MySpace Vids still not showing

Here is my experience testing the Myspace TV code for the emfield module.

Pasting the URL that appears in the browser address field, in this case...

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=14219200

... will successfully let the embedded player appear in full node new.

However. the code for downloading/caching a thumbnail of the video is broken (function "_video_cck_myspace_scrape_thumbnail" in myspace.inc?), since it produced the following (invalid) HTML for the thumbnail tag in the teaser:

<a href="/node/title-blah-blah"><img src="iewVideo");
</script>
</body>
</html>14219200_thumb1.jpg" width="120" height="90" alt="See Video" title="See Video" /></a>

...which in Firefox 2.0x gets rendered as a broken link (no thumbnail) similar to what you quote above.

Has anyone see the thumbnail generation work with Myspace videos?

It is worth noting that the URL that Myspace now provides on the "send URL to friends" field is different from the one appearing in the browser address field...

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=14219200

Indeed, when I use this URL with the current dev version of emfield, nothing happens, no thumbnail and no embedded player.

It's not surprising that key Myspace URLs and server names will change from time to time, so is it perhaps problematic to hardcode these URLs into the emfield provider code? How difficult is it to patch the code to support/recognize multiple URLs for the 3rd party servers, e.g. vids.myspace.com and myspacetv.com?

For further followup, it appears the code for scaping thumbnails from Myspace videos is indeed broken, since it that code expects to find an img tag with thumbnail image name of the format "XXX_thumb1.jpg" (where XXX is the numerical video ID). However, the thumbnail img tag apparently is no longer included in the myspacetv.com page for a given video, just the embedded player.

Furthermore, the naming scheme for Myspace TV thumbail images has changed, and no longer includes the video ID. Cf. the thumbnail image for the "chocolate rain" video mentioned above (which will appear in search pages, but not on the video page):

http://myspace-188.vo.llnwd.net/02047/99/15/2047795199_thumb1.jpg

As a work-around, I've a hacked the myspace.inc file to support the following:

1. Updated references to vids.myspace.com to myspacetv.com (diff attached).
2. Changed the thumbnail scrape function to simply return a link to a static 120x90 image that is topically appropriate (image attached in the next comment). Put this image in the /sites/.../files directory for your site.

Ah, the mysteries of Myspace...

And here is suggested Myspace TV static thumbnail image, as a topically relevant work-around. ;) Again, put this in the /sites/.../files directory.

fixed in the devel version (except for the busted thumbnail). still working on thumbnails: http://drupal.org/node/217339

didn't see your patch till i fixed it, so wasn't able to give credit in cvs, sorry.

also, category should'a been bug, and status should'a had patch in it, as i would've noticed it sooner.

thanks,
aaron