Ok, clear... Actually, there is some kind of mess with these URLs. Somebody on the previous page of this thread reported one kind of URLs, somebody - another kind.

It doesn't matter for me :-) I don't visit YouTube anyway. It looks like a garbage can of amateour videos; I prefer quality videos. I have lots of gygabytes of my own amateur videos I never watch :-)

Ok, I have an idea to make this mode a little more easier to enter videos. Is there a way to make it so that all the forum member needs to do is enter the video id?

Example:

The direct video address is: //www.youtube.com/watch/v/s1WmOd9O_ew

This part of the address is the same for all the Youtube videos: //www.youtube.com/watch/v/

So in theory, could the mod be changed so all the forum member would need to do was to enter the Youtube Video ID like this one: s1WmOd9O_ew

Not sure if it is possible, but it might take some of the confusion out.

Youtube has been recently bought by google and it seems it will be losing popularity every day as they are going to require some kind of payment to watch it. You may enter "beavis and butthead" in their search tab and notice what was free a couple of months ago now it's paid ;).

Monk
I think, user is required to enter the full URL, copying/pasting it directly from YouTube. Is this URL available somewhere at YT?

I think, YouTube gained popularity by massive advertisement. Today I saw its logo even in local latvian newspaper :-)

By the way, anybody know what video format they use for storing/broadcasting the video? Is this their own format? Just interesting...

Paul
You can find the Full URL in the box in the top right corner under embed. Though i noticed some of the members of my forum were having trouble finding it, and if they did find it, the video would only work if the URL was:

//www.youtube.com/watch/v/s1WmOd9O_ew

Some would make the mistake and enter this URL without the "www" into the javascript window:

/youtube.com/watch/v/s1WmOd9O_ew


Which wouldn't work.

With the URL being the same for all embedded YouTube video (Which is: //www.youtube.com/watch/v/ ) I figure it would be easier if the mode was made so for members would just need to enter the ID (Which is s1WmOd9O_ew). It might work.

Also, I think the video format used for YouTube is FLV or Flash Video. a very compressed low quality format. Flash Video is a popular video format among large hosting sites due to its wide compatibility. :-)

I think, the URL must be the same, as it is offered at YouTube. So users just copy it, paste into the window, and the rest is done by the miniBB addon itself. I will check it more carefully at Tuesday, I'm on a trip now. Greetings from Tallinn! :-)

I apologize for the url format I provided, I just took it from the address bar. I'm not a regular user of youtube so I don't know what format the url is supposed to be but I was just trying out the solution to see if it worked.

Ok, I've checked the YouTube pages and it seems, they do not provide a link or code to copy/paste in other applications easily. There are only 2 possibilities.

Either copy URL of the original YouTube page (that's the URL which looks like youtube.com/watch?v=Gw4bQKiLkQ4 i.e. it has watch?v= parameter), but this will point to the YouTube web-page, not the video itself.

Either copy Embed field's content, like this:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gw4bQKiLkQ4"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gw4bQKiLkQ4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

but you will need also to cut off the necessary URL part in embed src value. So the URL h t t p://www.youtube.com/v/Gw4bQKiLkQ4 is the one you need to paste.

So I think, people who want to embed YouTube in posts, must be some kind experienced to get this URL out... not a dummies task, and nothing to implement in this addon for more.

it might be possible to let bbplugins convert the url to the proper one automatically. i will ask my friend who said he knows how to do this and follow up in the next week or so.

i meant, bbcodes

it might be possible to let bbplugins convert the url to the proper one automatically
- I think what we need really is to know how to copy proper URL from YouTube. So that way it is pasted fast into code pop-up box and converted correctly later.

Hello, friends!
How to place videos of the YouTube directly in the MiniBB?

1. Install the solution offered.
2. Copy proper URL from YouTube
3. Paste URL in the box miniBB provides when you click on a button.
4. Post your message.

I hope this is what do you mean by "directly in minibb", else I don't get what you don't understand.

I've got my hands on this code again, and now it will be more easy to paste YouTube videos in your posts.

Usage: each YouTube video has its own URL tag. It's located in the right part of the screen, in "URL" form field. Click this field, it will be automatically highlighted; then copy it to memory buffer (press Ctrl + C or right moust button - Copy). Go to the miniBB message area, click YouTube button and you will be offered to enter YouTube URL. Press Ctrl + V or right mouse button - Paste. The URL you copied should be pasted in JS windows. Afterall, click ok, and your YouTube code in the message area should be transformed into something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIqhUCZgwXQ. YouTube video should appear in the body of your text after you post the message.

With the help of one of my customers, I have discovered that the code which we use in this plugin, is not compatible with valid XHTML (i.e. XHTML doesn't validate if YouTube video is included in the post).

This all is because <embed> is not included in XHTML definitions list.

I've searched in Google and discovered there is no solution currently for such Flash or YouTube XHTML code. There is the most wide-known solution called "Flash Satay" by Drew McLellan, the author of Dreamweaver MX Web Development. Even 2 years after this article release, on his personal site Drew confirms there is still no solution to get it work in all browsers correctly.

The "Satay" method is amiss. "While every other browser was getting it right, IE/Windows was not streaming it was waiting for the entire movie to download before playing it. This is fine for small movies, but for anything serious, the lack of streaming is unacceptable." I must say it is specially unacceptable for dynamicly generated forum pages.

Drew offers a workaround on this, proposing to refer to the additional .swf file from which to call an originating swf. Unfortunatelly I doubt it will work for the flash file with the parameters not known before; and it most probably won't work for YouTube content.

If you read the comments for the article on allinthehead.com, you'll notice there are mentioned 3rd party solutions, which use heavy JavaScript and a lot of additional code to embed Flash in XHTML, like FLACCESS or FlashObject, but they all are not reliable in the term of pasting YouTube videos I suppose. They all are TOO COMPLICATED solutions for a simple BB code, and I doubt it is necessary to pay attention to them in such easy miniBB solution.

I would prefer to wait a bit and see how browsers' developers will work on it - if it will be requested, I think, it will be fixed by default. Until that it looks not reliable, specially for the dynamically generated content.

So if you install/use YouTube addon we're offering in this thread, please note it will work correctly in all major browsers, but it won't be XHTML valid. I doubt the complicated solution is needed just for this task.