@alcinnz
> Wix & Squarespace can't host videos?

Not on the gratis plan. Maybe on some of the more expensive paid plans. Again, there's a reason people use YouTube (or Vimeo or other corporate datafarms).

@alcinnz I've only leased server resources as part of collective projects I've served on the governance bodies of, but the impression I get is that you get charged separately for both storage and bandwidth. So even if nobody watches your videos, it costs you money every month just to keep them on your server. The centralization of the webhosting industry into giant datacentres has typical #monopoly effects.

@strypey @alcinnz
In my experience, people host videos on YouTube or Vimeo because even a small number of hits will eat into your data (bandwidth) allowance in no time. A 100k webpage versus 100MB video makes a huge difference.

@fitheach And a habit of recording video and putting it on your server means a further step from hosted to virtual server rental to having a physical server with some hardcore raid setup I don't understand. I administer servers now (mostly rental, one a community favour), but video storage is impractical on all of them.

@strypey @alcinnz

@krozruch
Even the cheapest VPS offers, often come with 20GB. That potentially could be a lot of videos. That wouldn't be the problem. If you had some popular videos your cheap VPS probably couldn't support the requests, and your bandwidth would be gone in no time.

@strypey @alcinnz

@fitheach @krozruch @strypey And still there's ways around that bandwidth problem, primarily BitTorrent. How I hate how much that's been villified?

@alcinnz ... which brings up back to PeerTube, which uses WebTorrent, which uses BitTorrent, and which non-geek webmasters can use to upload their videos to existing instances and embed those on their sites, which is a solution that is accessible to people *now* ;)
@fitheach @krozruch

@strypey
... and it's as slow as treacle. I'll grant you, I've not watched that many videos from PeerTube, but they have all stuttered or stopped. Sorry, that is just the truth.

I'm not on some superfast fibre broadband, but then not all users are. I rarely, if ever, had problems with YT or Vimeo, for example.

@alcinnz @krozruch

@fitheach @krozruch @alcinnz @strypey

bit torrent can stream HD video just fine. if there's a problem with peertube its that servers don't do enough proactive seeding to help keep the swarms healthy.

if you want proof download webtorrent.io and grab a popular video torrent from somewhere.

@xj9 @krozruch @alcinnz @strypey @fitheach > if there's a problem with peertube its that servers don't do enough proactive seeding to help keep the swarms healthy

Yeah, that's exactly the issue, and yes, it happens. People usually can't spend that much on servers and it's extremely rare to have viewers constantly seeding every video you upload.

@espectalll the other problem is the disconnect between #WebTorrent and #BitTorrent swarms. Ideally, people could share bandwidth with PeerTube instances from home by downloading PT videos using a normal BT client and seeding them. But it doesn't seem to work this way.
@xj9 @krozruch @alcinnz @fitheach

@strypey @fitheach @alcinnz @krozruch @espectalll

yeah you need a hybrid client for that. web browser peers can only speak the web rtc protocol so they can only peer with mainline torrent clients indirectly through these hybrid peers.

@fitheach
> I've not watched that many videos from PeerTube, but they have all stuttered or stopped.

When did you last try it? I had that experience early on and reported it in a number of issues of their code forge. The last few times I remember trying it, it was pretty good. I guess YMMV depending on the power of the server hosting a particular video. Swarm effects only kick in when a number of users are watching the same video on the same instance at once.

@alcinnz @krozruch @xj9

@strypey @fitheach @alcinnz @xj9 It has improved to some degree but I have a good connection. I have rarely, if ever, watched a video anyone else is watching, but I upload to it and embed and though I hear there was little in the way of moderation tools early on, I have seen it improve so there's reason for hope.

@strypey
I watched a few this week, albeit only the first 5 minutes as I decided they weren't for me.

Since my self-imposed abstinence from everything Google I might even have more motivation to watch stuff on PeerTube(s). However, my viewing tends to be driven by particular needs (news, for example) rather than looking for something to pass the time. For my needs the PTs don't have the desired content.

@krozruch @alcinnz @xj9

@fitheach @strypey @alcinnz @xj9 It's in want of curation, for sure. I hit on something here and there and showed a couple of things to my advanced English students. They liked this, for example: https://betamax.video/videos/watch/4b607025-dbab-4bc2-8f9a-804dd5389906

@krozruch advanced searching and sorting tools that put the user in charge, rather than opaque algorithms, needs to be a major area of research for the fediverse as a whole. Especially as #FunkWhale and other such apps start federating and adding even more multimedia content to the network.
@fitheach @alcinnz @xj9

@strypey
Have you seen this?
https:// peertube-index.net/

Hat tip:
@GidiKroon

@krozruch @alcinnz @xj9

@fitheach Handy. Top tip.

@fitheach thanks for the tip, I've been wanting something like that for a while. I note the irony of a centralized search portal for a federated network, but then I guess the web itself is a federated network so Goggle et al are similarly ironic ;)
@GidiKroon @krozruch @alcinnz @xj9

@strypey
The Fediverse, in general, could do with a meta search engine. Mastodon's Web UI has a great search facility for *my* own posts, but finding other people's posts is impossible. Something like that PeerTube search for text would encourage a lot more interaction *within* the Fediverse.

