Author Topic: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV (Read 5932 times)

Rhombicuboctahedron · « **on:** November 21, 2012, 08:43:16 pm »

Recently, a YouTube channel for omnimaga was made so that all the calculator videos could be uploaded onto one channel, so that we could get more people on our sight and allow people to see all the videos without having to search around YouTube too much.
However, there are a few problems to having a YouTube account for a group.
How are we going to get videos onto it? We can give the password away, but it only takes one member to destroy it all. I have more posts than tangrs, but I would trust tangrs with the password long before I gave it to myself. We could email them to the admins, but they might not want to spend an afternoon uploading a dozen videos to YouTube. Another thing is that since this isn’t posted anywhere on the sight other than in a few posts, it might die out and be forgotten, or it might not be noticed by new users.
I spent some time yesterday and today setting up some accounts on YouTube and the Google app engine, and was able to come up with a somewhat failure/good solution; It has some very good solutions, but sadly it has some very limiting flaws.
Using YouTube Direct, people can upload videos onto a Google app engine account. (The problem is, the video has to be on a YouTube page. You either submit a new video to your YouTube channel, or you submit a video that is already on you YouTube channel. However, it works very well if it is already on you YouTube channel. You can easily select however many you want to)

After you submit it, an administrator can decide to preview it, and then approve it or reject it, or even label it as spam. They can change which playlist it will be uploaded too, and leave notes. Once it is approved, it is automatically uploaded to a playlist in the channel. Administrators can leave notes, so if one doesn’t know if a video is good enough to be uploaded, then they can leave a note to discuss it. Administrators can create new playlists, such showcases, tutorials, lets play’s, ect.

So in the end:
Advantages:
It allows for administrators
Anyone with as YouTube account can upload
It allows for easy approval of videos
It is easy to allow for more moderators or to delete other moderators
Nobody actually needs to know the YouTube login or password
The post or link can be embedded on an omnimaga page
If the video is already on YouTube, it is incredibly easy to submit.

Disadvantages:
The videos are not uploaded: instead they are merely in a playlist.
The videos must remain uploaded on the account that created them, so no deleting accounts or videos

There are only two disadvantages, but they are pretty big ones.
I didn’t know that they wouldn’t be uploaded until I got towards the end of setting it up.
It would probably be better to just have a group of dedicated users and admins with the password who upload them, but all the advantages are solutions to every problem discussed in the posts.
There is another thing called YouTube Direct Lite, which is supposed t be easier to embed, but I couldn’t get it to work, and there is very little documentation.
I spent a day and a half doing this, because all the solutions were being fixed, until at the end I found out that it only sends it to a playlist.
Although it would be nice if one of you knew something I didn’t know that would let this work, because this could solve all the problems with the YouTube account.
While this is mostly a failure, I’d like to show you guys it.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2012, 10:43:48 pm »

Personally I would just give the password to trusted people. It's more trustable than a third-party APP, and it would be much more convenient for channel traffic. I got my Twitter account almost hacked from a third-party APP before, but Twitter spotted it and blacklisted the APP.

Besides, if you give a password to many people, I think it's possible on Google to track down which IP accessed an account, and even if it isn't, then whoever will dare hacking the channel will instantly end up with a very bad reputation in the community (even other sites, since people from Omni go there too). So far, in the past 8 years, such incident only happened once in the TI community, and it was an Omni staff in 2011, with the religion stuff we brought up in another thread recently, and even the only other not-so-trusted staff member that Omni had a few years ago never ever tried to do anything bad on the site despite often being in disagreement with the administration and boycotting it.

I think the only real risk is if you give the password to people who have chronical bad or questionable behavior and earns himself negative post ratings on a regular basis. Just make sure to tell channel co-owners that they never upload videos from public computers or at least logout without saving their password info on the computer before leaving.

The more subscriber a channel get (from playlists, people will subscribe to other video authors instead), the higher it appears in listings. If you make a channel where mostly playlists are available, then when watching videos, the person will regularly end up with a different username at the top, subscribing to him instead of OmnimagaTV.

Also, since Youtube change their stuff on a regular basis, it's not guaranteed that third-party apps will continue to work in short terms.

In conclusion, I would go with the password thing, because the risk isn't that much higher and it would be much less hassle, not to mention if someone hacked the channel everyone in the TI community and Youtube would know. I doubt a good Omni member would ever do something that stupid. Also, if someone in the team knows more about Youtube SEO, then he could go through other people video and edit tags/descriptions properly if needed.

Rhombicuboctahedron · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2012, 11:32:26 pm »

Well, I don’t think hacking would be a problem.
If an admin went crazy, the worst they could do is approve bad videos or reject good videos or delete videos.
If an owner went crazy, the worst they could do is delete admins or unlink the YouTube account.
If the person with the YouTube account went crazy, then that would be just as bad as if one of the trusted members went crazy, except few if anybody would need to know the YouTube account info.
But I agree, this wouldn’t work very well.
However, if this allowed for uploading, this would be perfect.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #3 on:** November 22, 2012, 12:01:19 am »

Well for the APP I meant hacking as in the ones who made the app might have created this app just to harvest as many passwords as possible. I haven't heard much about that app before and given what I ran into on Facebook and Twitter, I tend to not trust third-party APPs as much.

Plus I find the fact we can't upload vids directly to one single account inconvenient and not SEO-friendly, since subscribers will be spread accross multiple channels rather than just one.

Hence why I prefer the single channel+password solution (like the Music 2000 and Metal Skeleton channels there used to be).

When are we planning to open the channel and assign co-admins btw?

