Adobe Flash end of life 31-Dec-2020

[casiepa]

At the end of this year, Adobe Flash is going end of life.
We are currently using Flash to create the thumbnails of the videos for WordPress.tv, so a different tool will be needed.

[casiepa]

Official announcement: ​https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html

[dd32]

Is this anything specific to the TV team, or is it just because Flash is used as a player on wordpress.tv via VideoPress?

[casiepa]

@dd32 For the moderators, so in the backend.
Flash is used to set the thumbnail for the video.
You can find it for the post itself (e.g. ​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=96279&action=edit ) in the 'submitted video' and also on the media file (e.g. ​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=96280&action=edit ) at the bottom

[dd32]

Replying to casiepa:

For the moderators, so in the backend.

Thanks!
Unfortunately this is going to require some effort to add on our part, as VideoPress has moved away from the flash embed to Calypso for capturing the thumbnails

1. Go to https://wordpress.com/media/videos/wordpress.tv
2. Select the video of interest and click Edit.
3. In the video editor, click Edit Thumbnail.
4. Wait for a desirable frame and “Select Frame”.

I'd never actually noticed that functionality on WordPress.tv since I haven't had flash installed for yonks :)

[casiepa]

@dd32 I'm more than happy to move away from Flash, the faster the better, as it blocks from time to time.

Example:
Post ​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=102760&action=edit has an attachment (the video) that can be edited on ​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=102761&action=edit
The new link would be ​https://wordpress.com/media/wordpress.tv/102761

​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=102760&action=edit :
In the 'Submittted video', the first line and the video, could be replaced with the new link and a text like 'To set or change the thumbnail, click _t_h_i_s_ link, Edit Thumbnail and then Select Frame'

​https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=102761&action=edit :
In 'Edit Media', 'Preview and Insert' would need the same text as above

It needs to be tested of course that 'Selecting a frame' is correctly reflected:

• to Jetpack for the og:image
• in the API on ​https://wordpress.tv/api/videos.json

Maybe already add the new way next to the current one (indicating that Flash will be removed soon?)

[dd32]

In 9978:

WordPress.TV: Remove the Flash video embed and replace it with the me.js embed, update the link to edit the thumbail to the new WordPress.com thumbnail editor.

Fixes #5210.

[dd32]

Updated the only WordPress.tv-specific thing here - that being the video at the start of the upload moderation panel.

The Flash embed inside the Edit Media page is a global WordPress.com thing that will get updated at some point in the future.