8 ms·

> Anyone knows a creator-friendly video platform? Let's rephrase that, if you have easy access to hosting and [sufficient] bandwidth, can anyone recommend crea

> Anyone knows a creator-friendly video platform? Let's rephrase that, if you have easy access to hosting and [sufficient] bandwidth, can anyone recommend creator-friendly tooling such that you can just host your content yourself? I'm so done with relying on third parties to do a poor job hosting stuff I created :(

______-_-______ 5y ago
If you're comfortable self-hosting, I think PeerTube is the go-to option. Federation is optional.
jraph 5y ago
Well, PeerTube is not too hard to install and is quite pleasant to use… https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/ https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/...
- slimscsi 5y ago
  If an install is necessary, you have already lost 90% of your viewers.
  - jraph 5y ago
    Viewers don't install anything. That would be the content creator here because the question is "as a content creator who wants to self host, what can I use?", but that could also be someone the content creator knows, or someone providing a PeerTube instance for content creators. PeerTube is a piece of open source software meant to build a YouTube-like platform, with optional federation (and P2P to allow servers to offload some bandwidth to viewers, but I don't know how well this works in practice with the widespread asymmetrical or mobile internet connections). It is not for the viewer to install.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- zxexz 5y ago
  Hmm, if you go the the instances list on joinpeertube.org, and hit "display" or "no opinion" on the "Sensitive Videos" filter, you don't have to go down more than a couple before seeing awful white nationalist content instances :|
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - jraph 5y ago
    I don't think this is that relevant. It's like saying the web is full of shit. It's true, but should we throw the baby out with the bath water? I host a PeerTube instance for my choir and I don't quite care about the existence of PeerTube instances hosting questionable content. I didn't enable federation though. Still hesitant to do this.
    - zxexz 5y ago
      Perhaps I should have added more to my comment. I love Peertube and it is very valuable software. I just question if the joinpeertube.org website shouldn't blacklist some of those from appearing on their website. Having such links there definitely wont increase the likelihood of your average content creator using the platform.
      - Ourgon 5y ago
        Ah, so they should blacklist things you don't like. Well, while they're at it, there's plenty of stuff out there I don't like so let's blacklist that as well. I'm fairly sure there are things out there which neither you nor I would want to blacklist but which should be banned according to others who don't care about our blacklists. Maybe the current system works after all? Just don't visit those instances you dislike, this is what I do. Give people the option to choose for themselves whether they want to partake of material which you or I or my neighbour or his dog finds offending.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
redwall_hp 5y ago
Internet video is stupidly simple these days, now that the Flash requirement is long dead: export your video in H.264 and WebM to cover all of your bases (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and iOS Safari all support H.264, WebM is supported by Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari on MacOS 11.3 or later, Safari on iOS 15 or later and Android Chrome.) Then you can just upload it to an S3/CloudFront bucket and slap a <video> tag on literally any web site. It's basically as simple as serving images these days. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/video https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/vi... Most of your garden variety blog/CMS engines have plugins that can even automatically take media uploads and stash them on Amazon or a similar CDN. For something that's not even that big, that might even be overkill. If the amount of data transferred monthly is low enough, you could probably just serve it off a VPS.
- jraph 5y ago
  This is probably not quite enough in many cases. You may need a search engine that indexes your videos, a comment section, a way to refer to sections of the videos, something that provides several versions / qualities so the video can be viewed on any internet connection but still be available in high quality when this is possible, adaptive streaming, and many other things I'm not thinking of. All that in a user interface optimized for videos. You can probably implement a part of these features imperfectly in a regular CMS and with the video tag, but you may as well use readily-available software that do this job for you well. If you host, occasionally, one or two videos, that's probably the best thing to do, but if you are to create a channel, you are probably better of using dedicated software.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    And of course, people always forget about accessibility for those with disabilities. Everyone making their own half baked video solutions creating a more user-hostile web for the disabled.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I mean you can just throw more cloud services at the problem* and use AWS video transcription. It works fine. About as well as MS and Google automated transcriptions. * I think it’s dubious that S3 & CloudFront is really DIY anyway but hey, if you already broke the seal.
kmeisthax 5y ago
If you have easy access to hosting and enough bandwidth, a <video> tag and static HTML is "good enough". If you want to get really fancy and are willing to touch JS, you can have some code swap out sources based on the screen size, if the video buffer has run dry recently, etc. The killer problem is specifically the bandwidth. There is not enough capacity to scale video over IP transit[0]; individual creators will get hosed by bandwidth costs. The way that every video platform gets around this is peering[1], but that requires lots of capital expenditure; and last-mile ISPs will play shenanigans with peering negotiations[2]. This is also why video is a monopoly market: large companies can negotiate way better bandwidth deals than you can. Someone else mentioned PeerTube; I personally do not consider it a solution because P2P is a privacy nightmare. It's still fairly common still for vexatious litigants[3] to sue members of BitTorrent swarms to try and extort settlements out of people. Not to mention, how the heck do you handle GDPR in an environment where every one of your customers gets every other customer's IP address? [0] What most people think of when they talk about "buying an Internet connection" - you pay someone else to route your packets. [1] How ISPs connect to one another. You set up a link between your network and theirs, either in the form of physically wiring up extra cabling or connecting up different switches in a colocation center. That link then carries all the traffic between you and them (and either side's transit customers). This saves money over transit, if you have lots of traffic between you and that ISP. [2] Notably, Comcast refused to upgrade their link with Level-3 because Netflix was one of their customers [3] Also regular copyright holders too, but usually they give up once they get a DMCA takedown processed.
- iptrans 5y ago
  I think you are overstating the problems of relying on IP transit somewhat. A typical content creator is unlikely to have enough demand for their videos to congest IP transit links. IP transit is also very,very cheap. At scale IP transit is only about 5 cents per Mbps. Source: built and operated a global CDN in-house
evancoop 5y ago
How's this for an alternative? (https://www.agencyovervideo.com/ https://www.agencyovervideo.com/) Looks like someone built a solution awfully quickly!

