User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/The Success and Future of Modernization/@comment-31623969-20180125224652/@comment-9565-20180126000032

That is partly my fault in terms of why default MediaWiki servers generally don't support uploading videos. I pointed out that many of the video codecs from a few years ago were heavily proprietary in nature. This means you needed to get special licenses and stuff that was really hard for the Wikimedia Foundation and other startups like Wikicities used to be and definitely most people who are staring a wiki in terms of getting licensing of the various codecs under control. Companies like Google (YouTube) and other major on-line video hosting sites don't mind paying the licensing fees as it is covered with advertising revenue and other ways they make money. It sucks if you are a small website being run with largely donated funds from a smallish community of fans.

Anyway, I convinced the MediaWiki developers to turn off stuff like MP4s because the licensing issues for being able to host and play those videos would kill the budgets of most people who are trying to use them on their website and it went against the Wikipedia ethos of open source software all the way too as well as transparency. MP4s are a legal minefield to wade into with caution if you want to start hosting your own content.

I think you can upload in most cases OggVorbis files and most open source type codecs like MNG files too. GIFs used to be a problem until the patent expried (a long story there) and a similar situation is now happening with MPEG-1 video formats as the patents and licensing can no longer be legally enforced although the file filters usually stop it from being uploaded on most MediaWiki operated websites.

Wikia has long supported embedded players with hosted content elsewhere, but I agree it would be nice to have local wiki storage of some video. It isn't an easy solution, and the data needs for video escalate considerably too over what is needed for text & simply images. It is something that will need to be addressed at some point by the whole MediaWiki community as a whole (not just Wikia) as I believe video is going to be increasingly an important element in a wiki type setting.

Supporting open source video codecs is really where you ought to be focusing though and breaking out of codecs that can shut down content for political reasons or because you pissed off the wrong person at the licensing office of the company who made the codec. It definitely isn't an easy thing to "fix", and the convenience of MP4s is definitely offset with many problems that don't make it an easy fix either.