Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

stepify.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 135 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#81

Post by _akhe »

shortformblog wrote: post #77

If you continue to this road, you should plan to fund the creators that this is siphoning from, or allow them some form of consent to agree to this. What you are doing is, whether you’ve considered this or not, at risk of harming people who are building around video because it is financially viable. People produce these guides as videos because that’s how they can make money from them, whereas it is much more difficu…

Hm, is this the right take? The YouTube player is embedded on the page, giving the creator YouTube views and more exposure. And I think when a person uploads to YouTube the idea is their video will be out there - including in embeds on 3rd party sites.

I just wouldn't use the word "siphoning" here. There are countless blog posts, news articles, how-to guides, etc. that will embed a video like this yet also provide supporting text for readers. I think it's a pretty normal way of sharing content.

I for one am not a person who learns by watching videos, step-by-step guides work better for me. The idea that all those video tutorials could be made available as text-based guides sounds actually very useful - and I would still be very aware of who originated that content as their video is embedded right there.

It would actually be great if when I search for a tutorial and the most relevant result is a video, if my browser could summarize that video the way search engines summarize results at the top or in the side bar.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#82

Post by mattl »

_akhe wrote: post #81
shortformblog wrote: post #77

If you continue to this road, you should plan to fund the creators that this is siphoning from, or allow them some form of consent to agree to this. What you are doing is, whether you’ve considered this or not, at risk of harming people who are building around video because it is financially viable. People produce these guides as videos because that’s how they can make money from them, whereas it is much more difficu…

Hm, is this the right take? The YouTube player is embedded on the page, giving the creator YouTube views and more exposure. And I think when a person uploads to YouTube the idea is their video will be out there - including in embeds on 3rd party sites. I just wouldn't use the word "siphoning" here. There are countless blog posts, news articles, how-to guides, etc. that will embed a video like this yet also provide su…

The YouTube player is there, poorly inserted at the bottom of the page on mobile.

No attribution is provided. There's no credit given. The description from the video is not provided.

People make their living from producing YouTube videos. This isn't cool at all.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#83

Post by _akhe »

mattl wrote: post #82
_akhe wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, is this the right take? The YouTube player is embedded on the page, giving the creator YouTube views and more exposure. And I think when a person uploads to YouTube the idea is their video will be out there - including in embeds on 3rd party sites. I just wouldn't use the word "siphoning" here. There are countless blog posts, news articles, how-to guides, etc. that will embed a video like this yet also provide su…

The YouTube player is there, poorly inserted at the bottom of the page on mobile. No attribution is provided. There's no credit given. The description from the video is not provided. People make their living from producing YouTube videos. This isn't cool at all.

Credit is given, for example this one: https://stepify.tech/video/Y4v8abG94CU

Says "Channel: Panigale Enthusiast" and the video is at the top-right of the page very prominently displayed.

On mobile - I agree it should be at the top, but for UI/UX reasons not because they're "siphoning from creators" which they are not - they are literally promoting the creators.

The people making a living from YouTube will make even more money now that their embed is on this site, won't they? Are you implying they don't get the views?

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#84

Post by [deleted] »

j45 wrote: post #56
makuchaku wrote: post #17

Great work. A few ideas 1) Speed : the site is often showing heroku errors. Seems like you are running the entire processing in the request-response cycle. If not already done, please try to use a queueing system to perform async processing - and then let the user know when their video is ready to view as steps (probably via email or browser notifications). This will stop your site from crashing frequently and you'll…

Not sure if putting the site behind cloudflare or something could help. Heroku just wants a bigger bill.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#85

Post by _akhe »

nickjj wrote: post #71
meiraleal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this place is called hackernews, after all. Information should be free so if Youtube makes it public, public it should be.

Public doesn't mean it's available for someone else to use however they see fit. That's why we have licenses and YouTube's default license ensures creators retain ownership of what they upload and are protected by copyright. The license allows YouTube to broadcast the content.

You're not the only one with this take on this thread and I'm really trying to understand it...

