Amara.org Support Center

Similar issue with http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/fHT7SnWWjSVB/info/:

• the original URL is http://www.archive.org/download/DameTartine_278/DameTartine.m4v.
• I've now added http://archive.org/download/DameTartine_992/DameTartine_Blanc_Prevots.m4v and made it primary

but what the player plays is still the original URL, and there is only a "Make primary",  no "Remove" link for it, whereas there is a "Remove" link for the added, theoretically primary URL.

HTML code, hoping it'll stay as code, with the "Make primary" and "Remove" links highlighted in red:

<ul class="listing urls">
<li><h3><a href="/en/videos/fHT7SnWWjSVB/url/165874/">http://www.archive.org/download/DameTartine_278/DameTartine.m4v</a><span class="descriptor original">Original</span></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.archive.org/download/DameTartine_278/DameTartine.m4v">HTML5</a> URL added by Claude Almansi </p>
<span class="timestamp" time="1331564431.0">5 months ago</span><ul class="admin-controls"><li><a href="#" video_url_id="165874" class="make-primary-url-link">Make primary</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>

<li><h3><a href="/en/videos/fHT7SnWWjSVB/url/237745/">http://archive.org/download/DameTartine_992/DameTartine_Blanc_Prevots.m4v</a>
<span class="descriptor primary">Primary</span></h3>
<p><a href="http://archive.org/download/DameTartine_992/DameTartine_Blanc_Prevots.m4v">HTML5</a> URL added by Claude Almansi </p>
<span class="timestamp" time="1344692849.0">9 minutes ago</span><ul class="admin-controls"><li><a style="display:none" href="#" video_url_id="237745" class="make-primary-url-link">Make primary</a></li><li><a href="#" class="delete-url-link"video_url_id="237745">Remove</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

Actually, this looks very similar to the problem mentioned in the comments of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: World Humanitarian Day 2012 -- I WAS HERE yesterday:

I had originally created this Amara page by adding the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki47WNsk-40 URL, which was then removed by the YT user. So Nick3 added the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9q-_gQqmk URL and made it primary.
Yesterday, though, the player started using the original - removed from YT - URL, so the video didn't work. There was no remove link for that URL from my Amara user's viewpoint either, but Darren, as Amara staff, was able to remove it, and so the Amara player now uses the working YT URL.

Of course, Darren could probably do the same with the URLs for your Jimi Hendrix video, but that would not be a viable solution. Darren, can we please have again the capability

• to choose which URL plays in the player
• to remove any of the URLs we've added?

Thank you in advance

Darren,

It's not just Verone's ca 10 videos that are involved, but apparently all Amara videos where another URL than the original one was marked as primary. See the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: World Humanitarian Day 2012 -- I WAS HERE  example I already mentioned.

And this has also hit the video embedded on the home page of Amara, where the video URL marked as primary is the Vimeo.com URL added by nick3, but the one actually playing is the original Youtube URL added by Dean Jansen. Not too bad in this case: playing the Vimeo video just prevented the double subs that show when the YouTube one is played: less pretty, but people can live with double subs.

However, in most cases, the reason for adding a new URL and making it primary is that the original video is deleted. So forcing the original video URL to be played means that the player just says "This video has been removed by the user." (if it was a YT URL; probably similar things if the deleted original video was hosted elsewhere).

This prevents further work on the subs of these videos where the one marked Original has been deleted. And it also means that they don't work in the sites where they have been embedded.

You can't possibly go check all Amara video pages to see if they have more than one URL, then check if the original and primary labels are on the same or on different URLs, and if on different ones, check if the one marked original works or not, and if not, delete it.

Therefore this is not an issue "to be addressed in the future" by Amara developers. It's something they have done to the software and must roll back immediately. They can go experimenting with whatever they are trying to do with primary and original URLs in http://dev.universalsubtitles.org/en/, but they must leave the main site be until they're ready.

Re my mention of the double subs for the video embedded on the home page of Amara in my former comment:

Now someone has managed to disable the viewing of the Amara subs in that home page video, so only the original English YT subs show. However, the double subs - YT and Amara - still show in the original video page: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/NmkV5cbiCqUU/info/learn-about-universal-subtitles. See the attached screenshots of both.

It's a absurd to deprive home page visitors of existing subtitles in other languages, just to hide the fact that developers changed something in the code for the player, to make it override the "primary" indication when several URLs are indicated.

This overriding causes far more serious issues than double subs in the home page video. So please roll back the code  for the player to the version preceding this overriding, instead of playing childish games.

Update,  Mon, Aug 13 at  23:52 (CET): Thanks for having re-activated the Amara subs in the video embedded in the Amara home page. Now, Amara developers,  please remove this overriding of the "primary" indication you've imposed when there are several URLs for an Amara player. And please do it NOW: it's mucking up heaps of videos where the primary indication has been used because the original video has been deleted from the hosting platorm.

Thanks, Verone. Darren, the developers deliberately removed users' right  to determine which URL should be streamed in the player on Aug. 10, without waiting for a software update and without letting us know, contrary to what Craig Zheng promised on Google+ after the havoc (Craig's term) created in countless video pages by other deliberate impositions of theirs in June.
This present deliberate by-pass of users' "primary" indication is now creating havoc in countless video pages again. So developers must revert it NOW, not wait until  "a future update of Amara" to fix it.

In the source code for a video's main Amara page, I now found a "learn more" passage for the URLs section that had escaped me. It doesn't show in clear in this section because it's in a division labeled style="display:none;". But it might be a clue to why the "primary" indication has been bypassed by the developers. Here's the passage, translated in clear for easier reading:

Learn more
Multiple video URLs let you link multiple videos to a single set of subtitles. Some example uses:

• Two versions of the same video exist on Youtube. You do not want subtitle volunteers to duplicate their work, so you add both versions to the multiple URLs pane.
• You put your video on Youtube, Vimeo, Blip, and Dailymotion and you want the subtitles you make to work on all of those versions.
• You want to provide different versions of a video to different browsers (HTML5/Ogg for free software users, or HTML5/h264 to iPad users). If you add these URLs, our embed code will automatically fall back to whatever format is necessary for the browser.

It's the third item on this list, which I evidenced in red, that might perhaps be a clue to the present by-passing of the primary indication: developers decided to talk directly to users' browsers, by-passing us annoying fallible humans, including those of us who want to make a URL primary: safer if the software decides in our stead.

No doubt the intention is good, but good intentions is what hell is paved with. Moreover, free software browsers are perfectly capable to read proprietary formats like mp4 nowadays and on the other hand, the Amara player CC subs simply don't show on iPads, same as CC added to videos on any web platform (YouTube, Internet Archive). So this solicitous ramming down our throats what's best for us is misplaced.

Hello Verone and Claude,

The fix for this bug should be coming out soon, hopefully within the next week. Thank you for pointing it out to us and being so thorough in your explanations. I'll update this when the fix goes live.