Add Panda Video oEmbed endpoint

[lafraia]

I'd like to know more about how can we add Panda Video's oEmbed endpoint to WordPress.

​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/ba943e113d3b31b121f77a2d30aebe14b047c69d/src/wp-includes/class-wp-oembed.php#L52-L105

This is out oEmbed endpoint

​https://pandavideo.readme.io/reference/oembed

[swissspidy]

Howdy!

We do have some guidance over at ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/contribute/design-decisions/#adding-new-oembed-providers for adding new providers to the mix.

If you could answer the following questions, that would be very helpful in moving this forward:

• Is the service is popular enough for core developers to have heard of it before? Is it “mainstream?”
• If similar services are already supported, how does this service compare in terms of size, features, and backing?
• Does this service have a large following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media? Is its Twitter account verified?
• Is its oEmbed endpoint clearly established and properly documented? (Sometimes, they are just a developer’s pet project that may not be supported.)
• Does the oEmbed endpoint work with WordPress’ oEmbed auto-discovery? If not, could it be made to work with additional HTML tags or attributes being added to the allow-list?
• Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?
• How old is the service?
• Does it have a well-established Wikipedia article? (Seriously.)
• Has anyone written a WordPress plugin that leverages the service in some way, whether adding it as an oEmbed provider, creating a shortcode, or leveraging other APIs of the service? Do these plugins have any noticeable adoption or traction that would indicate usage and demand?
• Is the provider frequently proposed?

[lafraia]

Hi @swissspidy . I understand your concern and I'm happy to answer all of your questions. We're a fast growing video hosting platform. Just like Wistia and Vidalytics, we're hosting marketing videos and also online classes for creators. Most of our users use WordPress with LMS (creators) or Elementor (marketers). Therefore, having support for our videos through oEmbed is something we must provide. Like I said, we're growing fast in Brazil due to our aggressive pricing structure and we will be providing services in US in August (via www.pandavideo.com). Our Brazilian webpage is www.pandavideo.com.br

Now answering your questions:

Is the service is popular enough for core developers to have heard of it before? Is it “mainstream?”

Yes. In Brazil it's mainstream now. Most creators now using Vimeo are moving to Panda Video. They're paying about 5 times less considering very high traffic creators. It's safer than Vimeo so, that's the main reason. We've also put together a Chrome extension to migrate videos from Vimeo to Panda due to the fact we're getting thousands of videos being migrated every day.

If similar services are already supported, how does this service compare in terms of size, features, and backing?

We're an alternative to Vimeo, Wistia and Vidalytics. All marketers tools such as buttons CTA, control over the progress bar, chapters, subtitles, thumbnails and many other features. The company started about 7 months ago and we already have about paying 1500 subscribers with nearly 3PB/month of video traffic data. Like I said, we're growing fast and expect to continue this growing rate due to new features that will be released. We also provide watermark to protect customer video.

Does this service have a large following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media? Is its Twitter account verified?

Not yet. We've been getting our subscribers by recommendations and good customer success. Our social media @pandavideobr and @pandavideous are not very popular yet.

Is its oEmbed endpoint clearly established and properly documented? (Sometimes, they are just a developer’s pet project that may not be supported.)

Yes. We've added documentation and it's also listed in oEmbed.com repository.

​https://github.com/iamcal/oembed/blob/master/providers/pandavideo.yml
​https://pandavideo.readme.io/reference/oembed

Does the oEmbed endpoint work with WordPress’ oEmbed auto-discovery? If not, could it be made to work with additional HTML tags or attributes being added to the allow-list?

I'm not sure. We have direct access to HLS files and, later, we will also provide sharable webpages with videos. So, we can't add HTML tags to HLS files, this way it would be necessary to add our oEmbed endpoint to WordPress.

Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?

We have a documentation being added in pandavideo.readme.io and we're going to add even more data there soon. Our solution was designed to provide services to developers and an extensive API is one of our main priorities. We have some of our customers using our API to build whitelabel services, so this is a true requirement.

How old is the service?

Company in Brazil started October'21. Company in US is open and we're going to start services in August'22.

Does it have a well-established Wikipedia article? (Seriously.)

Not yet. I'm also the CEO of Vagalume (a very popular music website in Brazil), which has a Wikipedia article.
​https://bit.ly/3O7S9wJ

Panda is becoming popular in the creators and marketing niche, therefore it's likely the end-user won't know too much about this service unlike Youtube and Vimeo.

Has anyone written a WordPress plugin that leverages the service in some way, whether adding it as an oEmbed provider, creating a shortcode, or leveraging other APIs of the service? Do these plugins have any noticeable adoption or traction that would indicate usage and demand?

Not yet. We're developing some plugins in order to have better compatibility with many of our features. These plugins will expose some customization being possible to make inside WordPress, Elementor, etc...

Is the provider frequently proposed?

It's a high demand by our customers who use LMS, Elementor and many other systems inside WordPress.

[lafraia]

Hi @swissspidy

Do you need any other relevant information that would help us the approval of our oEmbed endpoint?

Thank you for you attention to this matter.

Regards
Daniel

[swissspidy]

Thanks for your thorough reply so far!

I'm not sure. We have direct access to HLS files and, later, we will also provide sharable webpages with videos. So, we can't add HTML tags to HLS files, this way it would be necessary to add our oEmbed endpoint to WordPress.

If you add oEmbed discovery tags to your sharable webpages and also the ​https://player-vz-ded14ebd-85a.tv.pandavideo.com.br/embed/?v=3b101f05-84aa-4de0-9b64-71f1855388af pages, then it should work.

I'd encourage you to try adding these and then we can check whether it works.

Because then you don't even need to be on the allowlist.

As for HLS files like ​https://b-vz-ded14ebd-85a.tv.pandavideo.com.br/3b101f05-84aa-4de0-9b64-71f1855388af/playlist.m3u8, it seems unlikely to me that someone would try to embed a video file itself (especially since only Safari supports HLS). Rather, users typically try to embed the URLs of the sharable webpage.

[peterwilsoncc]

Due to the age of the company, less than a year old, I am inclined to say no for now and close the ticket as maybe later.

Similarly aged companies have been proposed in the past and within a few months gone through a name and primary domain change.

I won't close the ticket just yet as I think this a case in which it's important to get another WordPress maintainer to do a logic check.

[lafraia]

@swissspidy @peterwilsoncc Is there a chance you revisit this issue? Panda Video has been growing very fast and we've just launched our US branch ​https://pandavideo.com along with the Brazilian ​https://pandavideo.com.br service. Many thousands of customers migrating from many different video hosting platforms, specially Vimeo.

It's important that WordPress maintainers support startups like Panda Video in order to "break" the Youtube+Vimeo "monopoly". Your support would be greatly appreciated in the LMS community because Vimeo has been kicking creators from their platform and Panda Video is receiving a lot of former Vimeo customers (check links below) due to better pricing and features.

• ​https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-creators-price-increase
• ​https://lafraia.com/posts/vimeo-will-make-you-pay-thousands-of-dollars/

I appreciate your attention to this matter.

[johnbillion]

@lafraia It's unlikely that such a new company will be supported by the embed feature in WordPress because of the security implications (hence the interrogation-like questions you answered!). I recommend you follow Pascal's advice in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/55959#comment:4 and enable oEmbed auto-discovery, then the embeds will work on any WordPress site as soon as you implement it and will also work with other services that use oEmbed auto-discovery.