Motivation

Often, it's far more useful to *show* what's not working right by means of a screencast, rather than explaining it step by step and uploading many screenshots.
These screencasts can often be <1 MB in size, which is far below the 3 MB limit. Hence, size is not the issue. Unfortunately, typical video file extensions such as mov, mp4, avi, mkv are all disallowed. Why is this? I think this is simply an oversight and because of an assumption that videos tend to be large (historically drupal.org didn't want to increase the bandwidth consumed at OSUOSL)?
Zipping videos is the only option right now, but even then, d.o decides to rename the .mov.zip to .mov_.zip, for security reasons. I have no idea why this would improve security.

Sample issue follow-up where this was done: http://drupal.org/node/1068070#comment-4787392.

We could simply use external sites to host the videos (e.g. vimeo or youtube) but that has the drawback that videos on 3rd party sites might get deleted or the site might go away.

Implementation plan

Comments

jhodgdon’s picture

Issue tags: +docs infrastructure

Note related issue about embedding (rather than uploading) videos:
#1542882: Add a field for embedding video(s)

webchick’s picture

Component: Project problem » Other
Priority: Minor » Normal

I support this. I don't know how we would ever have explained this bug http://drupal.org/node/1960490#comment-7253406 with text. I didn't know that the ability to upload short screencasts was constrained to only certain roles on d.o.

jhodgdon’s picture

Title: Allow uploading of movies (screencasts) to d.o » Allow uploading of videos (screencasts) to d.o
Issue summary: View changes

Changing title because there are dups that didn't find this issue because it didn't have the word "video" in it.

Wim Leers’s picture

Hah — better title indeed :)

lizzjoy’s picture

Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Drupal.org infrastructure

I'm moving this to Infrastructure. Can someone comment on feasibility of this issue for Drupal.org?

Wim Leers’s picture

We have a 50 MB file limit. The only thing we need, is to allow additional file extensions, like mov mp4 avi mkv.

nnewton’s picture

I don't know the original reasoning for removing those files extensions (wasn't around for it), but would want to hear @greggles view on them and whether we should add Content-Disposition's to them.

jhodgdon’s picture

RE #6, presumably we would also want to have a player embedded? It doesn't seem useful to me to provide links to download videos. Most people would want/expect to play them in place.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

I think the original reason why we didn't host large files (ie videos) was that the OSL didn't like us doing it. We maybe should check whether this is sill the case. I guess not.

nnewton’s picture

@killes ya, that is no longer the case. They would be served off our CDN.

@jhodgdon, My concern is random video uploads. Video uploads that we specifically approve would be a different thing, but random uploads being played in-line seems a bit dangerous.

greggles’s picture

I'm not aware of security issues associated with mov mp4 avi mkv. If they were ever actively removed as allowed upload types, it was probably because of the reasons killes mentions: a desire to limit bandwidth.

nnewton’s picture

K, Cool. Then I think we have no issues with this. I'd advise we wait to 'flip the switch' on this until after d.o. is CDN fronted, which will be quickly after Austin.

-N

webchick’s picture

Hm. I don't think random videos being played inline is any more dangerous than random images uploaded inline, which all users can also do. Either way you can be a douche bag, and we can delete your comment or your user. ;)

Wim Leers’s picture

I don't want a video player. Then we will have to deal with codecs and transcoding and whatnot to make it play in every browser. Let us please not scope creep this issue; this is only about being able to upload screencasts to d.o so you can download them and watch them offline. Right now linkrot is breaking videos from the past.

Being able to upload videos is a must-have.

Being able to play them on d.o is a nice-to-have, and belongs in a new issue.

greggles’s picture

re #13 - I assumed the issue nnewton wanted me to weigh in on is not just for offensive or tricky purposes, but things like this or this. In those cases the file extension can matter.

Danny Englander’s picture

There is an alternative, we could use the Video embed field module which renders URLs from Vimeo and youtube. I'm not sure if it fits the use case here though. That solves many problems including cross browser / device rendering and bandwidth as youtube and vimeo handle all those things on their end. However, it still does not prevent someone from putting up a spammy video. Just my 2 cents.

Wim Leers’s picture

#16: no! That still doesn't fix linkrot. We can post videos on YouTube or Vimeo just fine today — that's the problem this is trying to solve, to remove that required dependency on external sites! Everything in the issue queues should be accessible forever; otherwise we can no longer retrace our steps. Screencasts/videos are part of that.

greggles’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Needs review

Updated issue summary to make it more clear what should be done and where and why we did things historically and why we shouldn't host elsewhere.

Since there won't be a patch for the change, setting to "Needs review" but it seems almost RTBC to me.

jhodgdon’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

OK. :)

drumm’s picture

Project: Drupal.org infrastructure » Drupal.org customizations
Version: » 7.x-3.x-dev
Component: Other » Code
Assigned: Unassigned » drumm

These should be managed by features in drupalorg.

  • Commit a52a4e3 on 7.x-3.x by drumm:
    #1246118 Initial exports matching production.
    
jhodgdon’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Active

OK, so I think this issue status needs to go back to "active" so we can make a patch, review, and commit, right?

drumm’s picture

Found a core issue: #2277281: Sometimes you want more than 128 chars of allowed file extensions

It doesn't block this, the form can be saved by taking the commas out. But, that's tedious and not a long-term solution.

jhodgdon’s picture

Lovely. :(

  • Commit d972962 on 7.x-3.x by drumm:
    #1246118 Allow uploading of videos (screencasts) to d.o
    
Wim Leers’s picture

Thank you! :)

drumm’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

Now deployed.

jhodgdon’s picture

Thanks! Sure enough, looks like we can upload videos!

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.