How to embed Youtube videos

[jks9199]

I've noticed a few people having trouble embedding Youtube videos. I'm seeing two common errors: people are either copying Youtube's embedding code, or they're trying to use the whole URL.

The software we use here makes embedding Youtube videos pretty easy. I'm going to walk through doing one here:

Here's the entire URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk&feature=related

Of course, we can't see it if we don't follow the link... and you don't know if you want to or not. After all, I sometimes do have a questionable sense of humor...

If you look at the URL, you'll see about the middle a section that reads

v=FzRH3iTQPrk&

. That's the part you want to look at. You want to highlight and copy everything between = and the ampersand (&), the part that reads

FzRH3iTQPrk

.

When you go to post it, you're going to use the code yt within square brackets to start it, then /yt afterwards. Because those brackets tell the software that it's a direction, for demonstration purposes, I'm going to write it here with {}. You'll type this: {yt}FzRH3iTQPrk{/yt} (remember, those are really supposed to be square brackets). You'll get a result like this:




[yt]FzRH3iTQPrk[/yt]

See -- I told you I had a questionable sense of humor!

 

[Carol]

Can the embedding be improved to support YouTube's embeddable link or a copy/past of the entire URL, rather than just a fragment of it?

 

[jks9199]

That's a question for Bob. I suspect that vBulletin (the software that MT is run on) doesn't support true or full HTML tagging... but we've just hit the limits of my understanding!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

vB4 has a much easier method. Just click an icon, paste the link and hit ok. There's a plugin for vB3 that does similar, but it's not forward compatible.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

..

There are some differences between our old method and the new one that came with vB4.

The old way was to do a lot of manual editing and sandwich your link between bbcode tags like this:

Link is:

OLD WAY (spaces added to break so code displays)
Using YT tags
[ yt ]p_5RTKQjccs[ /yt ]
Resulting in this:
[yt]p_5RTKQjccs[/yt]

New Way
using video tag (spaces added to break so code displays)
[ video ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_5RTKQjccs[ /video ]

OR
simply use the film strip icon in the editor and paste your link in then submit.

With this result:

This works with most major video host sites such as Youtube.


..

..

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

That is great Bob hopefully more people will take the time to embed as it is more enjoyable to watch it on page rather than having to go to a new browser!

 

[Chris Parker]

Just a heads up, the clips don't come up when I view the site on my I-phone 4. Nothing turns up, actually. The older embeddings work, but not the new version.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

There's a couple reports that due to the iPhone's lack of Flash capabilities, some video links won't work unfortunately. It seems to depend on how Youtube serves the clip. Sometimes it's Flash, sometimes not.
vBulletin's 'answer' is for me to spend a few hundred more dollars with them and push out their 'mobile' suite.
My answer (and others) is for them to add the 10 lines of code to fix the issue.

Unfortunately, at the moment the only solution I have is to suggest those posting videos also tack on the link, and that those running iOS devices consider the Tapatalk app which -may- fix the issue. (I don't have any iOS devices so I can't test it I'm afraid)

Sorry Chris, best I can do at the moment.

 

[Chris Parker]

Eh, it's cool. Makes me want to check out what someone's refering to (such as some of your JMA clips a few days ago.... got the title of the thread, but nothing in the body of the post, as it was all video) so it ensures I log on when I get home.

 

[Steve]

Just a heads up, the clips don't come up when I view the site on my I-phone 4. Nothing turns up, actually. The older embeddings work, but not the new version.

That's an apple problem, not an MT problem. The fix is pretty simple. Get a Droid or a Windows phone and wash your hands of Apple.