@GidiKroon @krozruch @alcinnz @xj9

@fitheach @strypey search on Mastodon is restricted on purpose to stuff you have a relation to. This is an anti-harassment feature. People would frown upon an index for posts. (Though I seem to recall one existed at some point)

As an alternative you could use the search features of the Mastodon UI on a Pleroma server, this gives all locally known results. Useful, especially if the server is connected to a good relay.

@GidiKroon
> This is an anti-harassment feature.

Which is ludicrous, given that, as you say, the instructions for getting around it are:
1) don't use Mastodon.

So it's 0% effective at stopping harassment. But really effective at stopping non-geek Mastodon users searching the federation for vegan recipes or photos of cats or whatnot. The only reason the text search feature got rolled back was Gargron getting dogpiled by an army of overly sensitive, narcissistic control freaks.

@fitheach

@strypey @fitheach @alcinnz @xj9 I keep meaning to look into FunkWhale. I saw they have been moving towards podcasts. I'm looking into embedding a lot of this stuff in a Flask application. Ideally, I would show YouTube etc with a privacy [etc.] warning but prefer PeerTube (configured on a user-by-user basis) or archive.org video.

@krozruch have you looked at invidio.us?
@fitheach @alcinnz @xj9

@strypey @krozruch @fitheach @xj9 If you feel need to link to any videos on YouTube, I recommend linking to those same videos on PeerTube instead. It's independant frontend that offers such (to me necessities) as downloads and webfeeds, at least it did last I checked.

@strypey @fitheach @alcinnz @xj9 I think my girlfriend watched The Internet's Own Boy on it months ago. She's allergic to all things Linux (anything clunky and un-slick counts) but managed fine. Too early to say YouTube's days are numbered etc. but people could be converted slowly and, yes, by not embedding that horrible Googly crap to return to the original point.

@strypey @alcinnz what's even better, they're largely commodity - you could move from one provider to the next quickly (if you use containers to implement your services and eschew any proprietary provider services). You'll find that the bandwidth allowances are at least a TB/month, which should be fine for hosting video if you want.

@strypey @alcinnz in terms of educational investment - even a USD10/month instance is a pretty cheap educational tool... and I'll stick my neck out and assert that any (would-be) sysadmin without their own server... isn't up to it. Gotta have a place to experiment, break stuff, and learn. It's not anywhere near as hard as many might think.

@strypey @alcinnz and, don't forget - if you want to test an idea that requires more "grunt"... then get a bigger instance for the duration of your experiment... a week of a USD40/month instance is only USD10 :) - you just have to remember to snapshot your work and destroy the instance (yes, there's a small cost to maintaining the snapshot, but it gives you the option of reconstituting it whenever you want)...

@lightweight @strypey I found the hard part of setting up my homeserver was to convince the Mac Mini to boot Debian. You could pretty much host a static website straight out of the Debian box!

Also had to learn DNS configuration terminology and wanted to replace Apache with Nginx, but that was nothing.

@alcinnz @strypey yep, there're a bunch of basic skills to learn, but those are arguably the "basic literacy" of the digital age... everyone should learn this stuff for sure.

@alcinnz @strypey the big problem with home networks is configuring port-forwarding for your network connection, and getting a static IP... Sadly, few NZ ISPs offer IPv6 by default... (I've recently upgraded all of my hosted stuff to be IPv6-aware, but still have some challenges there, e.g. firewalling).

@lightweight @strypey Oh yeah, I forgot about that step!

We've had a static IPv4 address setup for a while now because it helps others grant us network permissions we need for our work.

And yes now that you mention it, we did need to expose HTTP(S) ports through our NAT...

@lightweight
> I think everyone should have one.

Add "access to" to that sentence and I totally agree. There are thousands of kiwis on precarious incomes making choices between going to the doctor ($40 with a Community Services card) or buying groceries this week. Topping up their mobile data so they can stay in touch with friends is a stretch. US$5 may not seem like much to you, but it's an unaffordable luxury for them. That's in a rich country like NZ. Then there's China ...
@alcinnz

@lightweight before we moved to China I spent about 20 years living on about NZ$200 a week so I could do fulltime activism. All my work helping bootstrap Aotearoa Indymedia and CC ANZ, all funded by the "community wage", as they used to call it. I know what it is to dumpster food to make ends meet, or to be at the supermarket and have to ask the checkout workers to put some of your basic groceries back because this week's money won't stretch. In those situations, every dollar is gold.
@alcinnz

@strypey @alcinnz fair enough.

@lightweight hey sorry if that came across more ranty than intended :{ I just think it's important to make it visible. A single unemployed person in Ak lives on $250-$300 a week:
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/products/benefit-rates/benefit-rates-at-1-april-2019.html

Median rent for a room in a board house in Ak is $215:
https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/rent-bond-and-bills/market-rent/

People are really hurting out there and it's not getting better, despite the new government talking a good game about being "transformative".
@alcinnz

Then there are the guys being released from prison with $300 in their pocket, no benefit, no bank account, no ID. It's like we've build a machine for making people break the law to survive. It's not only mean-spirited, it's self-sabotaging. With proper support, those people could be contributing back to the community and would be happier doing so.
@lightweight @alcinnz