5 ms·

Anyone knows a creator-friendly video platform?

chockchocschoir 5y ago
That's such a broad criteria that it's next to impossible to give good recommendations. What does that mean? Could you make a list of requirements that would make one platform more "creator-friendly" than another?
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I think one of the biggest key questions is, how much do you need/want the platform to assist with authoring, engagement, and discovery? YouTube is okay at this; TikTok is excellent at it. TikTok provides the fyp, community management, authoring and captioning tools, access to thousands of sound/music clips to use where they're handling the legal side, etc. Ostensibly this is very, very "creator-friendly", but only for a fairly specific niche of TikTok-like content, and only if you're not skirting the line of what they'll censor. Vimeo has always felt to me more like a larger Vidyard— the content is 100% on you, but they'll handle the technical side as far as encoding and distributing, and give you a clean player widget you can embed on your own site.
  - atoav 5y ago
    Embedding a HTML5 video player with some javascript on top is quite trivial. I think the actual, reliable, fast and somewhat affordable global distribution of video streams is the actual meat of the problem from the perspective of someone who would eventually just self-host. That doesn't mean that a considerable amount of non-tech or low-tech (for certain definitions of low) people wouldn't rely on the actual tech expertise in terms of encodings, poster frames, subtitles, chapter marks, time-coded comments or similar things.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      Sure, but that comes back to who the "creator" is in this scenario and what their actual needs are. Embeddable video hosting might be perfect for an e-learning site, or an indie film studio, or someone providing paid online music lessons, or whatever. But if the "creator" in this scenario is khaby.lame or kallmekris, a service that helps them host their own videos on their own site is of zero use; those are social media personalities who take the hosting and technical side for granted— their primary need is exposure to a gigantic audience.
      - atoav 5y ago
        For which Vimeo was never the golden choice before. Most people I know who pay for vimeo are film makers who need hosting, sometimws for piblic stuff, sometimes with a password for preview purposes. A bit like soundcloud for video.
alexrsagen 5y ago
Floatplane? Linus and Luke at Linus Tech Tips (some of the people behind the service) always say it was made for creators.
- rwmj 5y ago
  Is it sustainable long term if it drifts along without either making much money or attracting much audience?
  - bsder 5y ago
    > Is it sustainable long term if it drifts along without either making much money or attracting much audience? Erm, aren't those exactly opposed? "Drift along" as long as you are profitable is the definition of sustainable, no? "Attracting too much audience" is anathema to sustainable if you can't maintain reliability or profitability in the face of the flood.
    - rwmj 5y ago
      I maybe didn't phrase it well, but I'm talking about companies that make just enough money to sustain themselves but never quite grow nor go out of business. (I founded one and it wasn't very much fun. We eventually killed it, but it was never unprofitable). Anyhow it seems like floatplane hasn't made much of an impact - it's not huge like Youtube or growing massively - so does it have long term prospects?
- bsder 5y ago
  I don't see pricing on Floatplane. Lack of pricing is a non-starter.
  - Elidrake42 5y ago
    https://www.floatplane.com/support https://www.floatplane.com/support That's because they don't charge content creators; as it's a pay to play only platform, they make money from the individuals that subscribe to you. The amount you charge is up to you, though they only list the minimum once you have an account.

That's such a broad criteria that it's next to impossible to give good recommendations. What does that mean? Could you make a list of requirements that would make one platform more "creator-friendly" than another?

mikepurvis 5y ago
I think one of the biggest key questions is, how much do you need/want the platform to assist with authoring, engagement, and discovery? YouTube is okay at this; TikTok is excellent at it. TikTok provides the fyp, community management, authoring and captioning tools, access to thousands of sound/music clips to use where they're handling the legal side, etc. Ostensibly this is very, very "creator-friendly", but only for a fairly specific niche of TikTok-like content, and only if you're not skirting the line of what they'll censor. Vimeo has always felt to me more like a larger Vidyard— the content is 100% on you, but they'll handle the technical side as far as encoding and distributing, and give you a clean player widget you can embed on your own site.
- atoav 5y ago
  Embedding a HTML5 video player with some javascript on top is quite trivial. I think the actual, reliable, fast and somewhat affordable global distribution of video streams is the actual meat of the problem from the perspective of someone who would eventually just self-host. That doesn't mean that a considerable amount of non-tech or low-tech (for certain definitions of low) people wouldn't rely on the actual tech expertise in terms of encodings, poster frames, subtitles, chapter marks, time-coded comments or similar things.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Sure, but that comes back to who the "creator" is in this scenario and what their actual needs are. Embeddable video hosting might be perfect for an e-learning site, or an indie film studio, or someone providing paid online music lessons, or whatever. But if the "creator" in this scenario is khaby.lame or kallmekris, a service that helps them host their own videos on their own site is of zero use; those are social media personalities who take the hosting and technical side for granted— their primary need is exposure to a gigantic audience.
    - atoav 5y ago
      For which Vimeo was never the golden choice before. Most people I know who pay for vimeo are film makers who need hosting, sometimws for piblic stuff, sometimes with a password for preview purposes. A bit like soundcloud for video.

alexrsagen 5y ago

Floatplane? Linus and Luke at Linus Tech Tips (some of the people behind the service) always say it was made for creators.

rwmj 5y ago
Is it sustainable long term if it drifts along without either making much money or attracting much audience?
- bsder 5y ago
  > Is it sustainable long term if it drifts along without either making much money or attracting much audience? Erm, aren't those exactly opposed? "Drift along" as long as you are profitable is the definition of sustainable, no? "Attracting too much audience" is anathema to sustainable if you can't maintain reliability or profitability in the face of the flood.
  - rwmj 5y ago
    I maybe didn't phrase it well, but I'm talking about companies that make just enough money to sustain themselves but never quite grow nor go out of business. (I founded one and it wasn't very much fun. We eventually killed it, but it was never unprofitable). Anyhow it seems like floatplane hasn't made much of an impact - it's not huge like Youtube or growing massively - so does it have long term prospects?
bsder 5y ago
I don't see pricing on Floatplane. Lack of pricing is a non-starter.
- Elidrake42 5y ago
  https://www.floatplane.com/support https://www.floatplane.com/support That's because they don't charge content creators; as it's a pay to play only platform, they make money from the individuals that subscribe to you. The amount you charge is up to you, though they only list the minimum once you have an account.