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Memfis

The [yt] tag sucks.

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Am I the only one who gets really annoyed by the use of the [yt] tag? What a shitty way to fill a big part of the page's visual space with some video that nobody is going to watch on that page anyway since the embedded version is small and you can't open it in fullscreen. It should die and people should just link to YouTube pages instead.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/56139-the-amazing-identify-that-doom-song-thread/4/ <- simply unreadable

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On the contrary, I wish it was more common on other forums I'm a member of. Sometimes you get a stronger "message" across just by having the thumbnail/title of a video in a post, even if people won't actually watch it.

Speaking of which, I don't know if Youtube has a sort of simple thumbnail image w/link embedding functionality that just takes you to the YT page by clicking on the thumbnail, but still allows you to show an image + title, even on forums that don't support object embedding.

Edit: apparently youtube has a little-known plain thumbnail embedding functionality:

Using Youtube API http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/#.jpg where, VIDEO_ID = KAnqo71hTsg# = 1,2, or 3


e.g.







No title though, and the thumbnail size is small...but perhaps with some suitable forum software hack, a new tag which automatically makes something like this by using the YT API:

The Ultimate Bathroom of DOOM - Youtube


could be cobbled together by the admins. Less invasive, I think?

I hereby propose the [yth#] tag where #=1,2,3 for the thumbnail you want, e.g. [yth2]KAnqo71hTsg[/yth2] would give the result above (with title).

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Memfis said:

What a shitty way to fill a big part of the page's visual space with some video that nobody is going to watch on that page anyway since the embedded version is small and you can't open it in fullscreen. It should die and people should just link to YouTube pages instead.

If you're using Adblock Plus, add the following to your custom filters -

||youtube.com/v/*
It will block embedded videos but doesn't seem to interfere with the playback of linked videos.

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I like Maes' thinking.

EDIT: I just realized Adblock Plus must be a complicated extension if it can do what Greyghost just said. I should maybe look into that some time.

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Technician said:

What, you guys have really shitty connections or low res rigs?


Must be, with all the people still complaining about images larger than 800x600 in 2014

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I generally prefer to watch stuff embedded than to go to YouTube, personally. As for full-screen option, it can be fixed easily, provided one of the admins care to bother about it:

Here's how the code looks now:

<object width="425" height="350">
      <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/<YOUTUBEID>"></param>
      <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
      <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/<YOUTUBEID>"
             type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
             wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350">
      </embed>
</object>
And here's how it would look if full-screen support was added:
<object width="425" height="350">
      <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/<YOUTUBEID>&fs=1"></param>
      <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
      <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
      <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/<YOUTUBEID>&fs=1"
             type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
             allowfullscreen="true"
             wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350">
      </embed>
</object>
Added parts are bolded. See this for further explanations.

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Technician said:

What, you guys have really shitty connections or low res rigs?

Nomad said:

Must be, with all the people still complaining about images larger than 800x600 in 2014


In part is this, but as I see it, one of the things that makes the forums (and the whole site) so enjoyable is the fact that it is very "light". And, for example, in my personal settings I chose to display 100 posts per page, and threads like the one referenced by Memfis lag considerably in one of my laptops, and not everyone has access to another computer.

I second Maes' suggestion (the [yth#] tag).

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Yeah, it's more about minimalistic style of this forum than lag (I get it sometimes but only if like every second post has a video in it). Maes' idea sounds a bit better.

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On some forums, it's up to user preference whether video/media links are embedded or displayed as a link. Though that would probably be a bit harder to shoehorn into the ancient vBulletin version used here.

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Now that you mention it, you do have a point there. But then again, I rarely, if ever, watch YT videos on fullscreen.

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I rarely watch embedded videos in their entirety, but if the thumbnail interests me I'll start watching them, and if I'm not bored in a few seconds I'll then start watching them on youtube. The way it works now, it's a tiered approach that fits different levels of interest.

