inline video file (HTML5 video player) [Xenforo feature request]

[Mithgol]

Currently the media button is limited by a short whitelist of media hostings that provide their own media players:

① Apple Music

② Dailymotion

③ Facebook

④ Flickr

⑤ Giphy

⑥ Imgur

⑦ Instagram

⑧ Pinterest

⑨ Reddit

⑩ SoundCloud

⑪ Spotify

⑫ TikTok

⑬ Tumblr

⑭ Twitch

⑮ Twitter

⑯ Vimeo

⑰ YouTube

The suggestion here is to support yet another BB code tag, named [video]…[/video] or similarly, that would (unlike [media]…[/media]) contain a full URL of some video file (a WebM file or an MP4 file, I presume) and make an HTML5 video player out of it.

<video controls src="givenURL"></video>

The intention here is to introduce a video tag that would much more closely resemble the behaviour of [img]…[/img] (but would reference video files instead of image files — but that would be the only difference).

An obvious demerit here is that a video file (unlike a video hosting's player) might be less compatible because not every browser supports a particular video track format. However,

➊ the compatibility situation has greatly improved recently (for example, Safari 17.4 supports VP8/VP9 video and Vorbis/Opus audio in WebM video files even on iOS devices),

➋ if [img]…[/img] tags are allowed to reference AVIF files (despite their lack of support in Microsoft Edge until January 2024), then a video file without a really universal support (for example, a WebM file with an AV1 video track or an MP4 file with an USAC audio track) should perhaps also be not frowned upon.

Please re-send this suggestion upstream (to XenForo Ltd.) if nothing can be done on MangaDex level of control over the forums' implementation.

 

[RogueKitsune]

Nothing(or very little) MD can do about this. It would be best to go to Xenforo with this.

 

[Mithgol]

It would be best to go to Xenforo with this.

I remember that XenForo more than five years ago (in October 2018) was vaguely planning to support the very same feature; for example, their video uploading example also said the following:

We have some future plans (maybe before XF 2.1 or maybe after) to add better integration with the editor (like we did with images) and are looking into whether we can support hotlinking videos.

Does anyone know whether they ever talked about this “hotlinking videos” again?

I am asking this while trying to understand if the suggestion (or at least the intention) already exists within Xenforo or it should be started anew.

 

[Mithgol]

It would be best to go to Xenforo with this.

Alright. I have just gone to XenForo with this.

 

[Mithgol]

I've been told that there is an addon solution for this (or very similar) problem.

That addon apparently transforms (into a video player) every URL that ends with “.mp4” or “.webm” (and thus is likely to be an URL of a video file) whenever such URL is the only thing on its own line of the text.

Perhaps the API design of XenForo's engine makes such simple approach (basically a scripted find-and-replace) more viable than an attempt to introduce a new tag of its markup.

So, is it somehow possible for MangaDex forums to use that addon or at least to implement a similar solution?

(The latter is not a rhetorical and/or loaded question. I really do not know the extent of MangaDex forums' capabilities.)

 

[Mithgol]

Hello? Anybody home?