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Comment on Are people blind on PeerTube?

Hosting video requires a lot more resources than hosting text, hyperlinks, or even pictures. It might be too much for individuals to self host video on a scale that could even distantly resemble how we use youtube today.

Then again, maybe there are ways to make that burden smaller. IIRC Peertube does do some p2p stuff to try and share the burden a bit but I’ve also heard that it’s not really feasible to rely on that to scale.

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lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Then again, maybe there are ways to make that burden smaller.

Yes: encode on lower resolutions.

Most of the videos on Youtube don’t ever need to be 4K. They don’t even need to be 1080p. Heck, most don’t even need 720p! Things like music videos, where what’s important is the music, orthings like old TV broadcasts or play rips of old consoles, where the source barely gets to 360p, can be encoded to 360p or even 244p without any suffering (I played Monster Hunter on the 3DS for years and I can attest 244p can do great works of magic).

This mixes wonderfully with Peertube’s idea about hosting your own instance. If you are hosting your own video storage, you’ll want to maximize the amount of stuff you can throw into it. If someone complains that your videos aren’t 1080p, tell them to go to /donate.php and do their part.

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- ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  How does the p2p work? I thought there was a bittorrent-like aspect to it but what you’re describing sounds different.
  
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    If multiple people are watching the same video, at the same resolution, it uses WebRTC (HLS P2P) to share data between them, saving bandwidth from the PeerTube instance.
    
    A PeerTube instance can also function as a peer (seed) for another PeerTube instance.
    
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    ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Ah okay, this is what I was thinking of.
    
    Sounds like Peertube admins can also proactively choose to mirror videos from other instances too?
    
    Very nice. Would be cool to get some kind of massive user influx and see how well it does under load.
    
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ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
As far as I know the p2p only potentially applies when >1 global users are watching a video simultaneously.

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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  You are right, but the users also need to be watching the video at the same resolution. A PeerTube instance can also function as a peer.
  
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