Do you allow "Video" uploads? What is your max file size allowed?

Do you allow "Video" uploads?

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rdn

Well-known member
I mean this option from XF:

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Introduce Oct 2018:
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XF 2.1 - Unfurling URLs, Emoji enhancements and video uploads

Here we go! We're four HYS threads in already and you might be wondering just how many there are left. Well, I can't tell you 😉 But what I can tell you is - we're not even half way through yet! In case you've not yet seen the previous entries, you can check them out here. As ever, to ensure...
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If YES:
  • When did you started using?
  • What is your max file size?
  • Using local or remote storage?
  • /data/video/ DIR total size?
Mine:
  • Yes, enabled it June 2020
  • Max file size is 100mb
  • Using local storage for now
  • /data/video/ size is 82G
 
Last edited:
no, too much weight to carry and not enough internal optimization available. That 500mb video you allow is probably 20mb on YT. I would rather have them use a better processing service and share the link/embed it.
 
rdn said:
I hope xenforo team will integrate the transcode feature from XMG to regular attachments.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, this is pretty problematic :(

Transcoding does take quite some time (or in worst case could even fail), so the transcoded video might not yet be available when the user finished writing and is ready to submit the post.

What should the system do at that point?
You could prevent submitting the post until all videos are ready, but that could take an unknown amount of time and would most likely upset users.

If it's a new post it could be kept moderated until the videos are ready, but that could upset users as well and might even cause the post to be missed by others if there are other posts being made without videos after that - which could become visible even before a transcoded video becomes available.
This also wouldn't work well when editing posts.

A placeholder or message could be shown, but without the video itself a post might not make much sense and thus this could upset readers and cause the Video not to be seen (by those who read the post while there was only a placeholder/message).

So none of those options is a good solution.

The gallery on the other hand does not have this problem - a video is a content item on its own there, it is not part of another content (eg. post) so keeping it invisible until transcoding has finished is not a problem.

If someone comes up with a good solution for this, adding transcoding for attachments would't be that complicated.
 
Kirby said:
Unfortunately, this is pretty problematic :(

Transcoding does take quite some time (or in worst case could even fail), so the transcoded video might not yet be available when the user finished writing and is ready to submit the post.

What should the system do at that point?
You could prevent submitting the post until all videos are ready, but that could take an unknown amount of time and would most likely upset users.

If someone comes up with a good solution for this, adding transcoding for attachments would't be that complicated.
Click to expand...
Transcoding of videos in the XFMG are placed in a queue so the same would work. They have to wait for the upload anyway.
 
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Kirby said:
If someone comes up with a good solution for this, adding transcoding for attachments would't be that complicated.
Click to expand...
  1. Allow users to upload video attachment in thread/post
  2. Post with video attachment can be submitted instantly, but...
  3. Served the original video file temporarily to the visitors and also placed it in a queue to do the transcode on the background via cron
  4. Once transcoding is done, replace the original video attached silently
  5. Done, saves bandwidth and storage :)
  6. ... maybe also add an option to force all videos to max 1080p or 720p quality

Maybe that can work fine?
 
Seeker-Smith said:
Transcoding of videos in the XFMG are placed in a queue so the same would work.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't :)

If you post a new video in the gallery, this media item can be kept invisible for others until the transcoding has finished and won't be missed by other users as it's new content on its own.

If you instead write a new post in a thread that contains a video, this video does 30 seconds to transcode and you keep that post invisible for 30 seconds, others might have made further posts in between and thus the video post is not the last post in the thread and therefore might be missed by readers.
You could of course adjust the timestamp as well so it effectively becomes posted at the time the video finished transcoding (instead of the time it was submitted) to make sure it is the last post.
But this won't work when editing posts.

@rdn
This would work and be better than serving uploaded videos as-is, but still has two significant issues:
While transcoding is in progress, the original video would be served. This is usually way larger than the transcoded version so it requires a lot more bandwidth - that is bad for the host and for viewers.
Furthermore the original video might be encoded with a codec not supported by all browsers, so some users might not be able to view it (usually happens with videos recorded on iOS devices).
 
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briansol said:
no, too much weight to carry and not enough internal optimization available. That 500mb video you allow is probably 20mb on YT. I would rather have them use a better processing service and share the link/embed it.
Click to expand...
Absolutely not. We have a script that compresses the videos a bit.

The problem with embedding is that if the user deletes it, the whole thread often becomes unusable.
Therefore, it is the better choice for us.
 
Nope. Never have, never will.

I'm not paying for expensive storage and bandwidth for something YouTube or Vimeo (or even Imgur) will store for free, and since our sites discuss items that have copyright, allowing them to upload the actual works is a legal nightmare. We allow links to them, but will never host.
 
I don’t allow it. Hosting locally is just too much disk space for my liking (relative to the gain). Remote hosting with things like S3/R2 gets costly if you allow users to just upload all they want (also for not much gain), and there’s also remote hosting issues with variable byte stuff.

I’ve thought about making an addon that allows videos to be uploaded, but then the backend sends them to the site’s YouTube for transcoding and hosting. Then the site controls the video but also doesn’t have the overhead of hosting/transcoding. Then I remembered I don’t have a site that needs video. 😀
 
digitalpoint said:
I’ve thought about making an addon that allows videos to be uploaded, but then the backend sends them to the site’s YouTube for transcoding and hosting. Then the site controls the video but also doesn’t have the overhead of hosting/transcoding. Then I remembered I don’t have a site that needs video.
Click to expand...

I do have a use-case for this but never even considered this to be an option. Definitely something I'll be looking into now. Thanks for the tip!
 
And the videos are so easy to embed in a post. Drop in the link and it's good to go.

One of my sites uses it extensively for music. If you go to music.youtube.com you can find the "official" upload from the record label and post that, so you don't have crappy-sounding fan videos posted a dozen years ago. Those links work the same as regular YouTube links, and the right link will embed the playlist for an entire album.

Solves the problem of anyone wanting to upload audio, too.
 
I allow mine to show.
I'm keen on people topost up their videos.
I make it hard for guests to view the media viewer.
 
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