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So the idea is that you select a file, create a room and then share the URL with anyone you want to join and then the video is streamed to everyone connected. A

So the idea is that you select a file, create a room and then share the URL with anyone you want to join and then the video is streamed to everyone connected. All communication between occupants is peer to peer, the room creator has the video controls and any action is relayed to all peers. I built this thing in my spare time because it seemed like a fun idea to be able to stream a video file between a group of friends and it is very much a first pass, things will be broken, features missing, etc. I do plan on expanding it further when I have more spare time but please do comment with any feedback, roast it if you like.

samtimalsina 6y ago
Sounds like a cool idea, wish there was a demo room without uploading a file. Can you talk a little bit about how the video is handled on the server? What steps do you take to keep the file secure and protect the privacy of the users?
- anxiostial 6y ago
  the server does not actually ever receive any part of the video, it is peer to peer (webrtc).
- anxiostial 6y ago
  and regarding a public room, just uncheck the private boolean when creating a room, it will then show up for everyone at: https://peer-flix.herokuapp.com/ https://peer-flix.herokuapp.com/. although public rooms are kinda pointless right now because once you close your browser the room is basically dead and is not being cleaned up atm.
  - Minor49er 6y ago
    You should keep the public rooms up, but show a viewer counter and duration of how long the room has been alive. That way, if someone comes onto the page, they can see if a room has been actively streaming to an audience, which would be less likely to disconnect, versus a room that someone created on a whim that they don't intend on keeping around
    - anxiostial 6y ago
      Yea I would like to and maybe I will revisit the idea, but the inappropriate content issue has me concerned, so until I have some kind of solution for that I think its more responsible to disable it.
      - Minor49er 6y ago
        You'd probably just have to have people create accounts, verify that they aren't bots through email and captcha, then wait for them to achieve a certain amount of cred before allowing them to have a public channel. And include a flagging system, of course. And add moderators. So yeah, not exactly a short list of things!
iconjack 6y ago
This is a cool idea. I did give it a spin and found that the fidelity between viewers was not all that true. For example, if I pause the video (as the room creator), the video gets paused for other viewers as expected, but not in the same place. In other words, not all viewers are in sync.
- anxiostial 6y ago
  yea so there is a "drift threshold" of 2 seconds, and my thinking for this is that instead of having the frames jump around many times when we go out of sync it would be preferable to allow for some difference between peers to reduce the number of times we need to sync up.
  - TheSmiddy 6y ago
    During pause you can use that time to drag the forward people (including host) back to the oldest guest so people can "manually sync" if they ever choose to.
ignoramous 6y ago
https://www.comeover.io/ https://www.comeover.io/ is similar I take, but only that it is built on top of webtorrent instead.
- anxiostial 6y ago
  well so is this haha, yea functionally its basically the same app right now, but like I said though I do want to expand it a lot, this was very much a POC for me.
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    Excited to see what you build. Is there a way to subscribe to your product updates?
    - anxiostial 6y ago
      no but maybe I will add a way to subscribe to a mailing list of some sort, might be a good idea, did not really expect this much reception haha.
- crtasm 6y ago
  OP doesn't embed googlesyndication+googletagmanager, so that's a plus for me.
  - anxiostial 6y ago
    and I never will, promise!
aero-glide 6y ago
Very useful. Better than using screen-sharing in MS Teams (which has really choppy fps)
- m-p-3 6y ago
  Same in Jitsi Meet. One workaround I found for the video choppiness (at the expense of image quality) is to present the video file as a virtual webcam using OBS Studio. https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases
  - soylentcola 6y ago
    Not sure if this is the case on all platforms, but didn't OBS just add virtual camera in the most recent version (instead of via plugin)? I noticed it the other day after an update, but not sure if it's only on the Windows version.
    - m-p-3 6y ago
      Maybe, if they did that's great!

samtimalsina 6y ago

Sounds like a cool idea, wish there was a demo room without uploading a file. Can you talk a little bit about how the video is handled on the server? What steps do you take to keep the file secure and protect the privacy of the users?

anxiostial 6y ago
the server does not actually ever receive any part of the video, it is peer to peer (webrtc).
anxiostial 6y ago
and regarding a public room, just uncheck the private boolean when creating a room, it will then show up for everyone at: https://peer-flix.herokuapp.com/ https://peer-flix.herokuapp.com/. although public rooms are kinda pointless right now because once you close your browser the room is basically dead and is not being cleaned up atm.
- Minor49er 6y ago
  You should keep the public rooms up, but show a viewer counter and duration of how long the room has been alive. That way, if someone comes onto the page, they can see if a room has been actively streaming to an audience, which would be less likely to disconnect, versus a room that someone created on a whim that they don't intend on keeping around
  - anxiostial 6y ago
    Yea I would like to and maybe I will revisit the idea, but the inappropriate content issue has me concerned, so until I have some kind of solution for that I think its more responsible to disable it.
    - Minor49er 6y ago
      You'd probably just have to have people create accounts, verify that they aren't bots through email and captcha, then wait for them to achieve a certain amount of cred before allowing them to have a public channel. And include a flagging system, of course. And add moderators. So yeah, not exactly a short list of things!

iconjack 6y ago

This is a cool idea. I did give it a spin and found that the fidelity between viewers was not all that true. For example, if I pause the video (as the room creator), the video gets paused for other viewers as expected, but not in the same place. In other words, not all viewers are in sync.

anxiostial 6y ago
yea so there is a "drift threshold" of 2 seconds, and my thinking for this is that instead of having the frames jump around many times when we go out of sync it would be preferable to allow for some difference between peers to reduce the number of times we need to sync up.
- TheSmiddy 6y ago
  During pause you can use that time to drag the forward people (including host) back to the oldest guest so people can "manually sync" if they ever choose to.

ignoramous 6y ago

https://www.comeover.io/ https://www.comeover.io/ is similar I take, but only that it is built on top of webtorrent instead.

anxiostial 6y ago
well so is this haha, yea functionally its basically the same app right now, but like I said though I do want to expand it a lot, this was very much a POC for me.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Excited to see what you build. Is there a way to subscribe to your product updates?
  - anxiostial 6y ago
    no but maybe I will add a way to subscribe to a mailing list of some sort, might be a good idea, did not really expect this much reception haha.
crtasm 6y ago
OP doesn't embed googlesyndication+googletagmanager, so that's a plus for me.
- anxiostial 6y ago
  and I never will, promise!

aero-glide 6y ago

Very useful. Better than using screen-sharing in MS Teams (which has really choppy fps)

m-p-3 6y ago
Same in Jitsi Meet. One workaround I found for the video choppiness (at the expense of image quality) is to present the video file as a virtual webcam using OBS Studio. https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases
- soylentcola 6y ago
  Not sure if this is the case on all platforms, but didn't OBS just add virtual camera in the most recent version (instead of via plugin)? I noticed it the other day after an update, but not sure if it's only on the Windows version.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    Maybe, if they did that's great!