Is Drupal Ever going to get with it when it comes to Video

Do you need to play Youtube or Vimeo (etc) videos? Or do you need to upload video files and play them as "local"?

@aaronbauman,

I understand your frustrations with Media in general, but if you dig in the right places, you will find support. I ran into the same problem and found that the best way to make it better is to contribute back since I rely so heavily on Media.

There is an unofficial initiative softly bouncing around the interwebs, here is a good list of what's going on: http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/64968

Documentation is a point that needs strengthening...
http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/media

If you want to contribute to making it better, a good place to get involved is the support squad: http://groups.drupal.org/node/207228

The only way it gets better is if we all chip in.

Will there ever be one media solution that does everything for everyone easily?

Probably not.

In just this thread we've gone from discussing spasebar's original use case of uploading videos to aaronbauman's use case of add the url of existing YouTube videos. The variety of use cases has always been one of the challenges of a single media solution in Drupal.

Looking at http://drupal.org/project/isfield it looks a lot like http://drupal.org/project/video_embed_field, without the flexibility provided by leveraging Drupal hooks. isfield hard codes 3 providers into a "library" which must be located at [root]/sites/all/libraries

Want to use videos from Blip, Archive, NPR, TED, or any of the other media_[provider] modules? You're either out of luck w/ isfield or you are learning to fork the github code. While it's as easy or even easier to add a new provider to https://github.com/jcisio/MediaWrapper as it is to create a new media_[provider] or video_embed_[provider], the resulting fork would be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with github to find.

My point... it is possible to create a solution that's easy to use for a handful of providers, but the isfield approach is ultimately a support and feature dead end if other developers can't override options with hooks and designers can't customize the .tpls. When you start designing a structure that can deal with both external urls or uploaded video from any source, it gets much more complicated.

I've done sessions at several camps of configuring Media with several media_[provider] modules from scratch < 30 minutes so I know it's possible and that the information is out there. Could the default settings, UI, and documentation be better? Always. But that's much more likely to happen if you ask what you can do to make it happen vs. complaining that people who already share their work with you for free need to "get with it".

Based on the posts @spasebar and @w7u64xi7 have made, I know they are both new to Drupal and using not-so-great hosts.

In the Community Media Starter Kits, we don't even introduce Media until the moderate level. Configuring Media requires an understanding of content types, fields, input formats, display settings, and likely WYSIWYG configurations. To really do something interesting, you need Views and Styles. If you understand all of these parts of Drupal, Media is already a MUCH better solution than anything WordPress offers.

I agree with you. I have some experience with Wordpress and it is all so easy to add great video content. I do really like Drupal and understand that it is a better ecommerce solution that blogging heaven wordpress. But what an ache it is trying to include video!

Glad I've found this discussion thread!

Before you commit your self to using video from elsewhere..... the Video module was in a state of flux around June - but much has been done since then and it's now very stable. I'm currently running v7.x-2.7 on core 7.15 with no trouble. The FFmpeg option is still a mare unless you have someone who can compile this for you..... but the Zencoder route is pretty straight forward.

Video continues to be a challenge with Drupal, but it's getting better. A LOT better. But as with everything else in Drupal, it depends on what you're trying to do.

Since you're working with local video files, are you also transcoding? Generally, you probably should transcode native video files with FFmpeg or some other tool in order to keep your file sizes down, and the question is, will you do that locally before you upload, or with some third-party tool. Even H.264 files need to be optimized for the web. FFmpeg is a very powerful way to refine your parameters for web display, with lots of controls, but other things may work better for you.

Video display in Drupal isn't fun to learn but it does pay off when you get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Drupal is extremely modular and finding the right combination of tools for your purpose is the epic challenge. Drupal is more than a set of pliers, it's a Leatherman. I won't say anything negative about WP because it works for a lot of people and is also quite capable. Regardless of your CMS (or framework), good development habits will help you troubleshoot and find what's working, like keeping things simple as you test, and turning on only what you need. When you find that right balance, it's a beautiful thing.

Personally, I have been extremely frustrated by the Media module. I won't go into the details here, but suffice to say it tries to do too much and you really need to commit to it, warts and all. It's not fun to uninstall and it also doesn't tend to play well with other modules, but that's my experience.

Lastly, I'll say that I am having a lot of success with the recent advances of the Video module because it works for my transcoding needs and development goals. The developer heshan.lk, above, created a wonderful tool that has blossomed in time. And the co-maintainer, Jorrit, has brought it to the next level of precision, and he is very thorough and responsive. I wish it had a better upload widget and supported multiple uploads to multiple files, but I have think those things will come in time.

Good luck!