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> Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting. Huh? I di

> Most indie video creators are not developers, and most developers would still struggle with the extraordinary challenge of effective video hosting. Huh? I didn't say "build a homebrew video hosting service". When you don't know how to do something you need done, you pay an expert to do it. I'm sure indie artists expect to be compensated for their own work, why shouldn't the people doing the technical work the artist is unable to do on their own be compensated?

jb1991 5y ago
It was easy to misunderstand you. You said pay for the hosting, which implies paying a hosting company. Of course, it would make more sense if you’re also paying an entire team to build it for you. But that wasn’t the initial reading of your comment.
- root_axis 5y ago
  Fair. I could have articulated my point more clearly. I was indeed implying that they "pay a hosting company" with the unstated implication that they also pay a company or individual to deal with the technical details surrounding that process. If I told someone to "build your own house" in the context of home ownership, I wouldn't expect them to understand that as literally building it themselves, I'd expect them to hire an architect, contractor etc, but on HN I can understand why the implication might sound like a DIY suggestion.
  - jb1991 5y ago
    Even still, hiring a team to basically replicate a high-performance video streaming service like Vimeo is not an easy task.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      You don't need to "replicate a video streaming service like Vimeo" which is obviously a massive undertaking, you just need a system to deliver your own videos, minus all the infrastructure necessary for a platform that is meant to support a multi-tenant video publishing and billing service as a product. That's like if I said "build your own web storefront" and you said "replicating shopify is not an easy task" or "build your own newsletter" and you said "replicating substack is not an easy task".
      - jb1991 5y ago
        My emphasis was on the high-performance aspect, not the platform itself. It's not a trivial problem to host videos and have them easily watchable in a way like Vimeo does it. Bandwidth, streaming tech and other aspects can't be done adequately by the average development team without significant expense.
        root_axis 5y ago
        I'm going to copy and paste something I wrote somewhere else in this thread since it's the same point. The tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
        jb1991 5y ago
        That sounds very optimistic. I work for a startup right now which is private but valued in the 10 digits, and they have some video streaming features on their platform, and despite an engineering team spending a few years on this, it still causes some customers problems with freezing playback and stuttering video. On the surface, sure, you can probably get it to work in a basic way. But the reliability, consistency, the overall experience of the user, that is extremely hard to keep going. And I’m not even talking yet about the interface.

jb1991 5y ago

It was easy to misunderstand you. You said pay for the hosting, which implies paying a hosting company. Of course, it would make more sense if you’re also paying an entire team to build it for you. But that wasn’t the initial reading of your comment.

root_axis 5y ago
Fair. I could have articulated my point more clearly. I was indeed implying that they "pay a hosting company" with the unstated implication that they also pay a company or individual to deal with the technical details surrounding that process. If I told someone to "build your own house" in the context of home ownership, I wouldn't expect them to understand that as literally building it themselves, I'd expect them to hire an architect, contractor etc, but on HN I can understand why the implication might sound like a DIY suggestion.
- jb1991 5y ago
  Even still, hiring a team to basically replicate a high-performance video streaming service like Vimeo is not an easy task.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    You don't need to "replicate a video streaming service like Vimeo" which is obviously a massive undertaking, you just need a system to deliver your own videos, minus all the infrastructure necessary for a platform that is meant to support a multi-tenant video publishing and billing service as a product. That's like if I said "build your own web storefront" and you said "replicating shopify is not an easy task" or "build your own newsletter" and you said "replicating substack is not an easy task".
    - jb1991 5y ago
      My emphasis was on the high-performance aspect, not the platform itself. It's not a trivial problem to host videos and have them easily watchable in a way like Vimeo does it. Bandwidth, streaming tech and other aspects can't be done adequately by the average development team without significant expense.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        I'm going to copy and paste something I wrote somewhere else in this thread since it's the same point. The tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.
        jb1991 5y ago
        That sounds very optimistic. I work for a startup right now which is private but valued in the 10 digits, and they have some video streaming features on their platform, and despite an engineering team spending a few years on this, it still causes some customers problems with freezing playback and stuttering video. On the surface, sure, you can probably get it to work in a basic way. But the reliability, consistency, the overall experience of the user, that is extremely hard to keep going. And I’m not even talking yet about the interface.