# User Support > Forum Software Support >  Problem Posting Videos

## journeybear

I haven't posted a video in a while, and had a problem doing so this evening. Using the youtube icon produced a fairly square black solid - no video. Searching through threads, I saw this fairly often. I also found videos that did work, with the proper wider rectangular shape. These had a completely different string of code. Copying this code into my post, and then replacing the youtube string with my video's proved successful. Has there been some change here? The code can be seen by using "Reply With Quote."

Following are examples:

Generated by using the youtube button:



Generated by the cut-and-paste method:

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## Jess L.

> ... fairly square black solid - no video. Searching through threads, i saw this fairly often. I also found videos that did work, with the proper wider rectangular shape. These had a completely different string of code. Copying this code into my post, and then replacing the youtube string with my video's proved successful. Has there been some change here? ...


Same here with **viewing** videos on both our Windows 10 PC's, many pages at this site now have a blank black box with no apparent way to make it play a video. This occurs with both *Chrome* browser AND the official *Microsoft Edge* browser (I think Edge might just be a fancy new name for Internet Explorer, anyway it's the browser that ships with Windows 10). Everything is fully updated. Problem exists even when Chrome prefs are set to run all plugins automatically (not our usual setting, but I changed it to the default for testing purposes). Microsoft Edge settings are default (I only fire up Edge for testing purposes, such as this). Nothing that I'm aware of in the security software which would cause such a thing. 

I just tested viewing pages here on an Android 6 phone and also on an Android 5 tablet, both running the latest Chrome browsers, and both have the same brand of security software as the two PCs but on phone and tablet we do *not* get the blank black boxes like on the two Windows PC's. No clue why the difference.

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## Bertram Henze

The YouTube button creates a Flash element, while the other "movie" button uses the HTTP 4 interface provided by YouTube.

Downside of the former: Flash is having security issues and frequently filtered away by newer browsers unless manually enabled and by corporate proxies.

Downside of the latter: should YouTube choose to change it's interface, all the embeddings using the old one will suddenly go black for good (while the Flash adapter only has to be changed and all the Flash embeddings will work again).

It's a cruel world.

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Jess L.

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## journeybear

Ah. Windows 10, Google Chrome. I was wondering ... But I get the same results on Microsoft Edge.  :Confused: 

What do you mean by "other 'movie' button?"

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Jess L.

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## Bertram Henze

> What do you mean by "other 'movie' button?"


The one saying "insert video" on mouseover, in the normal quick Reply frame, shaped like a snippet of 16mm film, left of the bubble-shaped "quote" button, right of the one saying "insert image".

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Jess L.

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## journeybear

Aha! Oho! _Danke, mein freunde!_ That works just fine. And it's clearly how  people who have been posting successfully have been doing it, as that produces the code string I mentioned in my examples in Post #1. If I've ever used that, I've forgotten, being quite accustomed to the youtube button. 

Zip A Dee Doo Dah!  :Grin:

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## Jess L.

> ... What do you mean by "other 'movie' button?"





> The one saying "insert video" on mouseover, in the normal quick Reply frame, shaped like a snippet of 16mm film, left of the bubble-shaped "quote" button, right of the one saying "insert image".


Excellent, thanks Bertram for providing the solution, and thanks JB for asking the question.  :Smile: 

So... a related issue... to **view** videos that don't show up, if it was something that looked really tantalizingly important, then I guess we'd right-click the page and select "View page source" (or similar), then search the source-code page to locate the relevant part of the page that contains the URL for the video link, and copy/paste that URL into the address bar and press "Enter" (or "Return" or whatever it's called on a given keyboard). Not sure how to do this workaround on Android, haven't tried that yet, not necessary so far, as (at least here) our Android devices don't have this video problem to start with.

I went back to some of my older posts and found that I was *not* able to **edit** the old posts to add direct URL links to accompany the embedded videos; I guess one can't edit older posts (except at the Song-A-Week part of MandolinCafe, seems to be no time limit on edits there). Somewhere along the line I had gotten in the habit of posting both the embedded video *and* a direct link in case the embedded video didn't show up for whatever reason, but I wasn't doing it that way at first, and it looks like most other people weren't either.

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## journeybear

Right. You lose the ability to edit a post after about 2 1/2-3 hours. But you can access the code string by using the "Reply With Quote" option. To see a video that is presenting just a blank black square, copy the youtube code - it's 11 characters long these days - which appears after = and paste it into this string [video=youtube; ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= [/video (there should be a ] after that last "video") filling in the blanks. Or you can paste it after https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= then cut and paste all of that into the pop-up field provided by clicking on the Insert Video button.

