Vertov

raf · April 23, 2008

I installed Vertov just after it was released. Not that I need it for my research but I wanted to play with it. In any case, I uninstalled it a few days later.

Since then it has happened a few times that after renaming a snapshot, I cannot open the file any longer. This does not happen when I leave the name of the associated file as it is, but only when I rename the associated file too (which I generally do).

When trying to open the snapshot, Firefox asks me for the program with which I would like to open the file (or I can save it to disk) and says it has the following extension: video/x-flv

Not sure whether this has anything to do with my previous install of Vertov - but it concerns a video file (though it's just a snapshot of a website) and it did not happen before my Vertov (un)install.

Any help would be appreciated,

Raf

sthiel · April 23, 2008

Hi raf,

I know there have been some changes (possibly in dev) on Zotero regarding the scraping of youtube pages. I think this because you mention that it was flv. Perhaps this has caused the change.

If vertov is uninstalled, there shouldn't be a problem. The only pieces of vertov that get stored are essentially notes on items. None of the actual item entries/snapshots ever get changed, so it wouldn't have such an effect.

If Vertov is installed, changing the filename of a snapshot can change whether or not Vertov will recognize it (on a mac, Vertov should recognize anything with a .flv, but you'll need Perian installed or it won't actually play). Incidentally, changing a filename of a snapshot will invalidate any recorded annotations (it'll make them point at the wrong file), but that doesn't seem to be the problem.

Are you changing the file extension when you rename the file? "video/x-flv" is a mime-type, so it's odd that Firefox refers to it as an extension (although on windows they're nearly interchangeable). What OS are you running under?

Stuart

raf · April 23, 2008

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the response. I am working on a Mac running Leopard, but I don't have Vertov installed any longer.

I have just tried to rename a few snapshots (all html files of normal websites and thus no YouTube) and the same problem appears with each of them: Firefox tells me it's a video/x-flv when I try to open it afterwards.

I changed the file name (including the name of the associated file) in Zotero itself, by clicking on the name of the file (right above the "view snapshot" button). I did not change the extension.

So, Firefox tells me now it's a video/x-flv file. And when I do "Show File" in Zotero, my Mac no longer tells me it is a html document but a "Unix Executable File."

Raf

dstillman · April 23, 2008

Raf, you're saying this happens even if the files (viewed through the Finder) end in, for example, .html?

The attachment title dialog displays the attachment item title (which often won't have an extension) and lets you rename the associated file, so wiping out the extension is pretty easy...

Without extensions, things (unfortunately, still, even in 2008) get messy.

raf · April 23, 2008

Thanks Dan. I see now. I have just tried to change the name of a few snapshots and it works when I put .html after the file name. I was not aware that changing the file name in Zotero could wipe out the extension, especially because in each of these cases the dialog did not display the extension to begin with.

So what I find strange is that the changed name of the file (in my Zotero library) ends with .html now. Before I changed the name of the file, it looked better (because it did not show the extension). For instance, "World War 1" was changed into "World War 2" but in my library it now shows "World War 2.html" because I had to put the "html" at the end of it.

Thanks.

EDIT: Of course, only when I choose to rename the associated file. (Silly me!)

dstillman · April 23, 2008

You might want to check the File Types settings under the Content pane of the Firefox prefs to see if there's some erroneous entry for files without an extension (if that's even possible).

While Zotero can't currently identify FLV files without an extension and should, on OS X, launch them via the OS (and not through Firefox, as seems to be happening to you), it should certainly detect HTML files and just load them in Firefox, which should obviously have no problems displaying HTML. So if Firefox is saying the file is video/x-flv, it would seem to be confused.