Why do some of you think it is not okay to put YouTube embeds on a website???

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#86

Post by mattl »

_akhe wrote: post #83
mattl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube player is there, poorly inserted at the bottom of the page on mobile. No attribution is provided. There's no credit given. The description from the video is not provided. People make their living from producing YouTube videos. This isn't cool at all.

Credit is given, for example this one: https://stepify.tech/video/Y4v8abG94CU Says "Channel: Panigale Enthusiast" and the video is at the top-right of the page very prominently displayed. On mobile - I agree it should be at the top, but for UI/UX reasons not because they're "siphoning from creators" which they are not - they are literally promoting the creators. The people making a living from YouTube will make even…

Why isn't it a link to the channel? Where is the description from the video which often includes the credits for the video, including writers, editors, etc?

People won't get views from this. This is taking the work of others.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#87

Post by redbell »

metadat wrote: post #13

This is a brilliant and useful application of LLM technology, I'm impressed. One question- On the backend, is it downloading each video CC (closed-caption) transcript and feeding that into a tuned prompt? What happens for videos where this is missing? Asking because I've noticed CC is occasionally unavailable for some YouTube videos. If you cared to have a fallback, a potentially interesting experiment / solution for…

Here is another resource on the same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39367264

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#88

Post by shortformblog »

_akhe wrote: post #81
shortformblog wrote: post #77

If you continue to this road, you should plan to fund the creators that this is siphoning from, or allow them some form of consent to agree to this. What you are doing is, whether you’ve considered this or not, at risk of harming people who are building around video because it is financially viable. People produce these guides as videos because that’s how they can make money from them, whereas it is much more difficu…

Hm, is this the right take? The YouTube player is embedded on the page, giving the creator YouTube views and more exposure. And I think when a person uploads to YouTube the idea is their video will be out there - including in embeds on 3rd party sites. I just wouldn't use the word "siphoning" here. There are countless blog posts, news articles, how-to guides, etc. that will embed a video like this yet also provide su…

It’s literally describing the entire video in a way that is intended to replace the purpose of the video, and only displays the video minimally in the context of the website.

It pulls out the information without adding anything of value, while making it impossible for the creator to make money from it.

This happens with text content, too. Ask publishers about the large number of AI rewrites of their content going around.

The issue here is not “consumer value,” it is “publishers not able to make money on their work,” the entire point of my original comment, which your reply doesn’t mention once.

Re: Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides

#89

Post by nickjj »

_akhe wrote: post #85
nickjj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public doesn't mean it's available for someone else to use however they see fit. That's why we have licenses and YouTube's default license ensures creators retain ownership of what they upload and are protected by copyright. The license allows YouTube to broadcast the content.

You're not the only one with this take on this thread and I'm really trying to understand it... Why do some of you think it is not okay to put YouTube embeds on a website???

> Why do some of you think it is not okay to put YouTube embeds on a website?

YouTube embeds are a different story, that is an official YouTube feature which allows folks to embed a YouTube video on a 3rd party website. I have no problem with that. YouTube even allows creators to enable or disable that on a per video basis. I keep it enabled because it's useful and promotes sharing of the original content as it was delivered.

I have a problem with a 3rd party site taking a video and making a derivative of it without the consent of the copyright owner. It's violating the license that the video was uploaded under. They even went as far as explicitly claiming copyright ownership on all content on their site (at the time of this comment their footer reads: "© 2024 Stepify - All rights reserved.").

I don't like making assumptions but look at how responsive the original poster of this thread was to most comments. They replied to a ton of people, but not this comment. They've also made an explicit decision not to include any way to remedy this issue or even contact them through their website. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

I wouldn't have even minded as much if the generated text was good but in this case it was wildly inaccurate and missed all of the details that would have let you follow along without the video. The site's official tagline is "Get a step-by-step tutorial of any video to follow along". If someone sees the text generated they might infer a video was of poor quality because this site claims it can produce a step by step tutorial of ANY video to follow along. That sheds negative light on folks who created the original video.

Post reply on HN