Show Thread Enhancements - AME 2.0 -Auto Media Embedding for posts, blogs, visitor and group messsages

From the creators of French and Toast comes a sweet and sticky enchanement to the New York Times best-seller: AME - Auto Media Embedding

AME 2.0 - The Embedder Strikes Back!

AME has won Mod of the Month for Spetember 08. Thanks!

Note that 2.5 Gold has been released. Click Here.

Discussions for AME 2.5 RC 1 start here

AME 2.0 is the next version of the "Mod of the Month" winning media embedder that:

• Allows user to simply 'paste' in a URL (i.e. a youtube link) without needing to know any special tags. However instead of displaying just the URL, it will show the media within the post
• is lightweight as it does all of her chores without the overhead of having 1 bbcode per pattern or trying to parse a post every single time it gets displayed with a bunch of patterns. AME radically reduces overhead and speeds up processing. The only time ame will kick in is after creating a new post or after editing an existing one (or if an ame tag is found)
• is extensible. She allows you to add, edit, delete, import and export patterns. That way you can decide which services to support, how they should look and then share them with others! At time of typing this, there are over 150 media sites that have been contributed by vBulletin.org members
• can extract the title (requires your server to allow url wrappers with fetch_contents)
• can extract embed code from sites whose URLs do not contain sufficient information to embed the video
• can rebuild your old posts to convert your 'other' mediaish tags into URL tags.
• can rebuild your old posts, blogs, comments, visitor and social group messages to convert URL tags into ame tags where needed
• can convert her codes BACK to url codes so you're not stuffed with a bunch of dead tags if you uninstall!
• won't uglify your site by having videos appear in quotes, php, code or html blocks (blech!)
• can be globally disabled
• can be excluded from forums
• can exclude usergroups
• can be toggled on/off per post, blog, comment, visitor and social group message
• would cook dinner for you if she had arms
• can wrap the output in a 'container' with original URL
• has a super comprehensive admincp help system. Yes, I actually took the bloody time to add all the info you need into vB's admincp help system. If you ask a silly question in this thread that is addressed in the help system, you will be taunted.
• is fully phrased
• has hooks around integral operations so you can extend it
• Supports embedding in vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups.
• Can be disabled in one or more of the following sections: Posts, vbBlog, Visitor Messages and/or Social Groups

Apart from the additional areas of support around vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups, little has changed about AME since version 1.0 released over a year ago. I cleaned up a few minor bugs, trimmed and updated the default definitions.

Which sites are supported?

At time of counting this, there are about 170 sites supported. But I have only included a few common standards as default (yahoo, youtube, myspace, google and Amazon). Why only these? AME was designed with its own import and export system that enables users to create or modify definitions and share them with the community. This keeps the system lightweight, customisable and saves us all from having to upgrade every time a media site changes their URL structure or if I add another site.

Check out the 'add ons' section of this post below to see availible add-ons.



Installation/Upgrade

• Upload the contents of the forums folder into your forums directory and import the product-ame.xml file into your product manager (if upgrading, choose 'yes' to overwrite previous installation).
• After installation, make sure that the system is on (admincp->AME CP->Settings)
• Then you may want to try to rebuild old URLs via the tools option.

Big thanks goes out to all those in the community that have supported this mod. Especially Digital Jedi Who has created about 155 definitions for this system alone!

Change Log


2.0.2 - fixed added slashes in quote blocks (DoH!), vm advanced error and incrimented product version. You need to replace include/ame_bb_code.php and re-import the product-ame.xml to upgrade
2.0.1 - fixed missing backslashes in code blocks

2.5 Pre-Release information

Attached to this post is pre-release of version 2.5

2.5 is a pretty major upgrade from the 2.0 series and adds the following functionality to 2.0:

• New in Beta 3 - Validation ability. This will help prevent media being embedded that can not be embedded (i.e. youtube videos that the author has stipulated can not be shown off of youtube). This option requires the extraction option to be turned on and a valid validation regexp. I have included one in the default youtube version. When a video on you tube gets embedded, but the author doesnt allow embedding, a link (with icon) is shown instead.
• Ability to prevent non authorised usergroups from viewing (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Usergroup permissions (edit usergroup to adjust edit/view permissions)
• Template driven system - uses templates now instead of 1 master replacement (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Signatures supported
• Different sizes and template configurations for each supported zone (posts, blogs, groups, visitor messages and signatures)
• A couple new hooks (Mainly to support a future add on for AME media in profiles)
• Notfication system (similar to vB's to check for errors)
• Definition keys for easier updating of definitions and to use in templates
• File caching system which radically reduces processing
• And more that I cant think of off the top of my head!