______-_-______ 5y ago

If you're comfortable self-hosting, I think PeerTube is the go-to option. Federation is optional.

jraph 5y ago

Well, PeerTube is not too hard to install and is quite pleasant to use… https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/ https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/...

slimscsi 5y ago
If an install is necessary, you have already lost 90% of your viewers.
- jraph 5y ago
  Viewers don't install anything. That would be the content creator here because the question is "as a content creator who wants to self host, what can I use?", but that could also be someone the content creator knows, or someone providing a PeerTube instance for content creators. PeerTube is a piece of open source software meant to build a YouTube-like platform, with optional federation (and P2P to allow servers to offload some bandwidth to viewers, but I don't know how well this works in practice with the widespread asymmetrical or mobile internet connections). It is not for the viewer to install.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
zxexz 5y ago
Hmm, if you go the the instances list on joinpeertube.org, and hit "display" or "no opinion" on the "Sensitive Videos" filter, you don't have to go down more than a couple before seeing awful white nationalist content instances :|
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jraph 5y ago
  I don't think this is that relevant. It's like saying the web is full of shit. It's true, but should we throw the baby out with the bath water? I host a PeerTube instance for my choir and I don't quite care about the existence of PeerTube instances hosting questionable content. I didn't enable federation though. Still hesitant to do this.
  - zxexz 5y ago
    Perhaps I should have added more to my comment. I love Peertube and it is very valuable software. I just question if the joinpeertube.org website shouldn't blacklist some of those from appearing on their website. Having such links there definitely wont increase the likelihood of your average content creator using the platform.
    - Ourgon 5y ago
      Ah, so they should blacklist things you don't like. Well, while they're at it, there's plenty of stuff out there I don't like so let's blacklist that as well. I'm fairly sure there are things out there which neither you nor I would want to blacklist but which should be banned according to others who don't care about our blacklists. Maybe the current system works after all? Just don't visit those instances you dislike, this is what I do. Give people the option to choose for themselves whether they want to partake of material which you or I or my neighbour or his dog finds offending.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

