“Pad.ma” is an online repository of densely annotated video material, mostly footage and unfinished films. The video material is freely available for download and non-commercial reuse. The archive itself has a number of features that allow for a deep engagement with video footage: searchability, timecode-based operation, layered annotation, torrent-based downloads, maps and many other features.
“Pad.ma” is an online repository of deeply-annotated video material. It began as a way of dealing with the immense resources “left-over” from the digital film-making process, parallel to the growth of video online, in the last 10 years. “Pad.ma” thus archives (mostly uncut) footage, and unfinished films. In doing so it seeks to open up a space beyond the finite film and the online video clip, a space where video material is densely written over, debated and viewed alongside textual material. This makes it not only a technically unique database but also an unprecedented tool for documentary and film studies, image-based research, and more generally a way to handle a medium that has become “democratic”.
“Pad.ma” is a deeply collaborative effort, involving five groups and over 15 individuals in its inception stage alone. A special license (version of the GPL) has been developed for “Pad.ma‘s” video material. See http://pad.ma/faq for more. At the moment Pad.ma contains about 380 fully transcribed and annotated “events”. This is expected to grow quickly in its new phase.

Links: http://pad.ma

The Pad.ma project was initiated by a group consisting of oil21 .org from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore and three organizations from Mumbai: Majiis, Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP.