Embedding YouTube videos in posts <oooh>

[RowanMumsnet]

Hi all

Just to let you know, we're soon going to enable you to embed YouTube videos in your posts. (Only YouTube ones we're afraid; the system works via the auto-detection of YouTube links so it won't work for other video sites.)

When we turn it on (probably later today), you can just add the YouTube URL to your post, and when the post appears on the thread the video will appear as a clickable thumbnail.

We've put a maximum of three videos on each post, but there's no daily limit to how many you can post (because unlike pictures, the video links don't place an extra load on our servers).

Hopefully this won't lead to much trolly nastiness because YouTube is fairly well policed, but as ever do please report anything you think we need to see or take down.

Thanks
MNHQ

[nannynick]

Ah, that may explain a strange error message that came up earlier today when accessing a message thread... page 2 could not be displayed due to an error in some code relating to YouTube. (no error message now, so guess it was whilst code was being added/tested).

Video test:

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

Thank you! Any chance of embedding images?

[NymodigFruOla]

Umm, Plenty, we've been able to do that for a while. Here's one I've posted a couple of times now. Or do you mean something different?

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

Yes, something different

That's an uploaded image. Embedding is when you find an image that's already online somewhere and just post the url (usually with some sort of simple tags round it) and it shows up as an image.

I've just done a test:

• found random image of bananas online and copied url
  
• clicked 'browse'
  
• pasted url into the 'file name' box
  

It seems to have worked (from my preview). However, hovering over the image reveals it has been copied to the MN servers, i.e. uploaded to MN. This places an extra load on the servers, which is why we are limited to 6 images per day (and I've just wasted one of mine on a pointless bananas pic )

There doesn't seem to be any need for this, especially if we can now embed videos. If we could truly embed images we could use as many as we like and the servers wouldn't suffer.

[RustyBear]

But wouldn't the servers for the website you grabbed the pictures from suffer, PubeGardens?

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

Well yeah, just as MN servers will suffer if people on other sites embed the images in people's posts here. It's the way the whole rest of the internet seems to work though.

[NymodigFruOla]

Oh, sorry, Plenty, I misunderstood (I'm a bit of a numpty!)

Actually, I have another question for MNHQ about this. I was trawling through some old threads this morning, one of which had a YouTube link. But the YouTube link was now showing as 'live' (like the one posted by nannynick ^^ up there).

Does this mean that all YouTube links on any old thread are now showing as live? Not that it makes any difference to me, but I just wondered?

[nannynick]

Yes, I would guess it would me all links posted to youtube will bow show the video image, as it is generated each time the message thread is viewed.

[NymodigFruOla]

Wow - clever stuff nnick [impressed emoticon]

[BertieBotts]

Rusty that is the case everywhere, it's known as "hotlinking" though and is considered bad web practice.

But it means that people could post images from a phone, if for example they linked it from their photobucket or other image hosting site.

[RustyBear]

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. I was vaguely remembering a web design course I went on ages ago when it was hammered home what a Bad Thing it was....

[RowanMumsnet]

@PlentyOfPubeGardens

Yes, something different

That's an uploaded image. Embedding is when you find an image that's already online somewhere and just post the url (usually with some sort of simple tags round it) and it shows up as an image.

I've just done a test:

• found random image of bananas online and copied url
  
• clicked 'browse'
  
• pasted url into the 'file name' box
  

It seems to have worked (from my preview). However, hovering over the image reveals it has been copied to the MN servers, i.e. uploaded to MN. This places an extra load on the servers, which is why we are limited to 6 images per day (and I've just wasted one of mine on a pointless bananas pic )

There doesn't seem to be any need for this, especially if we can now embed videos. If we could truly embed images we could use as many as we like and the servers wouldn't suffer.

Thanks for the suggestion - we'll run it past Tech (though of course we wouldn't want to offend against internet etiquette...)

[BertieBotts]

It's fine, you just have to tell people to only embed if they have their images hosted somewhere, and not just go round yoinking them off google.

[RowanMumsnet]

OK sorry, we've had a super-speedy response from Tech saying that hot-linking is very much frowned upon and not something we're likely to consider. Sorry. (Take your point Bertie but tbh how many people ever think to check copyright before posting...)

