Videos not embedding

[Viktor09]

I’m struggling to understand why some videos embed in our forum and some do not.

For example, if someone posts a YouTube URL it embeds as a playable video. Great.

URLs from other sites don’t render as an embedded playable video, even though I can see the same URLs as embedded playable videos on other (non-Discourse) forums.

So, are there restrictions somewhere? I don’t find anything in the settings.

[Arkshine]

Hello,

Not all video providers are supported by default. You can see a list here.
What are the sites you’re referring to? You can request it in feature if not available!

[Viktor09]

Thanks for the helpful response @Arkshine

So, supporting video embeds is literally done on a website-by-website basis? Discourse/Onebox has to choose to provide support for a specific website’s videos in order for this to work? Have I understood that correctly?

[Arkshine]

If you’re talking about generating a nice preview after pasting a link, yes, you’re right.

Every website has specificities, such as different formats, modes, URL structure, etc.
It’s not always as straightforward as wrapping the URL inside an <iframe> directly.

If Onebox doesn’t work with your site, this means no one requested it before, feel free to do so.

Create rich link previews with Onebox

Onebox converts your web links into useful preview excerpts that help inform readers about the target before they click through. To create a onebox, simply paste any link into a post on a line by itself, like so: https://example.com/interesting-article Which results in … In addition to supporting general oEmbed and OpenGraph tags, Onebox has many custom rules for extremely popular sites including Wikipedia, Twitter, Amazon, Youtube, Soundcloud, Stack Overflow, Github and more. Try it o…

Onebox configuration and troubleshooting

While users can create rich link previews in their posts using oneboxes (See: Create rich link previews with Onebox), there are some controls available to site administrators, and sometimes when links do not preview as expected, it can be helpful to do a bit of troubleshooting to understand why. Admin configuration Site administrators can control many of the onebox settings in the site setting section. To see available settings search for onebox. [onebox-site-settings] Notable settings are: …

Alternatively, you can still insert an <iframe> of any site directly into a post if you whitelist the source.

See allowed iframes setting:

[Arkshine]

@DNWebsite

I’m a little confused as to why a site hosting a video has to be ‘supported’. If I’m running Discourse on my own server, why do I not get to decide what I allow my users to embed?

I think you are confusing Create rich link previews with Onebox with embedding an <iframe> directly.
Creating a onebox requires the website to be supported internally by Discourse.

You still can post manually any <iframe> as long the source is whitelisted (see my answer above).
In both ways, you have full control over what to allow.

I hope that helps!

[Viktor09]

Thanks for you help. I am a complete non-techy so I am finding this hard

@Arkshine

See allowed iframes setting:

When I try to add something to that list I get this:

[Arkshine]

No worry! This setting is for onebox, to control what onebox is allowed to be rendered (among the supported provider I listed in my first message).

You want to use allowed iframe setting instead!

[Viktor09]

Okay, I’m starting to get somewhere

Thanks again @Arkshine