Twitter video & 2:20 length video

This is kind of a multi-part question.

1. Is there an easy way to upload video from Twitter? I believe they've now migrated to serving HLS. I couldn't see any way to upload these videos from the bookmarklet. Is there an easy way to do that? The video in question 2 comes to mind. My workaround was to just download the HLS segments and merge them into an mp4.

2. Is there any way to request an exception to the 2:00 cap on video length? This animation is 2:20 in length, but is original content and, as far as I can tell, quite worthy for inclusion in the collection. I can understand why it should be capped, but I didn't see this requirement listed on the upload page and only found out after trying to upload it with about 25 tags. That took a lot of effort for not a lot of uploading.

SoulEvansEater said:

1. Is there an easy way to upload video from Twitter? I believe they've now migrated to serving HLS. I couldn't see any way to upload these videos from the bookmarklet. Is there an easy way to do that? The video in question 2 comes to mind. My workaround was to just download the HLS segments and merge them into an mp4.

Do you have an example link?

2. Is there any way to request an exception to the 2:00 cap on video length? This animation is 2:20 in length, but is original content and, as far as I can tell, quite worthy for inclusion in the collection. I can understand why it should be capped, but I didn't see this requirement listed on the upload page and only found out after trying to upload it with about 25 tags. That took a lot of effort for not a lot of uploading.

See topic #13765 for a prior discussion on this. My two red cents are this site is not Youtube. Videos are not our main focus.

BrokenEagle98 said:

Do you have an example link?

See topic #13765 for a prior discussion on this. My two red cents are this site is not Youtube. Videos are not our main focus.

Yeah, the link in that post is a good example for all of those cases. Since it's HLS, the video tag looks like this:

<video preload="none" poster="https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/871161620138872832/pu/img/Yu5FVQ1TunxFxRNV.jpg" playsinline="" src="blob:https://twitter.com/f4b1475d-2610-4a04-a309-3b9fdea4386d" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; transform: rotate(0deg) scale(1);"></video>

The "source" is...

blob:https://twitter.com/f4b1475d-2610-4a04-a309-3b9fdea4386d

And that URL isn't usable to get something like a direct MP4.

As for this particular example, I think it's different. It's not a straight clip from an anime, and it's from an artist with other art (mostly still art) already in the collection. Given that the goal is to create "A repository of high-quality anime-style art and doujinshi," this type of original work certainly meets that requirement. However, right now, a 2 minute clip of some anime could be uploaded but this original work cannot because it exceeds the time limit.

I think the best way to not increase the limit but still support these types of animation is to allow users of some level to either override the length limit on a reasonable number of uploads, or directly ask for something to be uploaded. In other words, I think it's more of a technical limitation, not a quality one.

SoulEvansEater said:

Yeah, the link in that post is a good example for all of those cases. Since it's HLS, the video tag looks like this:

<video preload="none" poster="https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/871161620138872832/pu/img/Yu5FVQ1TunxFxRNV.jpg" playsinline="" src="blob:https://twitter.com/f4b1475d-2610-4a04-a309-3b9fdea4386d" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; transform: rotate(0deg) scale(1);"></video>

The "source" is...

blob:https://twitter.com/f4b1475d-2610-4a04-a309-3b9fdea4386d

And that URL isn't usable to get something like a direct MP4.

The bookmarklet was about to find a 13.4 MB file. Is that not it?

As for this particular example, I think it's different. It's not a straight clip from an anime, and it's from an artist with other art (mostly still art) already in the collection. Given that the goal is to create "A repository of high-quality anime-style art and doujinshi," this type of original work certainly meets that requirement. However, right now, a 2 minute clip of some anime could be uploaded but this original work cannot because it exceeds the time limit.

I think the best way to not increase the limit but still support these types of animation is to allow users of some level to either override the length limit on a reasonable number of uploads, or directly ask for something to be uploaded. In other words, I think it's more of a technical limitation, not a quality one.

What do others think about this? I myself wouldn't mind if there was some kind of override for works like SoulEvansEater mentioned. Given enough support, some kind of permission could be granted.

BrokenEagle98 said:

What do others think about this? I myself wouldn't mind if there was some kind of override for works like SoulEvansEater mentioned. Given enough support, some kind of permission could be granted.

Considering that we’re an image gallery, I think that allowing video uploads in the first place was a mistake and that capability shouldn’t be extended.

If we allow the two-minute limit being overridden to three minutes if the video fits all our criteria for still images, what do we do if someone brings a 3:30 video and wants to upload it with the same reason? Do we extend the limit to four minutes? Ten minutes? An hour?

I'd be fine with it being uploaded.

BrokenEagle98 said:

The bookmarklet was about to find a 13.4 MB file. Is that not it?

