A constant source of frustration with my users is the handling of inserting embedded videos in a post. Frankly, the current system is a mess and a horrible user experience not only for our end users, but Administrators as well.

All the processing of which embed tags and such should be done automatically without the selection of the correct tags by the users. They should never have to think about selecting the correct one.

This poor usability is now compounded by YouTube offering several different URL schemes for the same videos. Currently, YouTube has short and long links but the video identifier number in each could easily be wrapped using the very same embed code.

I propose that the Administrator select which videos services users are allowed to embed videos from and have one universal [ video] tag which behind the scenes looks at the URL it surrounds and wraps it with the appropriate embed code.

It's should just be a matter of looking at the URL within the [ video] and replacing it with the appropriate embed code for that video site. There's probably no reason to support anything other than YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustream anyway. So it's not like you have to do this for dozens of services. There seems to be a lot less video sites around now anyway...or that still have any popularity or mesurable usage.

Better yet, if the Administrator desires to enable it, lets automatically embed all these links even if they're not wrapped with [ video] [ /video].

This thread here makes my point: http://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/208789/youtube_test#Post208789

Well, the video tags where just built on the Custom UBBCode feature; where it could be improved by creating a video tag option which does processing just for video tags, the Custom UBBCode feature itself was built (by me) to allow users to be able to add new UBBCode without having to hack files directly (like they did in the past).

I think building the video tag into the stock software (outside of the Custom UBBCode feature) would be useful for cases such as this.