YouTube integration

[Clover13]

Crosspost:  https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/451521-youtube-integration/

Is it possible to integrate IPS with YouTube for video attachments by members?  Seems less than ideal to store videos on my hosting server or on Amazon S3 when I could use a YouTube page to house all that storage for free and auto-embed the videos members upload and post in the forums.   Has anyone had any success in an automated solution for this?  Right now, I'm left with manually downloading, uploading to YouTube and deleting the local video if I want to use this approach.

I do realize this leaves the content in YouTube's control/possession, but in the case of high viewership there is monetization potential with YouTube (and you could always keep a local copy of the videos if retaining the content was of utmost importance).  Plus viewing via YouTube saves on hosting bandwidth.

 

[CodingJungle]

you setup a category to autopull videos from a playlist/youtube channel with my media app. you will need a youtube api key. it will create a page for the video posted (they will be embedded, so nothing is really stored on your site, with the exception of the video's thumbnail). 

[Clover13]

@CodingJungle, this looks like a nice app with some similar desired features but it unfortunately won't address the raw file video upload issue as it requires having an existing YouTube (or some other media source) URL to start.  I need to be able to take in raw media from a topic/reply, upload to my target YouTube channel, and then embed in the forum topic/reply where it started.

 

[KT Walrus]

Don't your users mind you violating their privacy by uploading their videos to YouTube? Or, have you clearly notified your users that you are doing this? Google is rapidly accumulating personal information on all of us and I wouldn't like it one bit if I uploaded a video to your site and then you immediately gave it to Google (and the world) to do with whatever they want, just because you wanted to use "free" video hosting.

I try to never use any Google service that exposes my user's personal information to Google and other "free" hosting services. That includes Google's reCaptcha service, Google Maps, and any other service that Google gives away just to help them know everything about everyone. I hate Facebook's Like button and other free services that allow these massive companies collect and share personal information on all of us just to increase their revenues.

BTW, why don't you just tell your users to upload their videos to YouTube and "paste" the link to the video in their posts?

[Clover13]

7 minutes ago, KT Walrus said:

Don't your users mind you violating their privacy by uploading their videos to YouTube? Or, have you clearly notified your users that you are doing this? Google is rapidly accumulating personal information on all of us and I wouldn't like it one bit if I uploaded a video to your site and then you immediately gave it to Google (and the world) to do with whatever they want, just because you wanted to use "free" video hosting.

I try to never use any Google service that exposes my user's personal information to Google and other "free" hosting services. That includes Google's reCaptcha service, Google Maps, and any other service that Google gives away just to help them know everything about everyone. I hate Facebook's Like button and other free services that allow these massive companies collect and share personal information on all of us just to increase their revenues.

BTW, why don't you just tell your users to upload their videos to YouTube and "paste" the link to the video in their posts?

It's a good question.  My users are aware as I'll tell them I've uploaded it to our YouTube channel and embedded it.  I have an excellent relationship with my user base so if there were any issues whatsoever, they would be swiftly discussed and addressed.  It's a public forum, so whether Google/YouTube displays it or my site does, it's still on the open internet equally to a large degree.

With that said, I understand your position of big brother watching us all.  The tech giants are digging their heels deeper and deeper into "personal data", whether to use it for their direct business objectives or to sell/share it for profit.  It's a Brave New World and depending on your day to day tech life, it's pretty challenging to stay "off the grid" and you can't undo something that's already been done (or harvested by the tech giants or any other company).  Similarly, with an IPS driven site, I'm not sure how you can stop the web from scraping your info.  You can block bots, you can block spammers, but inevitably someone will find a way in and scrape away whatever is accessible.  And if you do all that blocking, how do users find your site?  How is your site deemed "valued" in the eyes of the internet?  Are you actively blocking all search engines?  Maybe your site is private and via member sharing and word of mouth, but for the strong majority search engines are inevitable and with that comes all your pages being scraped for "value".

To answer the last question, I did address it in the xpost.  My users aren't tech savvy or willing...they want to be in one place to do everything.  That place is the IPS forums right now.  I'm slowly getting them to use other parts of the suite, but getting them to set up separate YouTube or Vimeo accounts to upload videos and then share them is unlikely. Just is what it is, so I try to facilitate and make it as easy as possible for them.  Also worth noting, they like the anonymity of the forums, and may not want to share their personal YouTube channel if they have one.  Perhaps they could create an anonymous Vimeo account but most simply won't go to that effort and I'd much prefer they share content for the benefit of all who use the site.