[BertieBotts]

That's a really odd argument. Embedding images doesn't mean automatically hotlinking

In most forums which allow image posting, you can't upload directly, you have to use an image you've uploaded somewhere else, which means posting the url of the image. That doesn't mean hotlinking (most forums have an anti-hotlinking policy and will delete and warn any they see) but people use their own photobucket or whatever - sorry am not up to date with whatever other image hosting sites there are now, photobucket is what I used to use.

[RowanMumsnet]

Thanks Bertie, we will take that back to the Tech source. Does sound as though it might be a bit of a faff for MNHQ in terms of needing to check whether people were embedding their own images or other people's? Or am I not getting it?

[BertieBotts]

To be fair, the main usage for this for me would be enabling users to upload images from phones. Because they could upload to an external site, using an app, and then using that app copy and paste the url into mumsnet to embed.

Does mumsnet have a lower than average number of web-savvy users or something? I mean to be fair I've never encountered as many people on a forum complaining that they don't know how to do links, but I still wouldn't have thought that you'd get hordes of people hotlinking images and the picture owners storming over to complain. Or is it because it's not moderated?

[BertieBotts]

I think it would self police TBH. Enough posters are web-savvy enough to be aware. Some image owners who notice their images being hotlinked will change the graphic to one saying "Stop stealing my images" or sometimes something crude. Which might not be something you want.

It's not actually illegal to hotlink so there wouldn't be any legal issues, and in the case of a forum I think it would be the responsibility of the individual poster to ensure he or she owned an image rather than borrowing it from another source. But I suppose that disallowing image embedding does prevent it from happening at all, so it might be more hassle free all around. But it does mean that currently users on mobile phones can't upload images at all, and that's a pain for people like me who use their phone as their main camera and it's a faff to get the pictures onto the computer.

[RustyBear]

lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_6aCWWP07Lg/SD6qAC18bAI/AAAAAAAACxQ/81J04pWB7rs/s1024-no/bat t shirt.jpg

So what is actually happening when I do this?

[RustyBear]

lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_6aCWWP07Lg/SD6qAC18bAI/AAAAAAAACxQ/81J04pWB7rs/s1024-no/bat%20t%20shirt.jpg

And then this

[RustyBear]

lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_6aCWWP07Lg/SD6qAC18bAI/AAAAAAAACxQ/81J04pWB7rs/s1024-no/bat%20t%20shirt.jpg
(Don't worry, there is a point to this!)

[RustyBear]

So, that's the url of a picture in my Picasa web album, posted first from the app on my phone, then via Safari on my phone (which doesn't seem to allow automatic link conversion) then on the ipad (which does)

I then tried doing it PubeGardens way and couldn't get it to accept it at all - it just told me an image had to be at least 1 pixel high and wide., which presumably means it couldn't 'see' it at all.

[nannynick]

RustyBear, on mobile only the third is clickable and none show a picture or video on the mumsnet thread.

[RustyBear]

That's what I was trying to find out - for the second I think it would have been clickable if I'd ticked the box - the one that's now disappeared from the main site.

The picture, incidentally, is Soupy the bat in the Mumsnet tshirt, which is frequently posted on here, but the original was photoshopped (very hurriedly and badly as a joke for a thread late one night) by me and put on my Picasa web album several years ago. I don't know whether everyone who posts the link is getting it from there now or whether it has migrated from there to somewhere else though I do sometimes wonder about the copyright position on that one, as it was originally someone else's picture (The University of Hawaii Oceanography department iirc) and I suspect I shouldn't really have altered it without their permission...

[RowanMumsnet]

@BertieBotts

I think it would self police TBH. Enough posters are web-savvy enough to be aware. Some image owners who notice their images being hotlinked will change the graphic to one saying "Stop stealing my images" or sometimes something crude. Which might not be something you want.

It's not actually illegal to hotlink so there wouldn't be any legal issues, and in the case of a forum I think it would be the responsibility of the individual poster to ensure he or she owned an image rather than borrowing it from another source. But I suppose that disallowing image embedding does prevent it from happening at all, so it might be more hassle free all around. But it does mean that currently users on mobile phones can't upload images at all, and that's a pain for people like me who use their phone as their main camera and it's a faff to get the pictures onto the computer.

Thanks Bertie.

Just to backtrack - what's the issue with people uploading images from mobiles? You can def do this on iPhones from iOS6 and up (or is this an app issue?)