When will video support be added to Lemmy? (lemmy.today)

submitted 6 months ago by Slow@lemmy.today to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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As you know, web instances don't display video. Perhaps there is information on when full video support is planned?

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You can link to videos if you want. I don't think that lemmy or kbin instances will likely provide free hosting for them, though.

There is a Fediverse service that provides video hosting, PeerTube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

I'm skeptical that it will scale -- it costs to host video -- but it's there. You can host something on any PeerTube host willing to serve your content and link to it from the Threadiverse, same as you could on YouTube.

https://joinpeertube.org/

EDIT: For a list of nearby instances:

https://peertube.fediverse.observer/

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 9 points 6 months ago

I would like to add that we are talking primarily about the ability to insert a direct link with a video located on a third-party service. To do this, you need to display previews/thumbnails, which are not available now.

I may be wrong, but I don't think it will require a lot of additional resources.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For the scaling, isn't that mostly for those high availability / high demand content creators?

I mean, for me, Lemmy is a place where you interact, create, discuss. Not a platform where a select few have millions of "followers"?

So I think that bandwidth cost can be not that high for "enthusiast" servers.

Also, say you post a crazy viral video on my poor server, well people could(I know it doesn't work that way automatically today) re-post it elsewhere because they like it and see that it's just not available on my lil server because the hug of death.

Maybe information wants to be free, and if we share things on the internet, we shouldn't think we had a right to control it any more. I mean is there a law against to create something being inspired by something else?

A bit like when you say something interesting to someone, and they repeat it to their friends, and they do the same and so on.

Sorry about the rant, it's just a rant, not anything against you!, thanks for the information you provide.

I'll try hosting video on my ~700Mb up line (IIRC) to see how it works if I get the howtos.

Cheers Lemmings :-)

[-] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I’ll try hosting video on my ~700Mb up line (IIRC) to see how it works if I get the howtos.

It looks like that if you set up a lemmy instance, there's an upload size cap for things that people can attach.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3349

If you set that to some insane number, I imagine that people can upload large stuff, and as I note below, at least webm files seem to be doable right now on lemmy.world (just that the lemmy.world size cap is going to keep someone from uploading anything of meaningful size). I'd imagine that if you lift that cap to whatever you want -- if you want full-length movies, then probably a couple of gigabytes -- the users of your instance should be able to upload. They'd click on "image" rather than "movie", but...shrugs

The Lemmy Web UI isn't really designed for huge uploads, doesn't show a progress bar, so it's probably not going to provide the best user experience, but I'd expect that it'll work.

If you don't want to run a lemmy instance, but do want to permit people to just anonymously upload files that they can link to on other lemmy instances, then while I don't have a particular example ready to hand, I'm sure that there are no shortage of web-based "dropbox" systems that let one upload and then serve files. Just have people reference the file's URL the way they would anything else.

If you want to run a PeerTube instance, which is aimed at fediverse video sharing, then I'd look at their docs. I've never set one up, but I'm sure that they have some kind of documentation.

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 18 points 6 months ago

Hosting videos requires much more storage and performance than text and images. So for most privatly run instances not anytime soon.

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 5 points 6 months ago

Users can save videos to their cloud services, such as gdrive, and insert a direct link to the video when creating a post.

I don't think that displaying previews of videos hosted on third-party services will take more resources than previews of gif images.

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 5 points 6 months ago

Posts with external video links already have previews. Do you mean in the comments? I'd rather not have that ...

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 4 points 6 months ago

Are you serious?
This is what it looks like in Jerboa https://pixshare.de/images/iLzOo8.jpeg

Here's what the video display looks like on web instances.
https://pixshare.de/images/iLzPDJ.jpeg

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well, if you're using a 3rd party app, you need to address that with app developers. Try !jerboa@lemmy.ml

There are previews on the standard desktop web interface.

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago

If you enable the "PC version" setting in your mobile browser, it looks like this

https://pixshare.de/images/iLKEtn.jpeg

Just a black square.

[-] justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

I'm using the browser version (Firefox on a laptop) and it works for me as well: It has a huge preview and I can watch the actual video without it redirecting me offsite.

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the screenshot. I don't have a working laptop right now to check how Lemmy works on PC. I didn't realise that the display of media in the mobile and desktop version could be different. Probably because some people don't use the mobile version there is a misunderstanding and they don't understand what we are talking about.

However, the problem with displaying videos in the mobile version has been around for a long time. Also, after clicking on the dark square that is displayed instead of the preview, you are prompted to open the video in a new tab as if you were opening another site.

[-] justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

after clicking on the dark square that is displayed instead of the preview, you are prompted to open the video in a new tab as if you were opening another site.

Defo different for me. When I click it, no matter whether viewed in the post or from the community, it just opens the video like in the screenshot. It only opens in a new tab when I click on the tiny "v.redd.it" under the title, but I guess that's meant to happen (?)

The question is, why it works that way for me but not on your end. It might be because we're on different instances (I'm on lemmy.world) and there are sometimes differences between the various UI's, including functionality. It might be a browser/desktop/mobile issue. It could even be an anti-ad program on your device blocking the preview because it seems like a pop-up, or something in the settings that isn't quite right, or a programming mistake that prevents the video preview from showing up in certain apps. Hard to say without looking at the code =/

It might be a good idea to file a bug report and/or request the "missing" feature so a supporter can take a look at the issue. Provided it isn't on their to-do-list already, of course.

[-] scytale@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

On IOS, I found Arctic and Avelon to be able to embed videos directly on the post. You need to pay to scrub videos/gifs in Avelon though, that's why I use Arctic specifically for that.

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 3 points 6 months ago

Well, all I can say it works for me.

https://pixshare.de/iLKfmK

Not sure what frontend you're using or if it is maybe instance depended, but the feature isn't missing from the lemmy core.

[-] Slow@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago

YouTube previews are displayed normally. I suppose this problem occurs only with direct links, example www.site.com/827474/mycats.mp4

As you saw in the screenshots, for the test I used direct links to videos uploaded to reddit and the x0.at service.

I did the test in two different browsers and in two different instances. I've also read in the comments under various video posts that other people are also discovering this problem.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Do you mean in the comments? I’d rather not have that

https://lemmy.today/comment/4211739

I can see this inline webm hosted on lemmy.world in a comment on the Web UI on lemmy.today. Lemmy.world is gonna have upload size limitations that'll keep that from being used for anything very large, but I assume that as long as someone can find a place to host it, they can embed inline videos, so probably a bit late on that.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Obviously small text messages takes less storage, but as they are more abundant, they can take up more bandwidth (the protocol takes its fair share for everything). And storage maybe (edit: as they are sent around more often)?

We all know that (sort of) texts < jpg < gif < mp3 ...

But one part is storage, a totally other part is bandwidth. Two very different beasts.

I think we can try out video, if it isn't "stupid videos" ("fun" or for angering). Let meta and reddit handle those ones.

this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023

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