[AlexWebsites]

I'm not aware of a way to have other users upload to your channel but will subscribe to this topic, because I would be interested in something similar, if there is a way.

[opentype]

I highly doubt the YouTube terms allow this kind of use. 

[Clover13]

7 hours ago, opentype said:

I highly doubt the YouTube terms allow this kind of use. 

Hmm, I haven't looked into why, other than potential PII concerns?  You know of a specific reason?  I would think they'd be interested in content related to a given channel, which this all would be.  Ownership rights?  Much of this could be addressed with a policy agreement.

[opentype]

You want to use YouTube as a free and automatic storage service for other people’s content through your channel. Unlike Amazon S3, YouTube is not really meant for that. You are supposed to upload your content, not other people’s content. Do you know any YouTube channel who has this kind of mass storage of other people’s content? I don’t and there might be a reason for that. 

[AlexWebsites]

5 minutes ago, opentype said:

You want to use YouTube as a free and automatic storage service for other people’s content through your channel. Unlike Amazon S3, YouTube is not really meant for that. You are supposed to upload your content, not other people’s content. Do you know any YouTube channel who has this kind of mass storage of other people’s content? I don’t and there might be a reason for that. 

I have to agree with @opentype, I doubt youtube would allow this. You would have seen it already with major brands creating a channels and having their customers post videos. 

[bfarber]

As this isn't really a topic looking to relay feedback to IPS developers or ask for IPS-specific help, I've moved the topic.

[Clover13]

Valid point, reviewing their TOS and guidelines, I don't see anything specific related to not allowing uploading as long as you have the necessary rights/consents/permissions which you could include in an agreement notice for the users who are uploading.  

https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=CA&template=terms

 

 

Quote

 

6. Your Content and Conduct

1. As a YouTube account holder you may submit Content to the Service, including videos and user comments. You understand that YouTube does not guarantee any confidentiality with respect to any Content you submit.
2. You shall be solely responsible for your own Content and the consequences of submitting and publishing your Content on the Service. You affirm, represent, and warrant that you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to publish Content you submit; and you license to YouTube all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to such Content for publication on the Service pursuant to these Terms of Service.

 

 

And here is Google's sample for v3 of their Data API to upload a video using OAuth 2.0 authentication/authorization.  You can isolate all of the requires files in a protected directory to run.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/guides/uploading_a_video#top_of_page

 

Realize, at least in my use case, members do want to share these videos with the other members on the site.  If they wanted it to only be on the site or if it were in a private forum, then that's another use case that could be accommodated.  However YouTube does offer a variety of benefits:  free storage, best of breed video optimization/editing/processing, natural embedding into browsers, and revenue potential.  It's simple enough to hook into Amazon S3 for storage, but you're then responsible for managing your own videos and ensuring embedding works as desired.  YouTube makes is far easier all around.

I'm interested in the cons though, so please by all means, fire away.  There could be something I'm overlooking, as well as others who have expressed interest in this type of functionality.

 

 

1 hour ago, AlexWebsites said:

I have to agree with @opentype, I doubt youtube would allow this. You would have seen it already with major brands creating a channels and having their customers post videos. 

My primary thought here is that many brands want only professional grade/quality videos presented.  In my case, these are just hobby oriented videos members share, similar to uploading to Facebook, etc.  These aren't professional branding advertisement videos and the like.

1 hour ago, opentype said:

You want to use YouTube as a free and automatic storage service for other people’s content through your channel. Unlike Amazon S3, YouTube is not really meant for that. You are supposed to upload your content, not other people’s content. Do you know any YouTube channel who has this kind of mass storage of other people’s content? I don’t and there might be a reason for that. 

"your" content is relative.  My site's content is the user's posts, of which includes videos, pictures, etc.  If users are in agreement that their content can be used by the site, then I'd effectively be uploading "my" content as the site's content.  This isn't a personal YouTube account/channel, it's a site's (or even brand's) YouTube channel managed by myself (and potentially others with manager access).

I don't know of any that have this type of YouTube channel, but have found articles Googling around where people have written applications to fit this goal.

