Embedded Youtube videos displayed as blank spaces in Calguns posts?

[axhoaxho]

Recently, my iMac automatically updated itself to the latest versions of macOS (Big Sur Version 11.6) and Safari (Version 15.0.)

After the update; when I viewed the Calguns posts, all the embedded Youtube videos were displayed as blank spaces...


For example, if you could see the Youtube video below, all I could see was just a blank space on my screen.

Any CG tech guru can shed some light on it? Thanks!

[Robotron2k84]

iOS 15 seems to have done away with the non-html5 player widget (inside of iOS).

That means CGN has to upgrade their plugin to serve the html5 version of the player to iOS 15 (and above) devices.

Given the age of the forum software, this will have to be a hack into the old YT forum plugin.

[Librarian]

MacOS is not yet IOS.

It still may be true that Safari 15 does not like the youtube whatsit from Calguns, though.

axhoaxho, have you tried a different browser?

[Robotron2k84]

Safari is the same across both products, though. And that’s where the player widget code lives on the client side, by default. The old-style Safari widget emulated Flash Video, and that’s been removed.

Here’s the doc on what needs fixing:

https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters

The current plug-in generates the following for the above video:

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

To use the html5 player the viewport needs to be in an iframe tag (probably best to uniquely ID the iframe with the video ID), and call the url as:

<iframe id="ytplayer_WzHG-ibZaKM" type="text/html" width="425" height="350"
  src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WzHG-ibZaKM?autoplay=0&origin=https://calguns.net"
  frameborder="0"></iframe>

However, JS-based methods for operating on the iframe ID will still probably fail if the posts are quoted, as there will be multiple iframes with the same ID. So, the PHP that quotes the post should probably tie the iframe ID with the post ID in any quoted post.

[axhoaxho]

MacOS is not yet IOS.

It still may be true that Safari 15 does not like the youtube whatsit from Calguns, though.

axhoaxho, have you tried a different browser?

Sorry I only have Safari on my iMac.

On my MacBook Pro it works okay (which still has the older versions of Big Sur Version 11.5.2 and Safari 14.1.2.) -- I can see the embedded Youtube videos in Calguns posts.

[Librarian]

Well, as Robotron2k84 suggests, the fix on Calguns' end is likely rather far in the future, so some work-around looks to be the answer. I'd expect the full migration to some other platform makes more sense than trying to patch this version of vBulletin.

I'm using Firefox 87 on my Macbook Pro; I found that Firefox 91 screwed up Calguns quite bit, so went to a backup and downgraded. Might be a similar implementation situation, though I did not happen to look at embedded youtube with 91.

Thanks for the research, Robotron2k84.

[Robotron2k84]

Depending on how far back you wish to support for browser versions, site management could just make the change to serve every YT video with the new player and make a fairly small change in the couple of files that inject the player code.

You could also probably drop the iframe ID without consequence if you never intend to use DOM actions to alter them after the page loads.

Something to think about.

[the86d]

Doesn't Firefox work on iPhruity devices?

[axhoaxho]

What sucks to me is..... all I see is just a blank space in the post..... even if I right click it, it wouldn't show the URL of the embedded Youtube video..... so I have no way to watch the video even if I want to copy the URL to another tab.

[Marauder2003]

Quote the message and you will see the URL. Copy then cancel quote.

What sucks to me is..... all I see is just a blank space in the post..... even if I right click it, it wouldn't show the URL of the embedded Youtube video..... so I have no way to watch the video even if I want to copy the URL to another tab.

[axhoaxho]

Quote the message and you will see the URL. Copy then cancel quote.

Wow, brilliant! Thanks very much!

[the86d]

Firefox has a problem for a few revs with I believe it was https and http on the same page, as I recall, where something similar would happen with embedded viudeo...

[Diabolus]

Has anyone figured out a way to fix Safari so Youtube shows up?

[axhoaxho]

Has anyone figured out a way to fix Safari so Youtube shows up?

I haven't seen any real solution yet... I still cannot view Youtube in Safari 15.0... so far I just use the 'Quote-Copy-URL' trick that Marauder2003 suggested at above...

[Robotron2k84]

The fix needs to happen from the Calguns side. Flash video (and flash itself) is dead, gone and buried. Embedding flash video format, even though YouTube is still serving it, is problematic as more browsers phase out flash support. Eventually YouTube will stop serving it, as well.

Content-wise, Adobe and Apple have stopped supporting encoding for flash video, and now only support web-capable versions of their codecs. The lowdown, is that this site needs to change the method of serving the video links, to bring functionality up to current standards.

Browsers, since 2016, have all supported html5 video and MP4/H.264, so it’s not asking that much to switch everyone over.

I provided the new format for the forum plug-in to serve. It’s now just up to site management if they want to make the change in the short-term, or upgrade to new forum software and jump ahead.