Recently my users have reported a problem with YouTube video embeds. Some of the YouTube links just work as before, some get partially embedded, some embeds are fully broken.
Example:
(Fully working)
(Has picture - no title)
(no picture, no title)
It seems that YouTube embed link https://www.youtube.com/embed/{video_id} is not working for the videos with partial oneboxes.
For me the common thread has been ‘Shorts’ which seem to break like this regularly.
I wonder if it’s related to the thumbnail on YouTubes side being generated after a significant delay?
Seems to often resolve with a rebuild of the Post, but would agree it would be nice if it didn’t happen in the first place.
If I’m reading this right system will get thumbnail from this url discourse/lib/onebox/engine/youtube_onebox.rb at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub
I did check it out manually and thumbnails are sometimes loaded a bit slower, but nothing that bad. For now as well I see consistent results. If onebox does not work for a video, it newer works.
As far as I have tested post rebuild produces the same result each time. I might add that meta.discourse.org behaves in the exactly the same way as my Discourse installation.
On the video you shared, the critical url is the meta tag og:image which is:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XdU2mwcUzcg/hqdefault.jpg
which seems valid
So yes, this does look like a problem with OneBox?
+1 for this issue.
My installation is experiencing all the different behaviours for YT oneboxing as described above.
First reported incident was 26th July 2024 by my users
Just updated discourse and docker and it all seems fixed now. Because of course it does after you +1 a bug!
Not sure if this is the same bug
Embedding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCSQlmUnMFs
Gives a really weird composer preview
Just letting you know, we are tracking this and will see if we can get it sorted in the next 4 weeks or so.
If a community member figures out what is off pr-welcome
Was any more discovered about this bug?
I’m getting complaints again - I am also currently on -dev channel (but waiting to move back to tests-passed)
Sorry, not much more to report yet, but it is on our list.
It appears the YouTube is sending different content depending on the IP that is contacting it, which may be the culprit here.
Hi @WaitroseCarpark, as Sam mentioned, it does seem to be related to the server’s IP address attempting to access those videos, likely due to changes YouTube has made to prevent bots. However, we’re still investigating the issue.
In the meantime, I’ve merged this PR, which should help in cases where video metadata is unavailable:
Are you still experiencing these issues after applying this patch?
Thank you @jancernik - I’ve had a crack at asking discourse to cherry pick this fix using chatgpt as a guide (as above I’m waiting to come off dev channel) but it’s a little beyond my capability. Hopefully someone else who’s experiencing this can give it a go?
Actually - I think I’ve applied the fix. Tried a youtube video with known issues and same thing is happening. Although it would be nice to hear the same thing from another person as I’m not that good with docker/CLI stuff, it absolutely scares me to death
Patch seems to work. I did test it on a couple of video links.
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