vBulletin 3.8.1 Breaking Embedded Video Code

[Jason Dunn]

Hi there. I've been seeing a problem with my videos from MotionBox breaking inside vBulletin for months, and one of my developers had a chance to look into the problem in great detail. I'd like to officially submit this as a bug, because it seems like vBulletin is the problem here and there's nothing that I can do to fix it from my end...

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Back in January, when you first reported the issue to me, I replied suggesting that vBulletin was incorrectly inserting empty spaces into several video URLs. Now that I've looked into it further, I'm almost 100% convinced that this is the case.

You pointed me to a thread (http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/f305...era-92200.html) where the video did display correctly. This turned out to be a fluke. If you look at the source, the video URL appears as:

"http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=hd,video_uid=0a99d8b41a1fe0c487,affiliate_nam e=aol"

But it should be:

"http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=hd,video_uid=0a99d8b41a1fe0c487,affiliate_name=aol"

The video displayed correctly, because the UID of the video was unaffected, and the affiliate name isn't really a critical component.

Here are some examples where the video did not display correctly. You'll notice that in these cases, vBulletin broke the UID of the video. The latter is your Pantech Matrix Pro unboxing video.

"http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=hd,affiliate_name=aol,video_uid=0a99d8b6171ce cc487"

"http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type%3Dhd%2Caffiliate_name%3Daol%2Cvideo_uid%3D309 ad9b4191feccabe"

It's worth noting that this bug is very specific to the post view in the forum. If you quote the post in a reply, the video URL in the text box remains intact:

<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="600" height="336" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" id="mbox_player_309ad9b4191feccabe"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullscreen" value="true" /><param name="src" value="http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type%3Dhd%2Caffiliate_name%3Daol%2Cvideo_uid%3D309ad9b4191feccabe" /><param name="name" value="mbox_player_309ad9b4191feccabe" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="336" src="http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type%3Dhd%2Caffiliate_name%3Daol%2Cvideo_uid%3D309ad9b4191feccabe" name="mbox_player_309ad9b4191feccabe" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" id="mbox_player_309ad9b4191feccabe"></embed></object></p>

And, as you already know, the video URL remains intact in the source of the front-page.

I've replicated this issue in two other vBulletin forums (both completely unaffiliated with Thoughts Media); in both forums, the video URLs break in exactly the same spot. I strongly believe that a bug was introduced in a previous vBulletin version, and it's remained unnoticed (except by us) and unresolved ever since. I've traced the issue as far back as v3.7.5, which was released in January - around the time we first noticed the issue. I'm unsure if it was introduced in an even earlier version, since I don't have the resources to perform any testing. As for where the issue might stem from, I'm guessing it's the way vBulletin handles URLs of HTML-embedded videos in "$post[message]" in the "postbit" templates. The manner in which the URLs break is completely inconsistent. I can't seem to identify any pattern based on the number of characters leading up to the breaking point or specific characters adjacent to the breaking point.

[calorie]

Please check the following setting:

ACP -> vBulletin Options -> Thread Display Options (showthread) -> Number of Characters Before Wrapping Text

Enter the number zero to disable wrapping.

[Jason Dunn]

Please check the following setting...

I changed it from 10 to zero, saved it, and refreshed this page:

http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/f305/unboxing-dell-inspiron-mini-10-a-93022.html

And I'm still seeing a blank where my video should be.

Any other ideas?

[calorie]

Edit the post and remove the extraneous space and/or try posting a new video.

[Jason Dunn]

Edit the post and remove the extraneous space and/or try posting a new video.

Thank you, that appears to have worked!