Get a direct link to a video file inside devonthink with full path or extension possible?

DEVONthink
1

i know this maybe a bit out there :slight_smile: but lets see

in obsidian there is a cool little plugin thay allows you to “embed” media files in a note

the syntax is like this

path: F:\Tutorial Videos\\01.But what is a neural network.mp4
type: video
width: 640
height: 360

i store my cooking videos in devonthink and usually generate a link and paste it in my obsidian md files for cooking
i was wondering if i could use my devonthink links for that but sadly that does not work (as i expected):

path: x-devonthink-item://DD7984D1-BBAA-444B-890F-D4E8A9E7F4D2?reveal=1
type: video
width: 640
height: 360

so i guess im trying to get a solution. is there a way to link to the actual file in devonthink instead if the uuid? is there another solution to try and solve this?

best

Z

2

No you can’t use item links nor should you use the file path of imported items. You could use the file path of indexed files but I wouldn’t switch to indexing just for this use.

By the way, what are you gaining by creating those documents in Obsidian, especially when you can create Markdown documents in DEVONthink and have the item links work?

1 Like
3

Consider using proper HTML syntax to embed videos in markdown. See e.g. this brief guide.

In Obsidian, you can also toggle the developer console to inspect the actual HTML generated by the plugin you mentioned.

1 Like
4

thx

PS my cookbook in md is in obsidian @BLUEFROG as it has some specific plugins to make things look nice and specific recipie views :slight_smile:

5

That’s still not going to work with DEVONthink’s item links and it’s still inadvisable to use the internal file paths.

6

Thanks for the clarification.

I think this is because an item link resolves to the corresponding database record, not the file. Am I correct?

7

It does and the item link is a URL scheme that works only in our app, no differently than others do.

2 Likes
8

I don’t know what plugin you are referring to, so maybe it does other things for you. But the above is not necessary to simply embed media.

As BLUEFROG says, you can use the file path of indexed files.

As meowky suggests, you can use proper HTML. This also allows you to specify attributes for the video. Or you can use standard markdown links or WikiLinks.

The following syntax is compatible in both Obsidian and DEVONthink:

![[movie.mp4]]

![](movie.mp4)
	(document and video located in same folder)

<video src="../Assets/Video/movie.mp4"></video>

The last one actually surprised me. The manual states (p. 42, Linking): “it’s not possible to travel up with .. as documents can have multiple parents” – but I guess that is only for internal files. For indexed files, a document should have only one parent.

At first ../ didn’t work for me in MD, and I thought it only worked in HTML. Then I realized I forgot to URL-encode a couple of spaces in the path, and it worked:

![](../path%20with%20spaces/movie%20test.mp4)

Obsidian also supports this syntax, which I had never seen before:

![](<../path with spaces/movie test.mp4>)

Apparently it is part of the CommonMark spec (documented here), but it is not supported in MultiMarkdown. So it doesn’t work in DEVONthink.

Personally I don’t get the appeal of embedding videos in your recipes. I would find it too cluttered. When I cook, I cook – I’m watching the food and don’t want to be watching a video. If I want to reference a video, I would just use a normal URI link. In that case x-devonthink-item links work just fine.

Out of curiosity, what plugins do you use for recipes?

If you’re up for it, I guess you could also write some custom CSS for recipes in DEVONthink. I’ve toyed with the idea before… I would mainly want the ingredients listed in a separate column. But as I rarely wish for multi-colum layouts, I haven’t learned about them yet, so I can’t help you there.

9

Actually… while it is possible, I strongly discourage it.

10

May I ask why? I don’t personally want to do this, but it is not clear to me what the problem is. General indexing caveats? Since I assume OP wants to read the recipes in Obsidian on an iPad/phone, is it about cloud storage? Or is there more to it?

11

Sorry about that… I missed indexed in your statement. Yes, the path of indexed files could be used provided someone isn’t renaming or moving them around.

12

Ah, that makes more sense :slight_smile: