this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Would sound stupid as I don't indepth of PeerTube yet but I have heard that PeerTube is federated video sharing platform. I also heard it can't hold much a load which makes sense as HD videos takes lots of load. That begs me the question why don't we use it for small/short videos(not those vertical videos) to build communities like r/combinedgifs, r/whenthe or r/funnyvideos which are video driven communities?

Since we only need at max 2-3min of HD content per post to run these communities, I wouldn't assume it would be much of a load. With this we don't have to depend on third party embedding platforms like imgur(we know what happened over there recently).

Also someone make a community like the ones I've mentioned. I am missing video content here on fediverse!

This is my first post as well in fediverse :)

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[–] Untold1707 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’d guess mostly because of the storage space and processing power needed. I run my own Peertube instance for personal videos, and it’s quite resource intensive due to transcoding (making the 480p/720p/1080p quality options). These are needed for a smooth viewing experience, especially on mobile or slower internet connections, otherwise you’d have a lot of buffering waiting for the 1080p file to load. But creating all these different quality versions takes up a lot of space and a lot of processing power. And processing power and space requires money to keep running.

[–] couragethebravedog 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This. People do not realize what goes into running a media server. On the fly transcoding is so resource intense. Especially when you consider you could be doing it for many different streams at a time. Then you look at storage for it all and you need a massive amount of drives to store it all. Then there's just the bandwidth necessary to run multiple stream constantly. The reason there aren't any decent competitors to YouTube is almost entirely because of the resources needed.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Really nice idea, it also would be nice to have integration so that the video plays inside Lemmy instead of redirecting you to PeerTube

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

That would be a great idea to grow that platform. Keep the content on the fediverse instead of links to private companies

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

we know what happened over there recently

hmm, at least not me. Do you have a link?


What speaks for you against uploading your content there? When users start using platforms and others realize that they work well, they will follow their example. I think that's more effective than making a call to use a platform.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ulu_mulu 7 points 1 year ago

Gosh that's bad! They're going to break a lot of old forum posts and guides. More than ever we need to migrate out stuff to the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They might be referring to imgur recently deleting and banning all nsfw content.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I personally 100% support the use of peertube as the primary video platform. It really seems to go towards addressing the cost issue with being a video hosting platform. The only step I would take further is having IPFS being the cold storage backend for images as well, and integrate both into the app/website levels, so clients can participate in contributing sharing. If needed, a proxy service so that clients that are concerned about IP leakage, but can't use TOR or a VPN have an option.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Yes please. I've been wondering why it hasn't been done already.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

this is a great idea. They could code it that if someone does post a youtube link that it just fetches the peertube equivalent or gives the person the option of what platform they prefer to watch videos on in their settings.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That will would cause load for peertube that it otherwise would have though. I'm not sure how well it will be able to scale. Hosting videos is really expensive. If something is already on YouTube it may be best to just leave it there so as to not put all our weight on a new, untested product.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

PeerTube uses BitTorrent to be more resilient if a video goes viral (everyone who is watching the video shares the load). If someone is already investing the money to host a PeerTube instance, I think they wouldn't mind if people were to actually use it. Otherwise, what's the point? For example, the admin of TILvids often advertises videos from popular tech YouTubers, who mirror their content on that instance.

PS: PeerTube also introduced remote video transcoding in the last update, so now it should be even easier to distribute the load across the network.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I have been using the freetube client for years to watch videos across multiple platforms. Maybe we could incorporate their method of having youtube be a first choice but allowing the user to pick other providers if they prefer?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I took a peek at PeerTube recently, and yes they definitely need content just as much as Lemmy.

But, with the fediverse approaching 1 million users, it could very easily clog the tubes.

I think the people who run PeerTube instances should be the ones to invite more users there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Would it be possible to create a federated storage? Something like Storj?

[–] ptrknvk 3 points 1 year ago

I do, posted 2 videos already.

[–] Duchess 3 points 1 year ago

i'd love that personally, i would like to be able to move my entire internet presence to more federated options and youtube is the biggest obstacle for me. i've been using it very regularly since 2007 so it would be difficult but i'd be willing to give it a go