hansy
commented
1 year ago Hey @kaxline. Thanks for applying for a grant! This seems like a novel and very interesting use case for video, and we'd love to explore this idea with you a little more!
We've recently revamped our grants program and now offer up to $15K in grant amount to projects. Given this change, perhaps we can work together to update the scope of the project to fit the tighter budget. In particular we'd be most interested in general Livepeer integration within the app as well as how Livepeer + eCastr fit together.
Let me know if you'd still like to pursue the grant. As aforementioned, happy to tweak scope with you to make it work for all parties!
kaxline
Give a 3 sentence description for your proposal.
Pinch makes it easy to record videos asynchronously so that participants don’t need to be present at the same time. Imagine a regular video podcast with a host and guests, but instead of everyone being present at a scheduled time, they can record their parts separately in sequence. The host records themselves asking a question, and then guests get an alert and can respond whenever is convenient for them.
As an open source protocol and project, we’d love to use Livepeer to host and serve all the video required for the app. As well as a browsable directory of videos made on Pinch.
Describe the problem you are solving.
We are becoming an ever more global society. We increasingly work with people across the globe in different time zones, and out of necessity much of our communication is becoming asynchronous. You send a hand off email to your coworker at the end of your work day and wake up to her hand off email back to you. We are also becoming a society of creators. Anyone can be a TikTok star because the TikTok app is intuitive, fun, and easy to use.
It’s a natural progression, then, to want an easy way to asynchronously create video content with multiple contributors. Pinch removes the hassle of coordinating a group of people to contribute their video to a project. It also solves the pain of editing each individual part together to make a cohesive sequential product at the end. Professionals will still want to edit their own video by hand, but Pinch allows people with no editing experience to easily create compelling content from multiple contributors asynchronously.
Livepeer would be a crucial partner in this endeavor since we have no desire to rely on centralized video platforms, nor any desire to build something similar to Livepeer ourselves.
Describe the solution you are proposing and how it will have a positive impact on the Livepeer developer ecosystem.
Pinch gives users the tools to create media in a new way. Here’s how it works.
A host starts a video in Pinch and then invites guests to contribute. Once everyone has accepted the invite, the host can choose the order in which guests should respond. The host then records the first section of video. For example, they may record an introduction to the show and ask a question of the guests. When they’re finished, they indicate they’re done and the next contributor in the sequence should be prompted.
The next contributor is then alerted that it’s their turn to contribute. Pinch is designed so that days or weeks may pass before the next contributor records their response. When they do, they’re able to see the previous videos that were recorded and then add their own video to the sequence. When they’re done, the next person in the sequence is alerted.
In this way, a distributed panel of guests can contribute coherently to a conversation over space and time via the content container that Pinch provides.
At any time during the process, each participant can view the progress of the conversation and the latest contributions. They can also request to speak next if they feel like they want to jump into the conversation out of turn.
Another exciting opportunity is to have an asynchronous audience as well. The audience could have access to the conversation in progress and contribute their comments, questions, and suggestions. The whole experience is like a live stream happening asynchronously and in slow motion. Each participant can contribute what they want, when they want.
The platform is also general enough to allow for other use cases that we may not yet anticipate. Our goal is to make Pinch the best tool for asynchronous video creation involving many contributors. But the primary use case for now is the one described above.
For any protocol, it’s the apps that drive adoption. We think this could be a unique and fun app to bring users and awareness to the Livepeer ecosystem.
Describe why you are the right team with the capability to build this.
Pinch will be built by three founding members of JournoDAO, a DAO for journalists.
They are:
Keith Axline https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithaxline/ Seasoned full stack developer with over 20 years of experience
John Miller https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithaxline/ Senior video podcast producer, software developer
Crystal Street https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystalstreet/ Senior project manager and marketing strategist
Journalists are often not considered as product developers or innovators, and we’d like to change that. We see this async contribution model as being super helpful to journalists as they explore new narrative tools and news gathering methods. The founding team at JournoDAO also has extensive experience in the video and podcast space, a strong product background, and a wide network of journalists that can help spread adoption.
At JournoDAO, part of our mission is to empower journalists to take control of technology and make it work for them. So when journalists ask JournoDAO what web3 enables, we want to point to Pinch Media as an example of a novel use case and a way to re-imagine media.
A good previous model of this would be the popular javascript Timeline tool:
https://timeline.knightlab.com/
It was developed to scratch the itch of journalists but now many developers and publications use it for timelines for a wide variety of use cases.
Pinch could exist in web2 as an extractive startup that takes investors money and tries to capture as many users as possible in order to monetize them at some later point.
Instead, it’s far more compelling to partner with Livepeer and other web3 services to build Pinch into something that’s open and generative for the community.
JournoDAO is committed to building public goods and will share the code for this project with the public whenever possible. Journalists will be our first users, but nothing about the platform is specific to journalists or journalism.
Describe the scope of the project including a 3 month timeline and milestones.
Completion of this project will yield an MVP version of the app with the following functionality.
Pinch creators will be able to:
Pinch contributors will be able to:
In order to do this, we’ll leverage a popular and well-tested open source project called Ennuicastr:
https://ecastr.com/
We’ll run our own Ennuicastr server that will handle the recording of video and collecting assets from various contributors, plus some automated editing functions. With Ennuicastr and Livepeer handling much of the heavy lifting here, we can focus on the UX and frontend application.
We’ve designed the proposal to be done in three stages to give Livepeer the option to issue a smaller grant and wait to see results before committing to follow-on grants.
The proposed development schedule is as follows:
Phase 1 $15k requested ~ 1 month
The first phase will include the setup of the dev, staging, and production environments. By the end of the phase, the following milestones should be reached:
Dev tasks
Creators
Contributors
Phase 2 $25k requested ~ 2 months
The second phase will include the bulk of the feature and UI development. Here we’ll be focused on the integration of the Ennuicastr server with a frontend UI and get a basic UX for a minimal end-to-end proof of concept.
The following milestones should be reached:
Creators
Contributors
Backend
Phase 3 $10k requested ~ 1 month
This majority of this phase will be spent testing and fixing bugs. We’ll also leave time to wrap up any lingering issues from the previous phase. The major technical addition will be stitching videos into a single file and offering video export options.
The following milestones should be reached:
Dev tasks
Creators
Contributors
Please estimate hours spent on project based on the above and how much funding you will need.
Included above in the discussion of the development phases.
An itemized budget for each phase is available upon request, but generally assumes 20hrs/wk each from Keith Axline and John Miller, with Crystal Street handling a smaller commitment (about 5hrs/wk) in project management to keep the product on track.
Thank you so much for your consideration. We hope we can work together to bring Pinch to life.