Rhombicuboctahedron · « **Reply #4 on:** November 22, 2012, 12:12:49 am »

Well, it a google app so you can trust them, and the admins sign in with their gmail accounts, and if I'm not trustworthy anyone can download the dozen files and spend a couple of hours compiling and troubleshooting it. I don't think it would be dangerous in the least.
But I agree, this would not be a good solution; I just wish one of the many ideas we came up with would work, but they all have flaws.

And I think the channel is open. It sounded like spyro and keoni might be planning on doing videos.
It was pretty rushed and seemed unorganized though.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #5 on:** November 22, 2012, 12:15:41 am »

What flaws do 1 single channel with a shared password have, other than potential security risks (which I doubt that would happen if people are chosen carefully. Heck you can even ask staff if you're unsure)?

I couldn't see any notable flaw above...

Rhombicuboctahedron · « **Reply #6 on:** November 22, 2012, 12:38:48 am »

Well, security risk is kind of big, especially if they change the password.
Where are these files going to be uploaded? Though we might be able to just set up a section on this website possibly...
I know that I have worse Internet that other people, but it still might take a half hour to an hour for the admins to upload the videos to YouTube, which they might find annoying.

Also, this is not necessary, but ease of access is nice, but again, not necessary. In YouTube Direct, any number of admins only need to press approve or reject, and in epic7's post, they only need to email it.

So security is the only real flaw, because file uploading can be thought out and fixed, and the admins probably won't be annoyed.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #7 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:18:23 am »

Well to be honest, personally if the channel is dependent on Youtube Direct, I doubt it will be any successful. The chan will barely even have any video and subscriber and it will be hard to find anywhere.

It would be best if there was a way so people can send their vid with a description and that someone later uploads them directly in the channel. I doubt that many vids will be sent anyway. The main issue, though, is if you can't find any free hosting provider where people can upload large video files via FTP.

Anyway it's your decision I guess, if you absolutely don't want anyone to have access to the channel password. But you've been warned if the chan is mainly consisting of playlist, I seriously doubt it will have signifiant traffic, and I'm not willing to support a project that is 90% doomed to failure due to poor traffic.

ruler501 · « **Reply #8 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:19:53 am »

I could let people upload files to my server though I'd have to make sure they didn't take up too much space.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #9 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:31:09 am »

Can you put an hard cap for diskspace and bandwidth? I think there could be suggestions for people to keep their videos under 100 MB (even if it means scrapping HD quality).

ruler501 · « **Reply #10 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:34:02 am »

I could set a limit on how much space the folder could use along with that. I can give it 5gb with a 200mb a video limit. I think I'll also have it delete any video older then 2 weeks so it doesn't hold it up too much.

Rhombicuboctahedron · « **Reply #11 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:40:25 am »

I have a 4 minute video that is 100 MB, and I don't think it is HD.
200 should be enough, though you might should let special requests for special long videos.
Although if an admin checked every day or two, couldn't you delete half week old videos?

ruler501 · « **Reply #12 on:** November 22, 2012, 01:54:40 am »

for special requests I'd have to use ftp because I dont want a script that lets people doing that sit on the server.
I figure that 2 weeks should be plenty of time and the oldest video is deleted if there's less than 200mb free by default. I have to write the script for deleting and set up filtering of files but then this is good.

Admins will be able to pull the files off with ftp(I can give out password to those who have access to the youtube account.)
What filetypes should be allowed for uploads?

EDIT: Currently the script only accepts mp4 files under 200mb. though I'm having trouble moving the file to the correct location.

Spoiler For Spoiler:

Code: [Select]

 <?php 
 $uploaded_size = $_FILES[&#39;uploaded&#39;][&#39;size&#39;];
 $uploaded_type = $_FILES[&#39;uploaded&#39;][&#39;type&#39;];
 $target = "/home/omni/uploads"; 
 $target = $target . basename( $_FILES[&#39;uploaded&#39;][&#39;name&#39;]) ; 
 $ok=1; 
 
 //This is our size condition 
 if ($uploaded_size > 209715200) 
 { 
 echo "Your file is too large.<br>"; 
 $ok=0; 
 } 
 
 //This is our limit file type condition 
 if ($uploaded_type != "video/mp4") 
 { 
 echo "Only Video Files<br>"; 
 $ok=0; 
 } 
 
 //Here we check that $ok was not set to 0 by an error 
 if ($ok==0) 
 { 
 Echo "Sorry your file was not uploaded"; 
 } 
 
 //If everything is ok we try to upload it 
 else 
 { 
 if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES[&#39;uploaded&#39;][&#39;tmp_name&#39;], $target)) 
 { 
 echo "The file ". basename( $_FILES[&#39;uploadedfile&#39;][&#39;name&#39;]). " has been uploaded"; 
 } 
 else 
 { 
 echo "Sorry, there was a problem uploading your file."; 
 } 
 } 
 ?>

Is the code. What might be causing it to say there was a problem uploading the file? I do not have much experience with php most of this was taken from http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/ss/php_file_upload.htm

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #13 on:** November 22, 2012, 02:44:20 am »

Wmv and avi of course, but people need to make sure to encode their avi files properly, so Youtube allows them.

ruler501 · « **Reply #14 on:** November 22, 2012, 09:33:44 am »

I have no idea how to check the encoding, maybe I could have a script that would format all of them correctly with ffmpeg. First I need upload to work though
EDIT: I got the php script working. Now I just have to find the MIME types for wmv and avi.
EDIT2: It should work with mp4, wmv, avi and flv videos. Its at htttp://test.ruler501git.tk/omni/upload.html

Author Topic: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV (Read 5932 times)

Rhombicuboctahedron

A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

Rhombicuboctahedron

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

Rhombicuboctahedron

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

Rhombicuboctahedron

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

ruler501

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

ruler501

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

Rhombicuboctahedron

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

ruler501

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

DJ Omnimaga

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV

ruler501

Re: A possible solution/fix for Omnimaga TV