Google Video Sitemap (XML)

The problem is that there a wide variety of write-ups about the video sitemap format, and they all suggest different tags, including different inital "xml" and "urlset" (and other) tags.  Google's instructions are quite imprecise, as far as I can see, and the error messages from scanning the XML sitemap do not indicate what the exact problem is.  Many others have asked questions about this.  Maybe the ones who succeed have their own streaming servers including .flv files.  I am just not sure were my example deviates from the Google documentation.

the example I posted is quite clearly not the same as yours in some significant ways

1. player_loc shows where the player to play the video is
2. content_loc shows where the actual flv is

this makes more sense than  your player_loc which points at the video to play

OK, I will try later today, or tomorrow, and will let you know the results.  I have tried a number of combinations, but not that precise one.  I also wonder whether a YouTube-located video, with no .FLV file available, can work.

Will let you know what happens.  Thanks.

Nope. gives a 404 so have a deep read of this

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/Bug-Reports/12824/Youtube-suddenly-not-playing-embed-feature

Sorry for the slow reply, as I was not notified by email that someone had commented.

Status: This morning I did get a simple (sample) video sitemap to be OK'd by Google, but I am not sure whether it will function correctly in the real world.  How do I test that?

mplungjan, thank you for all the attention on this, and I will be giving you credit especially if we can clear up one or two smaller items.  I am attaching the working video sitemap as a code snippet.  I also tried a video sitemap more like what you suggested for the value of player_loc, and that version still fails.

Quoted below is the file at http://www.PlanetThoughts.org/SiteMapVid2.XML; the version that fails is at http://www.PlanetThoughts.org/SiteMapVid4.XML.  The only difference is player_loc of "http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl87635.swf&video_id=36e4cqS3VyI" in the failing file, instead of the simple YouTube URL "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36e4cqS3VyI"

The Google documentation is still not adequate, but was improved markedly, it seems to me, since a few weeks ago when I did much of the work on this.  The last documentation update by Google was 6/23/2009.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>http://www.planetthoughts.org/index.cfm</loc>
<video:video>
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36e4cqS3VyI</video:player_loc>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.PlanetThoughts.org/images/home.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>IPCC 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change</video:title>
<video:description>IPCC 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>
                                              

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And does the version posted by google with the youtube in the player_loc (which still does not make sense to me) work?

My test version which worked had a "dummy" URL for the <loc></loc> tags.

Now, with a real URL (tried both:

http://www.planetthoughts.org/index.cfm?pg=vid/ShowVideo&qid=2939 or

and

http://www.planetthoughts.org/index.cfm?pg=vid/ShowVideo&amp;qid=2939)

there is a parsing error on the line with <loc></loc>.

Will now try to "escape" the whole line as a URL encoded string

I should note that my landing pages have parameters in the URL e.g.

http://www.PlanetThoughts.org?pg=pt/Whole&qid=412

Hopefully that will not be a problem for <loc></loc> !!

Yes

http://www.PlanetThoughts.org?pg=pt/Whole&qid=412

should  use

&amp;qid=412

Yes, I had this message (below) prepared for a while, but just now overcame the final barrier: the heading needed to be a simple <urlset...>, with no <xml...> header initially.  Not sure why, this is all beyond my usual focus, but now Google validates the syntax.  Still, no URLs were indexed!  What to do?? Is getting indexed the real test of whether it works?
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Getting there!  SiteMapVid3.XML is now approved by Google.  However, 0 out of 1 URL was indexed, and I am not sure why.  The remaining question is whether a sitemap is actually working when the player_loc uses the YouTube.com form of the URL.

The other problem was that ampersand by itself is no good.  The <loc></loc> enclosed URL can be, for example: http://www.PlanetThoughts.org?pg=pt/Whole&amp;qid=2939

I have to fix my generating code up a bit to handle variuos ampersand occurences in the free text (convert to an acceptable token or delete it).  Later I may try adding entities such as &nbsp; which appears not to be recognized by default by the Google parser.

Good luck.
I am now a bit out of my usual waters

Thank you for being frank.  But you may have some idea of a way to determine whether a video sitemap is effectively "working", beyond it being parsed successfully.  Any thoughts about that?

Actually not
I had the same issues with google for a normal sitemap and it was impossible to figure out where to look for a result other than in the webmaster tools and they are not extremely helpful.

Oh, well, I have 1065 URLs "submitted", but zero "Indexed URLs".

Hopefully Google will process the page one day soon...

Still no URLs indexed in the video sitemap, even though it was parsed OK and has the green checkmark.  Will continue to watch, and also to look for more information.