[AlexWebsites]

Good luck with this, don't think its gonna happen. Personally, I would love to grow and monetize my site's youtube channel with member posted videos because I don't have the time to create videos, but that's not the way it works.

[Joy Rex]

I know you've said your users aren't technically adept, etc. but if they can't figure out how to sign up and upload to YouTube, I would be surprised they are able to make a video and have the knowledge to upload it to a forum.

Perhaps you are underestimating your users based on a few vocal ones that can't seem to figure things out?

Unless the volume of videos is problematic, I would actually just have them upload videos to your forum/server, and then you manually add them to your channel (allows you to do a bit of quality assurance and screening for potential violations of YT's policies to boot).

[Clover13]

1 minute ago, Joy Rex said:

I know you've said your users aren't technically adept, etc. but if they can't figure out how to sign up and upload to YouTube, I would be surprised they are able to make a video and have the knowledge to upload it to a forum.

Perhaps you are underestimating your users based on a few vocal ones that can't seem to figure things out?

Unless the volume of videos is problematic, I would actually just have them upload videos to your forum/server, and then you manually add them to your channel (allows you to do a bit of quality assurance and screening for potential violations of YT's policies to boot).

I agree, they're certainly capable of learning how to, they simply don't want to.  They want to be on the forums and not have to navigate off to upload anything.  I don't disagree with that, in the ideal world we too would want to keep them on our site as much as possible.  All this is changing is the backend storage and processing of the video content.

Right now, I am doing exactly what you described, I manually "support" the goal by uploading their videos to YouTube and then embedding them by editing their posts.  The obvious downside is, well this is manual.  Users want to see their video right away, not wait for me to upload it.  Unfortunately not all videos display inline in IPS after upload.  It depends on the browser, the video file type, etc.  YouTube eliminates that headache.  So all in all, YouTube is a superior solution given it's natural video capabilities and direct embedding that works everywhere.

[KT Walrus]

I suggest you look into Cloudflare Stream for your video hosting. It is a cheap alternative for small sites since they have a simple pricing model based on usage. Cloudflare charges $5 per 1000 minutes of video stored and $1 per 1000 minutes of video viewed. You have to upload the video using a tus client and embed the Cloudflare player into the page for viewing the uploaded video. It is about as simple as it gets. Also, you get precise analytics to keep track of your costs based on actual usage.

And, Cloudflare allows you to embed the videos on any site even those that don't use Cloudflare DNS for their domains. Cloudflare has a very good privacy policy as they provide the HTTP reverse proxy for millions of sites (over 10% of worldwide internet traffic). 

[Clover13]

Very cool @KT Walrus!  Have you used this?  Integrated it with IPS (forums specifically)?

[KT Walrus]

Just now, Clover13 said:

Very cool @KT Walrus!  Have you used this?  Integrated it with IPS (forums specifically)?

No. I haven't opened my site yet. I was going to use Cloudflare Stream and tested it out, but I realized that my users will be uploading small videos that are selfies (talking about their ideas/opinions). I decided not to bother with dynamic adaptive streaming using HLS or DASH and just use Handbrake/ffmpeg to transcode all uploaded videos into MP4 files at low resolution (288p30). This results in very small video files (you can fit 1 minute of video in about 2.5MBs). Most of the videos will be less than 2MBs so they don't need adaptive streaming. MP4 files can played using the HTML5 <video> tag (that IPS4 already uses to embed videos). I think there are a few browsers out there that won't play MP4 files, but if this becomes a problem, I can always encode the videos into WEBM files too (which is royalty free) and specify both MP4 and WEBM as sources in the <video> tag.

Anyway, if you want your users video to play in HD or even SD, you really need to implement HLS or DASH and use a player like Video.js to stream the highest quality video that your users bandwidth will allow.

Or, just use Cloudflare Stream which doesn't charge based on HD vs SD video minutes. A minute is a minute regardless of how many MBs are required to be streamed.

[The Old Man]

Hi,

Not sure if you will find this useful but JWPlayer has been a very reliable video platform over the years.

https://www.jwplayer.com/

Its the fastest, most used HTML5 video player (apparently), so I've always been surprised that IPS doesn't support rich embed video links like Youtube. Perhaps if enough people ask.

Regardless check out the the demos...