It's not easy being short

May 13, 2021 5:18 PM

One of these links is not like the others.
One of these links doesn't belong.
Can you tell which link is not like the other
by the time I finish this song?

Reading this post made me notice that the nifty in-line YouTube player button (mostly) doesn't work for "youtu.be" shortlinks. Interestingly, it *does* appear when the shortlink has a timecode at the end, as in the "Janelle Monae" link (and hopefully in the third link above so my Sesame Street joke works) but not otherwise. Since YouTube now defaults to shortlinks when sharing from the website or app, it might be a good idea to tweak the logic here so the button works more consistently.

And now... THE OCTOPUS

posted by Rhaomi to Bugs at 5:18 PM (18 comments total)

Mod note: Not sure how complex this is, but will bring the team's attention to it, and meanwhile people can discuss youtu.be shortlinks if they'd like.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:19 PM on May 13, 2021

Thanks! Fun fact: when the in-line player is up, you can drag it around by the border so you can read 'n' scroll while it plays.

(Also, on the off chance frimble implements a fix that recognizes all YouTube links regardless of format, I hope they keep the "youtube.com/embed/" style out of it, because it's nice for formatting purposes to have a YT link that I know *won't* trigger the player button.)
posted by Rhaomi at 6:13 PM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I pronounce youtu.be as "y'oughtta be" in case anyone cares.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:10 PM on May 13, 2021 [10 favorites]

This is even odder. Getting a URL from the bog-standard Youtube player somehow doesn't put it in any buffer that the unixy `xclip` program can reach (not primary, secondary,clipboard, buffer-cut), but does put it where Firefox's Ctrl-V can paste it into a text box. Now that's really annoying. Now selecting it from a text area once it's been Ctrl-V'd back works just like it ever did.

I use a hot-key bound script to turn URLs into HTML links with titles in the right place because I'm way too lazy to type all that in myself.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:43 AM on May 14, 2021

I always found that octopus clip to be creepy.
posted by sammyo at 3:21 AM on May 14, 2021

I'll second this, and please also consider a fix to time-coded links for Vimeo. As noted in their documentation, time-coded Vimeo links look like ...

https://vimeo.com/richardmisek/rohmerinparis#t=40s
https://vimeo.com/234036554#t=40s

But if you have the "YouTube & Vimeo video inline?" preference set to true, then FPP links like those are automatically converted to ...

https://vimeo.com/richardmisek/rohmerinparis&t=40s
https://vimeo.com/234036554&t=40s

... which doesn't work, as you can see in this FPP.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:28 AM on May 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

In other slight youtube bugs, neither of the ways to add my youtube account to my user profile work. One uses the path youtube.com/[username], and the other uses the path youtube.com/user/[username], but my youtube channel uses the path youtube.com/channel/[username] (like this), and so the two profile options just bring up a 404 page.
posted by dng at 5:47 AM on May 14, 2021

Is this something I'd need to give up my professional white background to be bothered by?
posted by flabdablet at 6:25 AM on May 14, 2021

This is even odder. Getting a URL from the bog-standard Youtube player somehow doesn't put it in any buffer that the unixy `xclip` program can reach (not primary, secondary,clipboard, buffer-cut), but does put it where Firefox's Ctrl-V can paste it into a text box.

Are you talking about what happens when you right-click a video in the browser and click "Copy video URL"? That puts it in clipboard for me, and through xclip I can transfer it to primary.
posted by trig at 6:34 AM on May 14, 2021

I see none of this.
posted by phunniemee at 6:48 AM on May 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Me either.

I initially assumed that this was because I must have turned a YT preview feature off in my profile at some point because that's exactly what I would expect myself to have done and then forgotten I'd done, quite soon after the introduction of any new feature of the kind I generally find more distracting than useful; but I couldn't find a profile option for it when I checked.

So I've just checked again after working out that mefi is probably not the kind of badly built nonsense that would hide or expose available profile options based on the choice of display theme, and of course it's right there, hiding in plain sight: tenth item in the Display Settings section, "YouTube & Vimeo video inline?" and a checkbox. And it is indeed not checked.

Thank you, younger me.
posted by flabdablet at 7:54 AM on May 14, 2021

Let it be moved that all metatalk posts heretofore shall be written in the form of a Sesame Street song.

Do I hear a second?
posted by medusa at 1:02 PM on May 14, 2021 [5 favorites]

One Sesame Street song, TWO. TWO Sesame Street songs. Ahhahaha
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 1:12 PM on May 14, 2021 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Just a quick note: frimble's got this as a known issue and we expect it to be sorted out, but it's a slippery regex thing vs. higher priorities so no specific timeframe on it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:33 AM on May 23, 2021

Slippery regex things are totally my jam, if you want a low priority zero expenditure second set of eyeballs on the slippery regex(es) concerned.
posted by flabdablet at 11:35 AM on May 23, 2021

It should be fixed now across the site: The problem ended up being that if any link had a timestamp, the timestamp regular expression was used for all of them, and then didn't match the ones without the timestamp.
posted by frimble (staff) at 6:12 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

I know, I'll use regex! Now I have a tractable problem.

Thanks, frimble!
posted by flabdablet at 8:02 AM on May 27, 2021

Huh... I just came across another instance of the play button not working on a shortlink (after frimble's fix, too), but it's just a basic youtu.be link without any cruft at the end. There must be some more unresolved regex weirdness going on.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:07 PM on May 31, 2021