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

[KAWIE1]

Thanks for the great mod. Marked as installed.

[h2ojunkie]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

The conflict I was referring to, (if there is a conflict, admitedly, I haven't had a chance to test this yet) would come, not from the video, but from the image embed code. You had asked if we could use this to embed images. The problem I see is people grabbing the image forum code with the [img]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/[/img] tags and either getting an image with the IMG tags on either side, or no picture at all. Like I said, though, I will have to test this to be sure.

yeah, I assumed you were talking about the IMG embed codes.

The IMG embed code is the same format for just an image alone, as the IMG embed code I pasted above that is part of the video string.

But if the replacement was only looking for a URL= with photobucket and action=view it could replace everything between the opening URL tag and closing URL tag so the IMG embed would be irrelevant and never cause a conflict on an image emb used alone.

URL image tag:

[URL=http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/h20junkie/Misc/IMG_1927.jpg][img]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/[/img][/URL]


URL video tag

[URL=http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/?action=view&current=100_2877.flv][img]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2008/12/103.jpg[/img][/URL]


As you can see, the action=view is the defining part of the string to separate a IMG from a Video, so there should be no issue with a replacement that looks for that action=view

I wish I was good enough at regex to try and write one myself.

But if I can't do that, I figure the least I can do is T it up for someone that actually can write regex...:P

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by h2ojunkie

yeah, I assumed you were talking about the IMG embed codes.

The IMG embed code is the same format for just an image alone, as the IMG embed code I pasted above that is part of the video string.

But if the replacement was only looking for a URL= with photobucket and action=view it could replace everything between the opening URL tag and closing URL tag so the IMG embed would be irrelevant and never cause a conflict on an image emb used alone.

URL image tag:

[URL=http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/h20junkie/Misc/IMG_1927.jpg][IMG]http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/h20junkie/Misc/th_IMG_1927.jpg[/IMG][/URL]


URL video tag

[URL=http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/?action=view&current=100_2877.flv][img]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2008/12/103.jpg[/img][/URL]


As you can see, the action=view is the defining part of the string to separate a IMG from a Video, so there should be no issue with a replacement that looks for that action=view

I wish I was good enough at regex to try and write one myself.

But if I can't do that, I figure the least I can do is T it up for someone that actually can write regex...:P

Hrm, I'm not sure we're on the same page then. See, I have a Photobucket (Videos) definition in my Add-On thread, but videos are converted based on the page URL. Are you suggesting a conversion of the offered image embed codes, or the permalink/page URL?

[wAnBoA]

I was wondering why myspace vid is not working.
And i would like to add livemarco vid as well. How do i add that?

[h2ojunkie]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

Hrm, I'm not sure we're on the same page then. See, I have a Photobucket (Videos) definition in my Add-On thread, but videos are converted based on the page URL. Are you suggesting a conversion of the offered image embed codes, or the permalink/page URL?

Maybe we aren't on the same page as you said.

I'm talking about a conversion specifically for the PB offered IMG Code - Forums & Bulletin Boards for videos.

When I tested the photobucket (videos) definition with:

[url=http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/?action=view&current=100_2877.flv][img]https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2008/12/103.jpg[/img][/url]


Here's the HTML rendered by the Photobucket (Videos) definition:

<A title="<img src=" 
href="http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/?action=view&amp;current=100_3043.flv" 
alt="" border="0" th_100_3043.jpg? motorcycle%20related%20stuff Whitey818 i237 
albums i73.photobucket.com http:>" target="_blank"&gt;<IMG alt="" 
src="http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/th_100_3043.jpg" 
border=0></A> </TD></TR></THEAD>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD class=panelsurround align=middle><EMBED 
src=http://photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/Whitey818/motorcycle%20related%20stuff/100_3043.flv 
width=430 height=389 type=application/x-shockwave-flash 
wmode="transparent"></EMBED>

As you can see, I ended up with a broken layout. The page was rendering the default photobucket image that is shown for videos, followed by the video player rendered by your product.

I was assuming your Photobucket (Videos) definition was written just to do replacements on the url portion only, and wasn't designed to account for the embed code PB provides as shown above. (at least that's what the regex looked like)

I got the idea of adding support for the PB embed code from use of this mod:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ht=photobucket

It adds a photobucket image/video search and upload when making posts using:
http://photobucket.com/landing/plugin_wizard.php

And, if you search photobucket using that mod for a video, the only URL photo bucket gives you for the video via the IFRAME used by that mod, is the IMG code I listed above.

Anyway, I personally love that PB image search/upload since it gives an easy way for users to post videos to the site without having to allow users to upload attachments.

I had to shut off your Photobucket (Videos) definition since it broke the page whenever someone would use the PB code provided by the IFRAME uploader.

Hopefully, I'm explaining myself better this time.

Thanks again for a killer product.

[MotMann]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

I was only recently turned me on to this, so it will be part of the next definition update, but you'll have to get that from one of my Add-On threads.

Where i found that?

[jerx]

Originally Posted by MotMann

Where i found that?

Please read more carefully. He said "next definition update" and "you'll have to". In other words, it has not been released yet!

But I am sure that you will not be able to find it in this thread, but in the other thread. This thread is about the AME mod and the other one has been created by DJ to provide his definitions.

I also like to ask everybody to discuss definitions in the other thread. Such discussion clutter this thread and makes it harder for DJ to keep track of definition problems.

[MotMann]

...but you'll have to get that from one of my Add-On threads.

The Update yes.. but i can get that from the Add-On Thread right now. That's i understand

And i don't found that one

[Breakpoint]

How easy will it be to upgrade from version 2.0 to 2.5 when it releases?

Do I also have to uninstall the mod when a new version of VB is released, or what will happen to the mod when you upgrade?

Thanks, Im new to VB and would like to add this mod

[XrayHead]

This is one sweet hack, thanks "Clicked Installed"

Xray