[Included] Video embedding

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I don't care about free. They have generous paid accounts. I'm just looking for a seamless way for my users to do it. "Hosting" on my server is not a problem, it's just not very handy. Only I can upload video to the server. Be nice if users could upload the same way they upload to Vimeo or Youtube. It's all about the user experience, has to be simple and rewarding.
 
grant sarver said:
I don't care about free. They have generous paid accounts. I'm just looking for a seamless way for my users to do it. "Hosting" on my server is not a problem, it's just not very handy. Only I can upload video to the server. Be nice if users could upload the same way they upload to Vimeo or Youtube. It's all about the user experience, has to be simple and rewarding.
Click to expand...
Vimeo only has one paid account plan, Vimeo Plus. And even that is limited to 5GB/week. While I agree it would be an elegant solution, what happens if your site grows and suddenly the collective userbase is pushing 5GB/week (quite plausible, considering the size of HD videos)? There's really nothing you can do. Does YouTube offer an uploading API? That might be a better way to go. :)

It would be really cool if there was a feature that allowed users to upload videos like they would attachments, and the videos would automatically be embedded using something like the JW Player. :) This could be developed as a mod pretty easily, I would think. :)
 
grant sarver said:
I see Kier has a preference for Vimeo. I like the way things work there too, it's my favorite. Wish there was a way to only allow my users to upload to one "captive" Vimeo account. Would add another option to have "house" videos without loading on my server.
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It's a favourite of mine too but unfortunately videos don't display on ipad so I think until they do I will move back to YouTube. I don't want a large portion of user base missing out on embedded content.
 
Does anyone else feel like the media tag is a little complicated for most users? On our forums, we have a video bbcode coupled with plugin code to regexp the url provided in the bbcode, extract the id and embed the video (if the site is supported). It's a lot more intuitive than having a user have to have the know-how and precision needed to slice up a url and extract the video ids amidst a bunch of url parameters. Maybe my users are a little slower than your average user, but I see people getting really confused about having to deal with it being setup the way it is.
 
Kyle said:
Does anyone else feel like the media tag is a little complicated for most users? On our forums, we have a video bbcode coupled with plugin code to regexp the url provided in the bbcode, extract the id and embed the video (if the site is supported). It's a lot more intuitive than having a user have to have the know-how and precision needed to slice up a url and extract the video ids amidst a bunch of url parameters. Maybe my users are a little slower than your average user, but I see people getting really confused about having to deal with it being setup the way it is.
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Huh? Isn't clicking the "media" button and pasting the URL to the video simple enough? :confused:
 
Nick said:
Huh? Isn't clicking the "media" button and pasting the URL to the video simple enough? :confused:
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IF you're a clicker it's a lot easier than if you're a typer. Our implementation (and others I have seen) are typically:

Code: 
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRTGRbrATs[/video]

You can't just quickly peck out some bbcode have it work on xf. You're basically forced into using the button if you don't want to mess around with the url. Maybe it's because I'm a developer, but I rarely use bbcode shortcut buttons, it's usually just faster to type out the code.
 
Kyle said:
IF you're a clicker it's a lot easier than if you're a typer. Our implementation (and others I have seen) are typically:

Code: 
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRTGRbrATs[/video]

You can't just quickly peck out some bbcode have it work on xf. You're basically forced into using the button if you don't want to mess around with the url. Maybe it's because I'm a developer, but I rarely use bbcode shortcut buttons, it's usually just faster to type out the code.
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Exactly. You're thinking like a developer, but you're concerned about your users (whom you referred to as "maybe slower"). Your users don't think like developers. It's easier for the average user to deal with BB Code as little as possible. Clicking a button and pasting a URL is just about as easy as it gets for the most dumbfounded users.
 
Well, I also speak as someone who has run a forum for 10 years, and I *know* that there will be users that click Help -> BB Codes at the top of the page, scroll down to the media tag and get totally and utterly lost. That media tag stands out as it's totally different than traditional BB Codes in that it requires voodoo to make it work.
 
Nick said:
Exactly. You're thinking like a developer, but you're concerned about your users (whom you referred to as "maybe slower"). Your users don't think like developers. It's easier for the average user to deal with BB Code as little as possible. Clicking a button and pasting a URL is just about as easy as it gets for the most dumbfounded users.
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True but what about developer based sites...

Then again I don't see why typing out

[video=youtube]zmRTGRbrATs[/video]

Takes any longer??? than

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRTGRbrATs[/video]
 
Nick said:
Exactly. You're thinking like a developer, but you're concerned about your users (whom you referred to as "maybe slower"). Your users don't think like developers. It's easier for the average user to deal with BB Code as little as possible. Clicking a button and pasting a URL is just about as easy as it gets for the most dumbfounded users.
Click to expand...

Amen. Since vBulletin introduced their great WYSIWYG editor at the time, finally the days of typing in the %$#$ bbcodes were over. Yes, they had and still have their place and use obviously, but let me tell you that 95% of my members won't ever want to know about bbcodes. They just want to type their text (and at most press some buttons to make text italic or bold or include a picture) and be done with it! And rightfully so. We do not live in 1985 anymore when we used [Alt-F5] or whatever it was to investigate Wordperfect's 'underwater' view to be able to layout our text in the way we wanted it. Long live WYSIWYG!
 
Ceri May, you don't see a difference because you have a grasp on the concept of how parameterized urls work. A lot of the people don't.
 
Kyle said:
Ceri May, you don't see a difference because you have a grasp on the concept of how parameterized urls work. A lot of the people don't.
Click to expand...

Hmm true but again I am thinking like a developer... so I see two options here...

1. a normal user would simply use the bbcode buttons...
2. a more advanced user may try the full URL realize it doesn't work then investigate and would know from then on the correct format and would use that... (I.E. developer brain, to investigate, learn, improve)...

I guess that the XF team could add some processing on post to change [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRTGRbrATs[/video] to [video=youtube]zmRTGRbrATs[/video] automatically.
 
Well, at the very least the Help -> BB Codes page should have some wording to tell a user that it's easier to just use the media button in the WYSIWYG editor. Having someone stumble into a help page only to leave even more confused is a bad thing.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that xf is using javascript in the WYSIWYG editor to parse the supported urls into BB Code when you click "Insert" after having pasted in a url, I don't know why you couldn't just make the media tag support urls and do the parsing when you click "Post Reply".
 
Indeed that is kind of what I said above... (I think)...

Either done using JS on post or some server side processing... only thing with the JS is when using the Button it only has to parse that URL... if it is done on post reply it would have to find the video tag out of the entire post... on a very long post this could technically crash the browsers JS or atleast it would be more server intensive on the browser... And it would have to do this on every post because wouldn't know until it did the check if the video tag was there...
 
Well, before a post is inserted into the database, it's going to be sanitized/parsed/whatever on the server side, so there's plenty of time to parse the bbcode into what it needs to be prior to insertion into the database.
 
Kyle said:
Well, before a post is inserted into the database, it's going to be sanitized/parsed/whatever on the server side, so there's plenty of time to parse the bbcode into what it needs to be prior to insertion into the database.
Click to expand...

On server side fine, but not on JS side... Again it was my idea to maybe parse these sort of bbcode formats if push comes to shove, but I don't see it as vital or really needed...
 
I'm not sure it's vital, but I think that having a media tag that you can paste any url into either by manually typing it, or using a button is more straight forward than a bbcode that requires you parse bits out of a url when it's all going to end up having to be parsed server side anyway.
 
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