Note that while previous definitions will work with the new system, they will not be sizeable by zone. Since DJ helped with the private beta testing, I am sure he will be releasing 2.5 versions of his definitions soon.

Please note that 2.5 is a pre-release so there will be issues. If you want more stability, use 2.x until this version becomes gold FWIW: The only items currently outstanding are to add some missing admincp help. The rest is working as intended as far as I can tell

nJoy

[0ptima]

Thanks for updating this hack! Hope one day to see you back in the hacking scene in the same capacity as you were in the past.

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by DoB Rhapsody

I temporarily added the title linked with the urls back so you can take a look at them.

I may have addressed one of two of these in the past, so bear with me:

Vimeo: I'll address this on the next definition update, just for now use links with the www in them, and it should embed.

Fileden: I don't have a definition for Fileden.

LongIslandOnline: This is a MySpace video, and the definition only supports the YouTube vids. If they continue to split videos up amongst hosting sites like this, I may have to drop support for them and sites like them. You can, however, still use the Permalink from YouTube/MySpace, etc.

The Rest: The rest of your videos are behaving like Extract destination data is turned off. I know you already said it was turned on, but as I recall, The Geek had said that this requires your server to allow url wrappers with fetch_contents. You may want to check that out with your host.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

The Rest: The rest of your videos are behaving like Extract destination data is turned off. I know you already said it was turned on, but as I recall, The Geek had said that this requires your server to allow url wrappers with fetch_contents. You may want to check that out with your host.

Just as a heads up, cCurl is support in 2.5

[punchbowl]

Originally Posted by nMIK-3

Guys I have a problem.

I installed it successfully V2.0.2 and all the settings looks alright however it is not automatically embed videos.

When I post a link from youtube as plain link in form of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZdkHylJ3w then only the link shows, no video. Then if I manually add the AME tags in form of [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZdkHylJ3w[/ame] it works!

The point is to do it automatically. Any idea of what issue may cause this annoying problem?

Same here but with 2.5beta and clean vb install. Tried posting a simple youtube url in a blog and nothing happened.

tech question: I'm going a simple cms, dragging blog entries out of the db and putting them on the front page - How can I make sure the ame entries are parsed correctly?
I use this at the moment to parse the blog text
$parsed_text = $parser->do_parse($blog_pagetext, false, true, true, true, true, false);
Is it just a matter of including the ame functions and parsing the blogs again with that?

Cheers

I'll try again today

[socalsoccer]

I installed and could not get it working either 2.5 . Waited 30 minutes then new url started working properly.

On Youtube will this work with the Embed code they give you? Or just the url?

[The Geek]

@punch -> Check usergroup permissions and settings to make sure it is set up correctly. In some cases, saving the usergroup perms (even if they looked right) seemed to do the trick. Most of the time when people are complaining about it not automatically converting, they are expecting it to convert old posts or posts that have been cached which it will not do without the rebuilding tools.

@Soccer. Only with the URL. The embed code is HTML and you would need HTML enabled in order to show that (which wouldnt be a good thing )

[The Geek]

Can I also ask that if you installed this mod, please mark as installed

[punchbowl]

Originally Posted by The Geek

@punch -> Check usergroup permissions and settings to make sure it is set up correctly. In some cases, saving the usergroup perms (even if they looked right) seemed to do the trick. Most of the time when people are complaining about it not automatically converting, they are expecting it to convert old posts or posts that have been cached which it will not do without the rebuilding tools.

Thanks. Will try that later. Sorry - thought I had already marked installed!

[carlos54321]

Thanks for the cool mod using 2.5.0 beta 3 had a couple of errors but wait till the update your sending out this weekend and hope that fixes them before i post about them.

[The Geek]

AME 2.5 RC1 has been uploaded into the first post. A quick snapshot of changes are:

• Fixed bug with unescaped apostrophes conking out preg_replace calls
• Fix woe where usergroup permissions problem where usergroupcache was not getting updated on install/upgrade. Therefore it was appearing to some that AME wasn't working until the cache was eventually rebuilt through some other method (i.e. manually saving usergroup permissions or similar). This will only happen on new installs or upgrades from 2.5 beta 1. If you think you may be suffering from this problem, try edit a usergroup and saving it.
• Fixed invalid Zone specified error during rebuild
• Fixed blogs not correctly previewing media
• Changed $ameinfo[width] and $ameinfo[height] to only display the value instead of the whole attribute (i.e. it now only displays xxx instead of width="xxx") this is to accommodate the many fun flavours of attributes different media sites use
• Fixed a bunch of other bugs
• Added some more admincp help

AME 2.5 RC1 is still a pre-release product and as such I would not recommend its use on a live site. If you can hang on a few, it doesn't look to be too much longer until it's gold