Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk

Back to thread
MNHQ

Embedding YouTube videos in posts <oooh>

9 replies

RowanMumsnet · 28/03/2014 11:17

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

Go to post
MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 02/04/2014 14:45

@PlentyOfPubeGardens

Yes, something different Smile

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 Hmm)

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...)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 02/04/2014 14:53

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...)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 02/04/2014 15:00

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?

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/04/2014 10:58

@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?)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/04/2014 10:59

@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.

I'm going to pass this on to Tech

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/04/2014 11:12

Hmm you're right Rusty, it doesn't seem to work on Safari from an iPhone. I still have the 'convert links automatically' box on the Safari/iPhone version though?

Does it work on Safari from a desktop?

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/04/2014 11:16

(It doesn't work on the app for now, but it will when we have the new improved app)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 03/04/2014 14:24

Thanks Bertie

Just to add to the fun, the auto-link isn't working on mobile at the moment but Tech will put a fix in for that imminently.

Watch this thread for updates

Tap "Watch" to get all the latest updates

End of posts

There are no more MNHQ posts on this thread

Back to thread