MG 1.1 MG 1.1 and 2.1 Imported from IPB 3.4 videos set as images

[FidoMike]

Hi all,
I have an issue in media gallery, I imported from IPB gallery 3.4.x into 1.1.18 of XFMG, and it appears to have imported all the videos as 'images', it has the video files, but in the category listing it has the image logo. Trying to view it gives a blank area with just the title, like a failed image load and the 'alt' text. I can't seem to find any method to change the type back to video. I initially didn't notice the problem and upgraded to XF2.1 / MG 2.1.8. The site isn't live yet, so I can re-build / re-import from any point back to IPB 3.4.7 if I have to. I have tried various items under the rebuild tools, but that doesn't seem to help. Oddly it must have known they were videos when it imported them, as it made new thumbnails (ffmpeg options were set prior to import).

Any help much appreciated,
Thanks,
Mike

 

[FidoMike]

An update, I had a look in the db, found one of the videos in the xf_mg_media_item table and set media_type="video", that got the page all working, but no video, trying to view it gives me a path of /data/xfmg/video/2/<filename> which gave a 404, on the filesystem there is no such folder called video under xfmg, however there is a /data/xengallery_videos/2, so I made a symlink in xfmg: ln -s ../xengallery_videos ./video and now it works.

My thinking here is that the MG IPB importer set the media_type incorrectly, and then the update to 2.x either ignored the path or didn't move the files, maybe because videos are in a different place to where it expected an image to be.

The question now is, what is the best way to go about fixing this, is there going to be any problem with just updating the corresponding entries in the DB?

Should I remove the symlink and actually make/move the folder, I assume if another video is uploaded it is going to try to put it in the same place, therefore having the folder there is better than a symlink.

 

[Chris D]

I think this is going to be far too difficult to unravel and applying symlinks etc. is just not a stable or recommended solution that we can provide support for.

We're not going to be able to advise or provide support for database changes.

To the best of my knowledge, IPB 3.x didn't support gallery video uploads. I guess it's possible it did and we weren't aware but the simple fact is - we never knew and therefore the old version of the importer simply did not attempt to import videos.
Unfortunately, and I appreciate this might be problematic from a licensing point of view, the only supported way to import correctly is for you to upgrade to IPS/IPB version 4.x and then use the importer built into XFMG 2.1 to import directly.

Alternatively, if upgrading to IPS 4.x is not an option, you will need to employ the services of a developer who is able to adjust the original importer to your needs.

 

[FidoMike]

Thanks for the reply Chris, we didn't do anything to our IPB3.4.x gallery to support videos, it has always done it from when we started with it - it doesn't make thumbnails or transcode or anything like XFMG does, but it has a nice player and shows a generic video icon with an option to upload a screenshot. It is clearly a supported function of it.

In terms of my XF setup, if you can confirm "/data/xengallery_videos" is the old path for the 1.x XF Gallery and "/data/xfmg/video" is the right place for the current release, I'll just remove my symlink and move the files to the right place.

All i did in the DB was to change the media_type entry from "image" to "video" for each individual entry that should be a video, and it is working perfectly, all the thumbnails regenerated, all the details, comments etc all fine, its literally like I uploaded the video directly to it.

The importer did an almost perfect job, only missing the change in media_type field. It copied those videos into the MG 1.x, even if it thought they were images, it did enough to save me a lot of work, 1 SQL query is nothing. IPB makes the user run several just during an upgrade. I think it really wouldn't take much to alter the importer, but I understand commercially there maybe little value as not many people are still going to be on ipb3.x. I will say however, I think that is Xenforo's biggest chance to take share from IPS, a lot of people were and still are very unhappy with IPS 4.x and refused to upgrade like me, I tested it, Xenforo is way better, heck XF 1.5 is way better than IPB4.0.

The whole upgrade from ipb to XF 2.x is now mostly perfect (we lost 35 images it missed but I'll re-upload those) so I really don't want to abandon the one we have as its working so well.

I don't need Xenforo to support my DB change per say, as long as I'm not going to be denied support for the product in the future.

Thanks,
Mike