It sounds like a nuisance, but it will work. You'll get used to it.

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

> ... you can access the code string by using the "Reply With Quote" option...


Thanks.  :Smile: 

That works everywhere **except** the *Song-A-Week* part of the forum, which does *not* have a "Reply With Quote" option, so (as far I can tell) the only way there to access the video would be to scour through the page's source code for each and every video that one wished to listen to, and some pages (tunes) have many videos. This situation is not going to be good for the Song-A-Week if it doesn't get fixed somehow (if that's even possible, retroactively). The Song-A-Week interface is quirky enough already, different than the main MandolinCafe forums, and this new development doesn't help. (I don't know if this applies to *other* MandolinCafe Social Groups such as the "Newbies" group.)

The Song-A-Week has many excellent videos that lots of different talented MandolinCafe members have posted over the years that suddenly aren't viewable due to this. 

It used to be nice to rummage through the pages there to see the different approaches that people take when playing the same tune, it was a good way to learn and get new ideas as to how to approach tunes, and to just hear some really great pickin'. 

Guess it's just one of those things, nothing in life is guaranteed anyway, especially when it comes to internet stuff on someone else's website, but... to have all those great tunes *seemingly* vanish just like that, seems a loss. 

The average person who's affected by this, is probably either (a) not going to know about the workaround to find the URL's in the source code at Song-A-Week, or (b) run out of energy utilizing the workaround for each and every video they wish to hear. The beauty of the properly-functioning embedded videos was near-instant access, just click and listen. Easy. Now, not.

_Edited to add:_



> ... Windows 10, Google Chrome... same results on Microsoft Edge. ...


That's a significant percentage of the browser marketshare: Windows 10 *Edge* *and* Windows 10 *Chrome* combined...

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## Bertram Henze

> ... to **view** videos that don't show up, if it was something that looked really tantalizingly important, then I guess we'd right-click the page and select "View page source" (or similar), then search the source-code page to locate the relevant part of the page that contains the URL for the video link, and copy/paste that URL into the address bar and press "Enter" (or "Return" or whatever it's called on a given keyboard).


That works if your browser just refuses to execute the Flash code but leaves it otherwise intact. It does not work for me, for instance, when I'm behind a corporate proxy that brutally edits the code element out of the page.

I recommend a backup strategy of bookmarking the YouTube channels of the people whose videos you like to watch on a regular basis, as long it is possible to jump from the embedded video to YouTube directly.

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

> ... I'm behind a corporate proxy that brutally edits the code element out of the page. ...


Bertram, does that corporate proxy alter or delete regular URL links too? In other words, if I post a regular ol' HTML link (not embedded video) to a YouTube video, will the proxy strip that out too? 

And, in your experience, is it better (when posting stuff) to have URL's fully written out instead of posted as short links? Or does the proxy keep or delete them regardless? 

For instance, would either of the following clickable links make it through the proxy? (it's just one of my silly videos as an example)

Full URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IEoLkhSzUE
Short URL, same destination: 
clickie
(I tried to also make a text-only non-clickable URL but the forum software converts it into a link anyway.)

I would like to use whichever format gives greater compatibility in the widest variety of situations, browsers, OS's, etc., not that my videos are sooooo wonderful (ha!  :Laughing:   :Whistling:  not) but regardless of video quality, I don't like the idea of excluding entire segments of the population if it can be avoided.

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## Bertram Henze

> Bertram, does that corporate proxy alter or delete regular URL links too? In other words, if I post a regular ol' HTML link (not embedded video) to a YouTube video, will the proxy strip that out too? 
> 
> And, in your experience, is it better (when posting stuff) to have URL's fully written out instead of posted as short links? Or does the proxy keep or delete them regardless? 
> 
> For instance, would either of the following clickable links make it through the proxy? (it's just one of my silly videos as an example)
> 
> Full URL:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IEoLkhSzUE
> Short URL, same destination: 
> ...


Both your links are working here behind the curtain. It's just Flash code that is axed.

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

> Both your links are working here behind the curtain. It's just Flash code that is axed.


Thanks Bertram!  :Mandosmiley:   :Smile:  Also, thank you for your patience  :Smile:  in helping us to understand this stuff, I think I'm finally starting to get it now (I can be a little dense sometimes with tech stuff)... so the regular links work because they don't make it turn into Flash, and the forum's film-strip-shaped "Insert Video" button also works for the same reason, but the forum's red YouTube button causes the Flash problem... hope I got that right... so I guess for now the thing to do is use the film-strip button when posting videos? I'm going to keep on putting a 'backup' clickable link with my videos, just for a little bit of future-proofing anyway...

