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Below is a collective list of questions that we (the Movies.SE community) feel would be vastly improved if we were allowed to embed YouTube videos into our questions and answers.

Further, these questions show that while we can get some points and context done with just text, some things, especially on a site about Movies and Television, just need to be seen.

Questions about filming techniques, specific scenes, as well as quotes from the actor require actual viewing in order to get all the information required to answer the question properly.

If you can think of more question examples (besides Identify-This-X) that are good examples, feel free to edit them in and/or answer this question with them to be incorporated. This question is our argument FOR YouTube/Video Embedding into questions and answers.

Lets make our case as strong as possible!!!

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  • 1
    Since graduation is near, hopefully this will be addressed.
    – user209
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 18:35

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Video Embedding Enabled

After reviewing your content and the moderation efforts to keep photos and such from causing problems with your content, we decided to activate video embedding on this site.

I'm not anticipating any problems, but please keep the concerns (listed below) in mind. Video should be used for clarification or supplemental information; the text of the post should still be valid and useful, even if the video were omitted. Make sure you have permission to link and embed the content you are including, and please do not include videos needlessly or gratuitously just because you can.

Good job! and thank you to everyone who put this list together and for keeping this content easy for everyone to find. Enjoy!

Why don't you activiate videos for everyone automatically?

We have experimented with embedded video on a few sites, but I would like to see a clear history of needing audio/video before enabling it.

A few issues to consider:

  1. The lifeblood of this site is search, and video is not searchable. I'd hate to see a potentially well-worded question that describes the problem reduced to a video link asking "What does does this scene mean?" That will contribute absolutely nothing to the future of this site. It's a black box to the rest of the Internet.
  2. To ask questions containing video, you need a source for the content. There's not a lot of legally-available, open, and public sources of movies on the web. If a clip outlining your question just happens to be available on YouTube, you can link to YouTube.
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  • Awesomeness! Thanks!
    – Tablemaker Mod
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 13:46
  • Just hours later and here is an example of this being used poorly
    – wbogacz
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 19:00
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    @wbogacz ..which got closed in no time
    – magnattic
    Commented May 31, 2014 at 19:02
  • By the way, does this work for anyone yet? Haven't seen an embedded video so far, Ankit tried it out and said he couldn't get it to work either.
    – magnattic
    Commented May 31, 2014 at 19:03
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This just-posted question on movies.stackexchange.com demonstrates clearly why this request cannot be adequately fulfilled.

The youtube link used is broken for me, as it probably will be for most of the movies.SE audience with the following:

This video contains content from Public Domain Compositions, SME, Warner Chappell and UMG, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.

So, no one person is going to become the DRM expert for content we want to display from all over the world, and this wish or desire may be helpful to some members, somewhere, but not to the all members everywhere. In this case, even the link is useless to the majority of movies.SE users (defined as North America), and points out that an embedded youtube within our questions will fail just as dramatically.

I personally don't feel that an unfulfillable video block with the message inside to the degree of 'Go away, nothing to see here.' is useful or desirable. Let youtube continue to say it, once the link is clicked and the message is clearly theirs; incorporate a video window with that message within the confines of our questions, then the responsibility is blurred.

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  • Sorry, I don't agree. With that argumentation we would have to ban youtube links completely, because there is a chance that the user cannot watch them. YT videos in questions and answer are always additional information only, and the post has to be valid and complete without it. So if a video does not work for a user, he still can completely understand the content and may just be lacking the additional visual information (which he can get on other ways usually, e.g. watching the DVD).
    – magnattic
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 0:06
  • If your point is that, if the video is restricted, the user will see a black box instead of a link which leads to a black box - this can be fixed by the site: The YouTube API allows to check if an embedded video is watchable for a user. If not, it could just show the link instead of the video box.
    – magnattic
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 0:08
  • @atticae "If not, it could just show the link instead of the video box." - If that is really possible, we should be sure that gets implemented, as I see this answer as a valid point.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 10:40
  • @NapoleonWilson I will take the implementation request to meta.SE as soon as I am at a PC.
    – magnattic
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 11:09

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