redwall_hp 5y ago

Internet video is stupidly simple these days, now that the Flash requirement is long dead: export your video in H.264 and WebM to cover all of your bases (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and iOS Safari all support H.264, WebM is supported by Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari on MacOS 11.3 or later, Safari on iOS 15 or later and Android Chrome.) Then you can just upload it to an S3/CloudFront bucket and slap a <video> tag on literally any web site. It's basically as simple as serving images these days. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/video https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/vi... Most of your garden variety blog/CMS engines have plugins that can even automatically take media uploads and stash them on Amazon or a similar CDN. For something that's not even that big, that might even be overkill. If the amount of data transferred monthly is low enough, you could probably just serve it off a VPS.

jraph 5y ago
This is probably not quite enough in many cases. You may need a search engine that indexes your videos, a comment section, a way to refer to sections of the videos, something that provides several versions / qualities so the video can be viewed on any internet connection but still be available in high quality when this is possible, adaptive streaming, and many other things I'm not thinking of. All that in a user interface optimized for videos. You can probably implement a part of these features imperfectly in a regular CMS and with the video tag, but you may as well use readily-available software that do this job for you well. If you host, occasionally, one or two videos, that's probably the best thing to do, but if you are to create a channel, you are probably better of using dedicated software.
- xwdv 5y ago
  And of course, people always forget about accessibility for those with disabilities. Everyone making their own half baked video solutions creating a more user-hostile web for the disabled.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I mean you can just throw more cloud services at the problem* and use AWS video transcription. It works fine. About as well as MS and Google automated transcriptions. * I think it’s dubious that S3 & CloudFront is really DIY anyway but hey, if you already broke the seal.

kmeisthax 5y ago

If you have easy access to hosting and enough bandwidth, a <video> tag and static HTML is "good enough". If you want to get really fancy and are willing to touch JS, you can have some code swap out sources based on the screen size, if the video buffer has run dry recently, etc. The killer problem is specifically the bandwidth. There is not enough capacity to scale video over IP transit[0]; individual creators will get hosed by bandwidth costs. The way that every video platform gets around this is peering[1], but that requires lots of capital expenditure; and last-mile ISPs will play shenanigans with peering negotiations[2]. This is also why video is a monopoly market: large companies can negotiate way better bandwidth deals than you can. Someone else mentioned PeerTube; I personally do not consider it a solution because P2P is a privacy nightmare. It's still fairly common still for vexatious litigants[3] to sue members of BitTorrent swarms to try and extort settlements out of people. Not to mention, how the heck do you handle GDPR in an environment where every one of your customers gets every other customer's IP address? [0] What most people think of when they talk about "buying an Internet connection" - you pay someone else to route your packets. [1] How ISPs connect to one another. You set up a link between your network and theirs, either in the form of physically wiring up extra cabling or connecting up different switches in a colocation center. That link then carries all the traffic between you and them (and either side's transit customers). This saves money over transit, if you have lots of traffic between you and that ISP. [2] Notably, Comcast refused to upgrade their link with Level-3 because Netflix was one of their customers [3] Also regular copyright holders too, but usually they give up once they get a DMCA takedown processed.

iptrans 5y ago
I think you are overstating the problems of relying on IP transit somewhat. A typical content creator is unlikely to have enough demand for their videos to congest IP transit links. IP transit is also very,very cheap. At scale IP transit is only about 5 cents per Mbps. Source: built and operated a global CDN in-house

evancoop 5y ago

How's this for an alternative? (https://www.agencyovervideo.com/ https://www.agencyovervideo.com/) Looks like someone built a solution awfully quickly!