Some videos are not detected on podia (while they should be)

[Bobby M]

Hello, it has been two months I think since I noticed that for some reason, some videos were detected and some were not, yet both are of the same type and on the same website, just the content differs. I've noticed it on two different podia based courses.

I've tried refreshing the page and reanalysing it but they are not detected.

I run VDH 7.6.0 and CoApp 1.2.2 on FF 66.0.5

[Wild Willy]

The current release of the CoApp is 1.6.3 & the current release of Firefox is 94.0.2.
You're seriously out of date on both pieces of software. You really ought to get current
on both. You didn't say what operating system you're running & you didn't post any URLs
of representative pages on which you are seeing problems. But you mentioned something
about a course so I'm guessing that's why you didn't post any URLs. This is a
password-protected site, right? In that case, you have to be our eyes. Post some
screenshots to show us what we can't see for ourselves.

[Bobby M]

I could update the CoApp but that's for converting, not detecting, correct ? I won't update FF, I could use another browser if the extension is available. I run Mac OS 10.12.6. Here's a link to 2 html pages from the paid course, one with a video I could download, one with a video that was not detected. Perhaps length is the issue ? https://www.mediafire.com/file/ks9n0gpqsvw2l5v/Some+videos+are+not+detected+on+podia.zip/file

[Wild Willy]

I got your zip file with the 2 web pages in it. I opened the one web page & there was a
video player in it. Without even launching playback, VDH had detected one item. So I
downloaded it. I saw after I did that that you had included that MP4 in your zip file.
No matter. Part of this exercise is to see if somebody else can download the things you
can. I did & it played fine in VLC, although I just sampled it to make sure there was
video & audio all the way to the end.

Then I opened the other web page in your zip file. My attached image #01 shows what I
got. You'll notice that I did not launch playback within the web page. I downloaded the
variant you can see in the image. The attached image #02 shows the results of both
downloads. The second video also played fine in VLC, although once again, I just sampled
it.

I believe your problem may be related to your operating system. That is the most
significant difference between our two setups. I'm on Windows 7. As for the CoApp, I
can't say for certain what all its functions are. Remember, I'm just another user, like
you. You may or may not discover something works better with the newest CoApp.

Why don't you want to get up to the current Firefox? It doesn't appear to be affecting
this particular issue, but you never know when it might cause you a problem in future.
So I'm curious to know why you are unwilling to get on the current version. That's what
I used to load up your web pages & I had no problem downloading your 2 videos.

VDH is available for Firefox, Chrome, & Edge. I don't know if the other 2 browsers are
available on Mac. I've never used a Mac.

I think we're at the point where you have to post some screenshots of what you encounter
when you visit that second page. Both web pages in your zip archive worked fine for me &
I was able to download both videos. If VDH doesn't detect something when you go to a
page when you've logged in there, we need to see what you are seeing.

I must say I am greatly impressed that you've managed to let me see your web page that is
behind password protection. You should post a tutorial here for other people who report
problems on password protected web sites so they can give the rest of us a chance to test
out their problem without signing up for (and paying for) the site in question. What
you've done could be hugely useful to many other people here. Usually when someone says
their problem is on a pay site, the reaction here is to throw up our hands in despair &
say we can't help. What you've shown here is that being behind password protection or a
paywall is no excuse. Do please write a tutorial for us on how to share password
protected web pages. Show lots of screenshots.

In that spirit, I initially had a problem unzipping your zip file. I have an old
unzipper called RPF ZipControl. It's an application written in Java (so it's portable)
that is a GUI wrapper for something called Info-ZIP, which is freeware. As far as I can
tell, the copy of Info-ZIP included in ZipControl is over 20 years old. I have been
using this application since before the year 2000. I've used it on OS/2 & on a handful
of versions of Windows, starting with Windows NT. In other words, yes, it really is
portable thanks to being written in Java. It is a 32-bit application so it sometimes has
its limitations. It won't work on archives larger than 4G, & I've encountered a handful
of occasions when it won't work on archives smaller than that. But it still works fine
on 99% of the zip archives I encounter. The error ZipControl gave me with your zip
archive said some path names were too long & it truncated them. This caused your second
web page to render incorrectly.

Time for Plan B. I also have something called PeaZip. I use this when I hit large zip
archives. I had to use it in your case because of the long path names. Once I unzipped
your archive with PeaZip, everything worked fine.

[Bobby M]

About sharing, I simply saved the page with the browser. I since realized the html contained my name and email address so I removed 

the files. 

What surprises me is that anyone can access those videos with that page. I saw the presence of a token. Do you think other videos from the course could be accessed with that token ? does it expire or is that a security issue for Podia

I've updated the CoApp and all videos seems to be detected.

[Wild Willy]

Aha! I guess the CoApp has an effect on more than just converting.

As for the token, I can't say. After I posted earlier, I deleted the zip file you
provided & the videos I downloaded, so I can't check that out. I was going to try to
visit the pages again just now but my Firefox history shows the URLs as the locations on
my hard drive where I had unzipped your file. It does not show URLs on the web site
itself. I have observed the token offered by the Metropolitan Opera free nightly streams
expiring, but that was rather a while ago. The expiration delay seemed to be several
hours. The Met stopped doing the free nightly streams when they announced a few months
ago their return to live performances. So it's possible your token does expire. But
even if I had managed to revisit the page, I'm not sure I would have proven anything.
For one, like I said, I didn't actually get on the web site. Firefox opened the web page
from inside your unzipped archive on my hard drive. There may have been elements of the
page coming from the web site. Certainly the video did. There may have been images on
the page that came from the web site as well. I didn't pay that much attention. Things
like that don't show up in the Firefox history. Also, if it had worked again, that might
just prove that the token had not expired . . . yet. So it's still an unanswered
question. When I still had your zip file, I did try clicking a few of the links on one
of those pages just to see what I would get. Those URLs are in my browser history but
they don't have any token. It didn't take long for my clicking around to cause a popup
saying that I could proceed if I paid 497 euros. You won't be shocked to learn that I
didn't pay so I didn't actually see much.

Your E-mail address is safe. I didn't notice it was in there anywhere. I was focused on
downloading the video & pretty much ignored what else it said on the web pages. But
anybody who logs on to view threads in this group can see your E-mail address at the top
of your posts. That's just how Google Groups works. If you're not logged on, the E-mail
addresses don't display. You have to log on to see the addresses. So your caution is
warranted but I'm not sure it's keeping the world from knowing your E-mail address. I
can say that I have not received loads of spam as a result of my address being visible
here.

So you used the Firefox Save Page As function, then zipped the whole thing. That's
straightforward enough. Then you uploaded it to mediafire. I gather mediafire is one of
those sites that offers free online storage. I should think Google Drive would also
serve the purpose. We all have Google user IDs, therefore we all have a certain amount
of free storage on Google Drive. I will have to remember this technique for future cases
when someone comes on here with a problem on a password protected web site. I have only
occasionally used Google Drive so I would have to get familiar with its idiosyncrasies
again. Specifically, there would be the issue of permissions. As I recall, there's some
fiddling with permissions that would be required. I just got on my Google Drive area. I
have no files there but it's telling me I'm using 10.6M of 15G. For an empty Drive?
Maybe it's counting my GMail trash. Whatever. But this is an important idea. Thank you
for thinking of doing this.