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A hide/show spoiler button would be cool, for more than just Youtube videos.

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It's fine that you don't like the YouTube video embedding feature here on Doomworld Forums, but it could be useful in some cases. People can watch the video on the forum in case they don't want to click on the link, and embedded videos can be used to post reactions to certain topics or quotes. So maybe if you look more into it, then you might like the [yt] tag feature here on Doomworld Forums.

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I don't hate the YouTube tags but it seems like once someone posts a reaction to something in the form of a YouTube video, their next ten posts seem to be the same thing. Also why the fuck insanity pit lasted for more than two posts is beyond me.

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My problem with the tag is that it assumes you're using Flash. I refuse to install it on any computer I have (keeping Chrome around for "emergencies"), so the yt tag is utterly useless to me. Embedded YT videos on other sites seem to work with WebM or the Mac Safari HTML5 plugin.

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ungrateful bastards. I remember the days before yt tags, when a link was posted and you had to move your mouse two inches and click on it.

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david_a said:

My problem with the tag is that it assumes you're using Flash


Well, TBH there wasn't much of an alternative for watching embedded videos until recently, when HTML5 made MPEG4 support in browsers mandatory (?). At least Flash was cross-platform, or at least more cross-platform than e.g. Silverlight or Windows Media Player embeds.

And even today, many sites with streaming videos still use their own (Flash-based) custom players. Reasons not to use the HTML5 MPEG4 feature include:

  • Your video format is not MPEG4/not supported
  • You want more control over the player (customized appearence, adding unskippable ads, restricting premium content, DRM etc.)
  • Support of the <video> tag is still not universal, so in this case Flash becomes a universally accepted fallback. Don't forget that this whole "streaming video" fad grew on the shoulders of a giant: Flash
MY real gripe with Flash players is this though: they have a lot of CPU overhead compared to a native player, and it just seems to get worse. A Pentium 4 CPU which seemed to have no problems with any online video just a few years ago, now struggles to play even 240p videos if embedded on a page. I ended up downloading the videos using JDownloader and using Media Player Classic + a codec pack, that's how bad it got.

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Maes said:

Flash

I understand why they did it however many years ago the tag was created, but in the year 2014 you cannot assume people have Flash. Try browsing the forum on a mobile device.

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The only way to have HTML5 video embeds from Youtube is to go through an iframe.

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david_a said:

I understand why they did it however many years ago the tag was created, but in the year 2014 you cannot assume people have Flash. Try browsing the forum on a mobile device.


For that matter you shouldn't assume people have Javascript either, but how many websites do you know that have a "pure HTML fallback", as it would be considered the Right Thing to do? "Best practices" my ass. Trying to view a website with Javascript (aka about 99% of them) on a mobile device is as painful as trying to run it on a Pentium II or III with 256 MB of RAM. Almost makes you want your 90s banner-laden sites back.

I'm not saying this is how things should be, but it's a de facto standard. Same as Flash: for good or bad, it monopolized certain niche uses. At least with HTML5 you can sort of just say "here goes a video" and let the browser/platform handle it appropriately.

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Maybe a more pragmatic solution is to update the YT tag to spit out a full YouTube URL underneath the video preview.

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david_a said:

Maybe a more pragmatic solution is to update the YT tag to spit out a full YouTube URL underneath the video preview.


Plus a thumbnail, as I described above, if the purpose of this is -mainly- to give an alternative to people without Flash. Otherwide, if you can see the Flash video, you can always click on its own embedded link, and there's no gain in terms of screen real estate.

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david_a said:

Maybe a more pragmatic solution is to update the YT tag to spit out a full YouTube URL underneath the video preview.

That would be great (I also have flash disabled).

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I love the yt tags and I just went full screen in the badger/star trek pie eating contest video in blogs. So yt must have just fixed this!

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Nah, it's been changed on Doomworld's side. Nothing they could do on Youtube's side. The stuff I was saying needed to be added has been added.

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