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Bertram Henze

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## Martin Jonas

We had a similar discussion a while back, when Firefox decided to block all Flash elements as unsafe -- they relented shortly afterwards.  Same effect then: all videos embedded using the "Youtube" button were black, those embedded with the "insert video" button worked.

However, as Bertram has said, the downside of using the "insert video" button is that videos will stop working if/when Youtube changes their internal scripts as they did a few years ago when they switched from Flash to HTML5.

For what it's worth, as of now all videos by either method work just fine for me, using Firefox on Windows 10 and also using a Samsung Android tablet (which diverts to the Youtube app).

Martin

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

For some reason, at least here, all videos are now working good  :Mandosmiley:  on both of our Windows 10 computers, in both Microsoft Edge browser *and* Google Chrome browser. 

No idea *why* they're working now, did something change here on this site? Lacking further info, I'm inclined to blame/credit the usual popular scapegoat for computer odd behavior: Windows Updates which, in Windows 10, are mandatory and can't be turned off. I used to always do our updates manually, that way if something went wonky I'd have a pretty good idea what caused it and could revert the changes. Oh well. Something else to get used to I guess. 

Whatever the case, good to have the videos back. 

I wonder how long the cure will last though; I keep reading that Flash is dead and being phased out etc. The gist I'm getting from those articles is that Flash content will soon no longer work but people such as home users (who aren't behind proxies that censor stuff) would have the option to enable Flash on a site-by-site basis... ouch my head,  :Wink:   :Chicken:   :Laughing:  this stuff is complex.

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## journeybear

The "Reply With Quote" and cut-and-paste method I described is a work-around, not a real solution.  :Wink: 

The other way to go with this is to get that string of 11 characters via RWQ, search for it on youtube, get the full code string there, and pop that into the Insert Video field. It's another step or two. Of course, if you're familiar with code, you can always type that into the field. I'm not, and also am prone to make typos, so I wish to avoid such error possibililities.   :Wink:

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## Jess L.

> The "Reply With Quote" and cut-and-paste method I described is a work-around, not a real solution. 
> 
> The other way to go with this is to get that string of 11 characters via RWQ, search for it on youtube, get the full code string there, and pop that into the Insert Video field. It's another step or two. Of course, if you're familiar with code, you can always type that into the field. I'm not, and also am prone to make typos, so I wish to avoid such error possibililities.


JB are you still unable to view videos normally, without using the workaround? I wonder how many other people still can't see the videos? 

As I mentioned up above a ways, the problem has mysteriously cleared up for our two Windows PCs here, but I don't know how many other people are still affected by this.

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## maudlin mandolin

Hoorah - our videos have magically reappeared. Thanks to Scott or whoever was responsible.

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## Bertram Henze

> As I mentioned up above a ways, the problem has mysteriously cleared up for our two Windows PCs here, but I don't know how many other people are still affected by this.


Ha. If our proxy software could be circumvented that easily, we'd have reasons to worry. But I watch those videos when I'm home.

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## Mandolin Cafe

Sorry to disappoint those of you thinking our attention all day long is posed at twisting knobs and altering video coding with the sole purpose of creating a stream of random problems just for you. Haven't touched these codes for over 5 years-- nada, nothing -- and this version of software is a generation behind the most current and stable which is why we continue to employ it. All the problems experience, all the miracle proclamations of "it works now!  thanks for fixing it!," sorry to say we had not a thing to do with it.

Appreciate your input, Bertram. Keep up the good work.

In summary: No, nothing has changed. No, really.

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Bertram Henze

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## Jess L.

> Sorry to disappoint those of you thinking our attention all day long is posed at twisting knobs and altering video coding...


Ah shucks, we thought maybe the MandolinCafe Control Room looked something like this:  :Wink:   :Grin: 



 :Grin:   :Mandosmiley:   :Whistling:  Anyway, *thanks* for the website!  :Smile:

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## Gary Leonard

As a web application developer, I cannot wait till flash dies completely. Chrome as well as IE/Edge are now blocking flash by default, but It is easy enough to enable it in your browser settings. Myself, I am attempting to deal with empty white space where flash elements once were, but alas, mlb.com needs it to function. 

The sooner the major players switch to HTML5 the better.

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## Gary Leonard

And perhaps the YouTube icon can be removed from the add new post. In the Post Quick Reply, we just have the video icon, and it appears to handle all those that have their own icon

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