Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Multimedia and Commons/Improve error handling of video2commons

Random proposal ►◄ Multimedia and Commons The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Improve error handling of video2commons

Problem: video2commons does not work with all files, and does not tell the user what has gone wrong in the event of a failure.
Proposed solution: Fix the errors, or make more visible to users what parts do not work (like uploading YouTube videos).
Who would benefit: All
More comments: Issues are tracked on GitHub: https://github.com/toolforge/video2commons/issues
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: PJ Geest (talk) 09:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Any project or idea that can improve uploading/converting videos to Commons is great. Currently the process is tedious. --ProtoplasmaKid (talk) 17:12, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. we need this badly, for both uploading videos from devices and importing videos from an url.--RZuo (talk) 15:40, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You can download YouTube videos with a tool like youtube-dl-gui or yt-dlp (command line only). Most YouTube videos are already in webm, and can be directly uploaded to Commons. If you need to convert a video to webm, I can't recommend Handbrake enough. -FASTILY 22:21, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@PJ Geest: Can you describe the specific problems with Video2commons that you want to see fixed? Are they listed on its issue tracker? Is it uploading from YouTube that's the most important issue? Please add some more information to the problem statement above. Thanks! SWilson (WMF) (talk) 06:23, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Offroader is a tool that will transcode files (for example MOV from iOS and MP4 from Android) to webm and upload files of up to 4GiB. Videos of more than 4GiB will be automatically splitted into parts of upto 4GiB C.Suthorn (talk) 17:39, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@C.Suthorn: That sounds very useful, but it looks like Offroader is an Android app and so isn't a total replacement for Video2Commons (i.e. isn't available to people who don't have an Android phone). SWilson (WMF) (talk) 02:29, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Last I checked, this was working fine for YouTube videos (though it had been down for many months prior, which was a problem on YouTube's end on mass-downloading by API). What is the issue? czar 22:22, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It occours sporadic. It seems the maintainer of v2c has left the project. C.Suthorn (talk) 00:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What are the errors that happen intermittently? Is there a bug reported for these? I think this proposal needs to be a bit more specific about what it's asking for (generally we try to avoid "fix issues with x" type of proposals, because they can suffer from scope creep). SWilson (WMF) (talk) 05:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if there are formal bug reports. Most people will not file bug reports at phabricator, github, etc. Reports keep popping up at the talk pages of v2c, VP, HD and so on. The main issue IMHO is, that there is no maintainer. One problem: The source of File:The Lost World (1925), full HD (1080p).webm cannot be uploaded with v2c, because the transcode will be larger than 4GiB, but v2c will not tell you what the problem is. C.Suthorn (talk) 09:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@C.Suthorn: Okay, that's fair enough. I've update the title and description a bit, to hopefully make it clearer and so easier to vote on. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support James3141592 talk 18:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Raymond (talk) 18:25, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Strainu (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Joalpe (talk) 21:49, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Magnoliasouth (talk) 22:16, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 23:18, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support NMaia (talk) 23:43, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support --NGC 54 (talk｜contribs) 01:40, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support ··· 🌸 Rachmat04 · ☕ 02:44, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support need video tools to function effectively Gnangarra (talk) 15:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Bluerasberry (talk) 15:23, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Abzeronow (talk) 19:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sometimes tools fail and we need to fix the functions of these essential tools. Thingofme (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mauricio V. Genta (talk) 07:57, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support video2commons needs love, care and more development Zblace (talk) 09:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vis M (talk) 06:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tbartovic (talk) 20:27, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sikander (talk) 22:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support cyrfaw (talk) 12:17, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hans5958 (talk) 05:30, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 11:30, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Serieminou (talk) 22:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mehdi^Talk 06:47, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support That would be useful. Juandev (talk) 11:02, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 03:31, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]