I'll be honest, I didn't even realize that the bookmarklet picked it up. I haven't uploaded much, so I didn't even notice this:

Tyxddiey9zeokrni
Size: 13.4 MB

Maybe a "video has been detected @ 13.4MB" would be a better placeholder, or some notification that it worked?

kittey said:

If we allow the two-minute limit being overridden to three minutes if the video fits all our criteria for still images, what do we do if someone brings a 3:30 video and wants to upload it with the same reason? Do we extend the limit to four minutes? Ten minutes? An hour?

Well, I mean, I think that if fan art is getting into the 10 minute to an hour range, we have a different issue on our hands. If an artist animates a full anime length video of something, they've effectively just made a normal length anime. Most artists animate much smaller clips, just because they're limited in the tools and time they have -- it's unlikely that we would see an influx of great quality super-length animations, just because of the constraints associated with producing it.

For me, the cut point is the queue. While I find that animation suitable for Danbooru, not all will. I would rather just see it considered in the queue with tags and the rest of the database information, like other art, than excluded on a technicality. Danbooru's quality guidelines and queue process are what make it unique. The upload process is just a vehicle for things to go into the queue.

We've had flash animations on here since the site's creation, some of which well exceed 2 minutes, so I don't see the inclusion of videos like this as a particular stretch of the site's focus. Assuming technical limitations aren't the issue here, I think general relevance to the site's focus is a more important metric for videos than any arbitrary length limit.

As a compromise, we could allow mod+ users to bypass certain limitations like video length or file size in some exceptional cases.

I suggest that only admins do that. I feel only they are the ones that can bypass the limit.

Type-kun said:

As a compromise, we could allow mod+ users to bypass certain limitations like video length or file size in some exceptional cases.

tapnek said:

I suggest that only admins do that. I feel only they are the ones that can bypass the limit.

I agree that it should be restricted a bit more, but I'd like to offer a potential compromise to avoid overworking the Admins. Instead, have a two person approval system for bypassing the uploads.

The scenario I'm envisioning would be the following...

1. Mod+ user uploads a file outside the limitations for consideration
2. For this, there would be a checkbox on the uploads page that will bypass the size/length limitations
3. The upload does not get inserted into the post table, but gets held in a temporary record on the server
4. A deadline is established on this temporary item... like 1 week
5. All of these pending posts can be viewed from a page all mod+ users can access
6. A pending post gets inserted to the post table once another mod+ user approves it
7. Otherwise, the post will be deleted, including the file on disk, once the deadline is reached

BrokenEagle98 said:

I agree that it should be restricted a bit more, but I'd like to offer a potential compromise to avoid overworking the Admins. Instead, have a two person approval system for bypassing the uploads.

The scenario I'm envisioning would be the following...

1. Mod+ user uploads a file outside the limitations for consideration
2. For this, there would be a checkbox on the uploads page that will bypass the size/length limitations
3. The upload does not get inserted into the post table, but gets held in a temporary record on the server
4. A deadline is established on this temporary item... like 1 week
5. All of these pending posts can be viewed from a page all mod+ users can access
6. A pending post gets inserted to the post table once another mod+ user approves it
7. Otherwise, the post will be deleted, including the file on disk, once the deadline is reached

I like this solution, but I think that in the short term it would be trivial to silently permit admins to bypass the limit. Since I think I'm the only person who has an animation that meets this criteria, it's hard to gauge demand for implementing something this verbose. If it turned out that only I ever requested something to violate the limit, well, it's most certainly not worth development time to work out.

If you guys want to allow oversized videos, why not make the “ignore length limit” option automatically force the post through the mod queue and stick a big notification* on it (while pending)? Then at least an approver (who is not the uploader, which is already implemented, AFAIK) has to give it a pass. If an approver accepts too many videos, it can be dealt with just the same as with someone who accept too many mediocre images.

Implementing some kind of alternate mod+ back room mod queue for such a corner case is overkill and sounds pretty shady.

* The notification should contain the policy for accepting oversized videos, such as only exceptionally good fan-made amateur videos, no clips from “official” animes, etc.

I submitted a pull request for what I consider to be the minimum viable solution. Since most of the consensus seems to be that there are exceptions to every rule, and that admins know best, I went with the most simple thing.

It's worth noting that I'm spearheading this over a single thing. I would be satisfied if an admin were to uh, sponsor this animation and upload it. I think the only other thing is that admins might not be the rest role for this. It creates an additional workload only they can alleviate (even if that's n = 1). If builders are super trusted, they're probably a better role to restrict on.

If some set of users abuse it, that's more of a sign that they shouldn't be trusted with permissions, rather than that the system failed.