurture the right of free speech, to strengthen the much-needed presence of alternative and youth voices, and to connect young mediamakers from diverse backgrounds.

Although there are many aspects to this project one of the most crucial aspects is transfering large files from one access center to the next on a shoestring budget. These files are broadcast quality video files. Several of the access centers participating are connected to the internet via limited download/upload connections usually funneled through school or city governments. These access centers rarely have an IT department to help them with upload/download problems. We have tried other applications such as Azureus and bit torrent but found numerous problems raning from creating the torrent files to getting around the firewalls positioned in these environments.

Pando has helped immensely in our project. Pando has virtually eliminated all our transfer issues allowing our participants to focus on the other aspects of video compression/decompression and playback (Very important pieces).

The NYMAPExchange website is a central place where participants can post what content is available along with short descriptions of it. The website, built in Drupal, allows the participants to sort by genre, audience, bit rates and get information on copyright, licenses, etc. The site also produces an RSS feeds in which the participants can subscribe to with Pando to automatically download videos when they are posted!

If you're interested in our project and assisting in any way (or just talking about it). Feel free to contact us at anytime!