Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Animated Video of the 2011 North American Blizzard as shown from the perspective of a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite operated by the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

2011 North American Blizzard[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 4 Jun 2016 at 20:36:08 (UTC)

Original – Feb 2011 storm moves across the U.S. - Animation made with images from the NOAA-NASA GOES 13 satellite showing a giant storm developing and moving across the U.S. The animation shows clouds building over New Mexico and Texas early in the day. As the system develops and moves north-east, the storm grows and becomes more organized. By the end of February 1, 2011, the storm was a sprawling comma that extended from the Midwest to New England.

Reason: This is a satellite video loop from the North American region for an approximately 72-hour period beginning 31 January and ending 2 February, during which time a rather sizable portion of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico experienced one of the worst Winter Storms/Blizzard in history. This was one of only 16 storms to have earned a Category 5 rating on the Regional Snowfall Index. This image comes to us courtesy of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent organization of the US National Weather Service, which operates a number of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GEOS) - include the GOES 13 bird which captured this specific footage - in conjunction with NASA.
Articles in which this image appears: January 31 – February 2, 2011 North American blizzard
FP category for this image: As a guess I'd say either Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Natural phenomena/Weather or Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Space/Looking back
Creator: NASA/NOAA/NWS (PD-USGov)

Support as nominator – TomStar81 (Talk) 20:36, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Bammesk (talk) 02:36, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Jobas (talk) 12:12, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - We should not be promoting Ogg Theora files in 2016. Transcode the source file into something better. - hahnchen 14:39, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- @Hahnchen: How do I that? Please explain in great detail and in simple English so that I can at least make an attempt to figure it out. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:56, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Theora codec, which this video is encoded in, was already outdated in 2013. You should download the video from its source at NASA, and then convert that to WebM format, encoded in VP9. This file format is more efficient - so a video of the same size as this ogg candidate would be of higher quality. WebM (VP8 and VP9) have significantly better hardware support than Theora, which means that videos can be played on target devices with lower power/battery costs. I wrote some instructions for transcoding video to VP8 here, but you should really be using VP9. - hahnch e n 19:43, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@TomStar81: you can also do a WebM (VP8) conversion here [1]. Source is [2], source file [3]. Just enter the source file's URL in the box. Bammesk (talk) 14:14, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Hahnchen and TomStar81: In order to not use Ogg Theora (or WebM) would require a policy change at the Wikipedia Foundation level. See Commons:File_types#Video. The oppose is basically invalid, since it's advocating for a policy change in the wrong location. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 11:13, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- You are wrong. We're here to promote the best quality files, WebM files are unambiguously better. - hahnch e n 16:02, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 11:14, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Spongie555 (talk) 05:46, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Feb 2011 Storm Moves Across the U.S.OGG --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 20:57, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]