Video tutorials now on PeerTube • Hacker News Board

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#21

Post by acomjean » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

RL_Quine wrote: post #9

elliekelly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He posted a video[1] about why he left. It sounds like YouTube updated terms of service that required him to allow YouTube to put ads in his videos and he never wanted to monetize his work, he’s making the videos to share information, not to make money for him or anyone else. [1] https://peertube.linuxrocks.online/videos/watch/6b779810-671...

Evil company decides not to take a loss on hosting probably zettabytes of video? It's really hard to paint youtube as the villain here and keep a straight face.

Thats a good point. Hosting isn't free, so someone is going to have to pay some cost. Even if the original goal was just to share information and not profit, there are some costs associated with running a site.

One wonders if youtube had an option for you to pay them to host videos for you without ads, if that would be popular. Of course then someone with a 1 million+ view video and a large bill would then start complaining..

You can always host yourself but you loose the audience youtube brings.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#22

Post by tyingq » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

clipradiowallet wrote: post #2

Some examples of what the OP means by "lost sovereignty" would be useful. I assume he means ability to monetize how he wants, or to avoid algorithmic claims against his work etc....but who knows - the author does not explain.

A transcript of his video "I'm leaving YouTube", that I pulled from the closed caption file[1]

https://pastebin.com/8ZTwaJEm

[1] https://peertube.linuxrocks.online/lazy-static/video-caption...

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#23

Post by fabianhjr » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

I use IPFS and host my media (mainly photography) on my domain. (With cloudflare as a IPFS gateway in case a visitor doesn't use IPFS)

Hosting cost: $0.

Some details: https://fabian.social/posts/2020-11-07-ipfs-blogging.html

Example: https://fabian.social/photography/2021-01-15-incidentes-vial...

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#24

Post by muglug » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #11

Absolutely loving how people are starting to abandon ship for self hosted platforms. If I had to compare this to a historical event, it would be like the Puritans leaving England for America to escape the oppressive bureaucracy that controlled their lives. There's radical freedom in decentralized social media. The question is whether or not it will take off as a viable alternative to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube -- or wh…

People have been abandoning walled gardens for many decades, but still walled gardens persist. Most either value the walls, or are indifferent to them.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#25

Post by eropple » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

clord wrote: post #8

What are the per-viewer costs these days to host video files on a plain web server? Perhaps with a CDN?

Video is the sort of thing that benefits significantly from economies of scale. Encoding and bandwidth costs are your two biggest factors. Encoding has to be done once -- well, once per rendition you ship, more on that in a second -- but bandwidth costs are, modulo volume discounts, very linear, and thus a direct per-viewer-minute line item. Those bandwidth costs typically depend on your desired quality of video (bitrate) and capacity of service. CDNs and traditional cloud services tend to have expensive outbound bandwidth. VPSes etc. don't, but it's not fast enough to serve many users, and what happens when you hit transfer limits is Not Great.

It is pretty rare in 2021 to serve video just as "video files". HLS and DASH allow for adaptive quality streaming for bandwidth- or performance-constrained devices -- which can also help keep costs down, if you're shipping lower bitrate 480p renditions to some clients rather than full-boat 1080p -- and make resumption of partially played media easier. (Because you can append segments to an HLS or DASH manifest, you can also use this technology more easily for live-streamed content.)

This stuff is complicated. You can build out the pipelines to do this stuff yourself with either cloud services or a lot of duct tape -- I've done it before -- but it's A Lot Of Work to get right and economies of scale are a real thing. There exist services like Mux Video (YC W16, https://mux.com -- this is a shameless plug; I work on the devex team) package this and present straightforwardly consumable APIs for folks who just want to ship decent video at a reasonable price.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#26

Post by jcims » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

RL_Quine wrote: post #6

It's pretty hard to imagine what people think they gain by "switching" to PeerTube. Beyond idealism, there's not a whole lot going for the platform technically; it isn't peer to peer meaningfully. It would be better to just claim you are paying to self host your videos, which is what the author is doing.

Is there a downside to going to peertube versus self-hosting? Even if you just use it as a CMS for your videos, it seems like it’s all upside to me. Plus it adds a drop to the bucket of network effect for the platform, which appears to be the only viable alternative to YouTube in which the publisher retains the lion’s share of authority.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#27

Post by benrbray » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

wussboy wrote: post #16

clord wrote: post #8

What are the per-viewer costs these days to host video files on a plain web server? Perhaps with a CDN?

Probably approaching zero. But how are people going to find you. That's the problem YouTube solves.

We've got good old-fashioned RSS and blogrolls!

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#28

Post by fennecfoxen » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

muglug wrote: post #24

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #11

Absolutely loving how people are starting to abandon ship for self hosted platforms. If I had to compare this to a historical event, it would be like the Puritans leaving England for America to escape the oppressive bureaucracy that controlled their lives. There's radical freedom in decentralized social media. The question is whether or not it will take off as a viable alternative to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube -- or wh…

People have been abandoning walled gardens for many decades, but still walled gardens persist. Most either value the walls, or are indifferent to them.

Well, to be quite fair, places like England persisted, too.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#29

Post by rvz » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

Good.

YouTube cannot be fixed and they will never change, and it is no more about 'the creators' anymore, It's for the big influencers, advertisers and now for the already established cable news networks. It's for the best to start leaving the platform since it is completely skewed for them.

At least there are some sane alternative platforms that exist which make the switch possible to some.

Re: Video tutorials now on PeerTube

#30

Post by danparsonson » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

RL_Quine wrote: post #9

elliekelly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He posted a video[1] about why he left. It sounds like YouTube updated terms of service that required him to allow YouTube to put ads in his videos and he never wanted to monetize his work, he’s making the videos to share information, not to make money for him or anyone else. [1] https://peertube.linuxrocks.online/videos/watch/6b779810-671...

Evil company decides not to take a loss on hosting probably zettabytes of video? It's really hard to paint youtube as the villain here and keep a straight face.

"Poor giant video hosting company has to play multiple ads before, during and after every video otherwise they go broke" doesn't really work either. Having the most content available to show viewers has made them the de facto video sharing website - videos freely contributed by people who wanted to share something with the world have helped to put YT in the position where they are basically a monopoly and they are now aggressively capitalising on that. I don't believe they need to monetise everything just to keep the lights on.

Ultimately though, the guy doesn't want his content monetised so he's removing it - that's his prerogative just as much as it is Youtube's for advertising however they please.