When opening remote files in ELAN, the software validates the file type (e.g., .eaf or .mp4) by only checking the last few characters of the URL. This causes problems with cloud storage providers such as Alibaba OSS, which generate signed URLs for private objects in the following format:
https://bucket.oss-cn-region.aliyuncs.com/path/file.eaf?OSSAccessKeyId=...&Expires=...&Signature=…
Since the URL ends with query parameters (e.g., Signature=...), ELAN does not detect the .eaf or .mp4 extension correctly, even though the actual file type is valid and accessible.
This validation method is too simplistic and prevents users from working with remote files stored in private buckets or any system that relies on signed URLs with query strings.
Suggested fix:
ELAN should parse the URL properly (ignoring query parameters when checking extensions) or validate the file type based on the actual HTTP headers (Content-Type) instead of only looking at the last characters of the URL.
This would make ELAN compatible with signed URLs commonly used by cloud providers (AWS S3, Alibaba OSS, Azure Blob, etc.) and remove the current limitation.