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

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Let me first start by apologising for my sporadic attendance here, however my rl zaps most of my free time now and I have less time to code and/or support this project. Let me then follow up by again thanking DJ for his tireless support of this mod. If it wasn't for his support, I am sure most would agree that this mod would be as dead as a doornail (whatever the hell a dead doornail is).

Smirkley, I do seem to recall that the last 2.5 release had an issue with conversions of old blogs, social group and visitor messages. IIRC, I think I had it resolved on a local development build, however I am not keen to simply zip up what is on my dev server without really spending the time to comb back through the code to ensure there are not any loose ends left undone (its been months since I have worked on it).

The problem was that the tool would give a db error trying to do conversions of old data and no changes would be made. It in no way affected the underlying data (but of course it wouldn't convert old info into ame's either!). The rest of the system works hunky dory. New visitor messages, blog posts, etc... worked fine... (as well as edited ones) just not the conversions of old data using that particular tool.

Ah, thanks Geek. I was running out of ideas.

I will try to set some time aside over the next week or so to comb back through the code and see if I can get a final release into the 3.8 forum (yes, this indeed works on 3.8). Until then, know that the system works fine - there just isn't a working tool to automatically convert old blogs, social messages and visitor messages.

Whenever you find the time dude. Whenever you find the time. :up:

[Finster]

If one has Goldbrick, and that hack is supposed to add media tags, and one switches over to AME which seems to be far more supported, will the old tags get converted? From what i read, it appears the answer is yes, but better to ask a dumb question.

Also, Highslide JS is an add-on requirement to Goldbrick, and it is a nice affect. If one disables Golbrick but keeps Highslide, I trust AME would be Highslided (or is that Highslid?) lol.

Lastly, Golbrick would allow one to upload a QT or Mov or WMV (yuck) video to their own server and paste the url to that video in a post and it would render it. I want to make surre AME does the same. Goldbrick rarely thumbnails, how good is AME?

Last dumb question, there seems to be two AME's floating around, thus confusing my pea brain.

Thanks!

[Gladhatter]

I have not seen any highslide working in my AME but it may be disabled or I may not understand. You can upload to your local server and AME will render the extentions I belive all are supported or can be with a simple edit in the cpanel. I can send you some of my cpanel what ever they are called and you can just edit them to your server info if that helps. It does not render blank spaces if render is the correct term and you need streaming names with _ or else put %20 in the blank space.

Hope this helps.

[Redzzand]

great mod! installed and working perfectly on my 3.8 board.

many thanks...

Redz

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by Finster

If one has Goldbrick, and that hack is supposed to add media tags, and one switches over to AME which seems to be far more supported, will the old tags get converted? From what i read, it appears the answer is yes, but better to ask a dumb question.

I've not personally worked with Goldbrick, but I can tell you what AME can do which might help you out. AME has a conversion tool built in, which will take existing BBCode you are using and convert the tags to it's own built in [AME] tags. So, for example, if you used to use [YOUTUBE] or [METACAFE] BBCode, you can have the conversion tool go through your posts and convert both of those tags to [AME] tags. Mind you, AME tags are not neccessary for new posts to embed, just older posts.

Also, Highslide JS is an add-on requirement to Goldbrick, and it is a nice affect. If one disables Golbrick but keeps Highslide, I trust AME would be Highslided (or is that Highslid?) lol.

AME does not use Highslide and would not affect AME videos. They would all be embedded. There's a number of reaons why, such as AME embeds more then just videos where the Highlslide wouldn't really make much sense or be practical.

Lastly, Golbrick would allow one to upload a QT or Mov or WMV (yuck) video to their own server and paste the url to that video in a post and it would render it. I want to make surre AME does the same. Goldbrick rarely thumbnails, how good is AME?

Yes, with the extended definitions in my thread (the add-on link in the main post), you can get AME to embed Local Hosted media, such as MOV, SWF, WMV, DIVX, RM, RAM and PDF.

Last dumb question, there seems to be two AME's floating around, thus confusing my pea brain.

Depends on which threads your refering to. There's the older version originally made for 3.6. Then there's my two threads which support the extended definitions for AME: Third Time's the Charm are the definitions for AME 2.0 or older, and Delta are the definitions for AME 2.5.

[Nadeemjp]

well i posted and The Geek came around
anyways, dont wanna push you guys, but would really look forward for the update in 3.8 as well. practically it is working fine so far so i think there shouldnt be much work involved. But then again, it is the creator's decision

good job DJ and Geek

[james shadle]

Is it possible to allow the listening of hosted .Mp3 files but prevent them from being downloaded.
Thanks James

[Gladhatter]

James, I think the answer is yes to this. You need to ask your server admin what to set the chmod ( I think it is 755 ) for sure not 777 on that directory at or maybe but not sure it can be pass protected but not the files. May be another chmod that will protect it as I am not that familiar with these but am sure there is a solution here. Another possible solution is a redirect code where the url is read from a fake location. Its a simple code for a competent coder to set up.

[james shadle]

Originally Posted by Gladhatter

James, I think the answer is yes to this. You need to ask your server admin what to set the chmod ( I think it is 755 ) for sure not 777 on that directory at or maybe but not sure it can be pass protected but not the files. May be another chmod that will protect it as I am not that familiar with these but am sure there is a solution here. Another possible solution is a redirect code where the url is read from a fake location. Its a simple code for a competent coder to set up.

Makes sense!
I even know how to set the chmod, just not what to set it to.
I will try 755.
Thanks,
James

[Gladhatter]

I have tried all the chmods and I cannot stop it but there may be one that will work or the server help you restrict it or again pass protect not sure of and redirect, nearly positive would work with proper code.