30

I have a decent amount of video footage that I'd like to share with friends and family. My first thought was Youtube, but this is all home videos that I really don't want to share publicly.

A large portion of my video footage is 4k/60, so I'm ideally looking for a solution where I can send somebody a link, and it gives a "similar to Youtube" experience when they click on the link. And by "similar to Youtube," I mean that the player automatically adjusts the video bitrate and resolution based on their internet speed. Trying to explain to extended family how to lower the bitrate if the video starts buffering isn't really an option. It needs to "just work" as soon as the link is clicked; some of the individuals I'd like to share video with are very much not technically inclined.

I'd like to host it on my homelab, but my internet connection only has a 4Mbit upload, which is orders of magnitude lower than my video bitrate, so I'm assuming I would need to either use a 3rd-party video hosting service or set up a VPS with my hosting software of choice.

Any suggestions? I prefer open-source self-hosted software, but I'm willing to pay for convenience.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sgh@lemmy.ml 8 points 9 months ago

Have you considered keeping them on YouTube but unlisted, so that they don't show up on your profile nor in youtube searches?

Otherwise, you could create a Google Photos album, but either quality suffers, or the videos will take a lot of space.

All the other options I could suggest either call for a recurrent payment, but trust me, it gets tedious after a while (ie. VPS with Peertube or similar), or call for losing quality by a lot (ie. Whatsapp or Telegram channels/groups), or quickly become unpractical (ie. Mega, Dropbox...)

There are plenty of choices, and if you're 100% sure you're fine with recurring payments and having to constantly mantain a system/keep it updated and secure, then go ahead and make a VPS, but if you'd rather have it be convenient, look into additional YouTube settings or common alternatives like Vimeo.

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago

Another option is to make the youtube video private. Then you have the option to only share it with specific people. If it's unlisted, then anyone with the link can view it.

Hosting on a VPS will get expensive. 4K video takes up a lot of space. If you want adjustable quality, then you will need to store multiple copies of the video at various resolutions and bitrates. A cheap VPS won't have a GPU to do real time transcoding.

[-] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I had heard some users complain that youtube waa delisting private videos since they can't share publically for ad revenue. Something to check into.

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago

That wouldn't surprise me. I'm sure they don't want people using youtube their own private video archive. Storage isn't free after all. If they didn't want people to set videos to private, they would have removed the option though. Just don't expect the videos to stay there forever.

[-] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago

I think it was over large private videos ( aka storage space unpaid )

[-] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

I'd say private, not unlisted.

[-] sgh@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

My reasoning for suggesting unlisted instead of private is because the recipients might not have a YouTube account, so making it unlisted means they're certainly able to view the video.

Yup, this is the answer - if they need to be able to open the video with just the link, there's functionally no difference if it's self-host or YouTube unlisted. Just a lot less effort.

this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
30 points (91.7% liked)

Selfhosted

39677 readers
355 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS