Which instances have you looked at? Most of the big instances federate with others. Except for Tilvids.com. You can still subscribe to other channels though.

[–] MetaStatistical@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

This is not true at all:

Libre Video does not link to my channel
TILvids does not link to my channel
The same with neat.tube
Or Blender videos
Or PeerTube.io
Or P2J
Or Move IT Tube

Why? Well, let's look at the top servers. The first hit is a French server, with mostly French and European content. The first US hit is bestgore.fun, which based on its name alone, I would exactly call quality content. The next one is swebbtv.se, which claims to be in the US, but is clearly a Swedish server, and immediately assaults you with a donation screen when you go to the first page. It also does not have any federation.

The next US one is phijkchu.com, which appears to be somebody's personal instance with just their videos? It also doesn't have a lot of federation. Then there's pony.tube, which appears to be mostly My Little Pony content?

You have to go pretty far down the list to find something like diode.zone, and even its federated list is only 25 or so instances.

What do you define as "big instances"?

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I would recommend you use this list: https://instances.joinpeertube.org

You should use an instance that has enabled global search and uses https://search.joinpeertube.org/. This way, you can find content, even though the instances is not federated.

Also, TILvids and Blender Videos are instances for specific videos, for "general purpose" instances to follow. Most of the above instances also use very old versions of PeerTube. We are at verison 6.0 now. So I think they might be inactive, therefore not following more instances.

Here's an instance that does follow spectra.video > https://peertube.wtf (my instance), but I also only follow a select few instances, because there is a lot of crap being uploaded to the videoverse and that just makes for a worse experience.

There is nothing however that would keep you from searching for or following any channel, on peertube.wtf because global search is enabled.

[–] MetaStatistical@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago

Here’s an instance that does follow spectra.video > https://peertube.wtf (my instance), but I also only follow a select few instances, because there is a lot of crap being uploaded to the videoverse and that just makes for a worse experience.

That's also Sean's experience with administrating Spectra.video. And that's one of the main problems, isn't it?

With Lemmy, the posts are well-moderated and most of the good content bubbles up to the top, on the highest-populated servers. Both community moderation and instance moderation are working well. Everybody is federated with almost everybody else because, with only a few exceptions, the community is healthy and thriving.

With PeerTube, there's so much random crap being uploaded, with no real community-based moderation (like upvoting). The top servers are either European politics, non-English content, or gore-related. There's also a lot of people that are more concerned with using PeerTube as a backup outlet than actually serving content to users.

There is nothing however that would keep you from searching for or following any channel, on peertube.wtf because global search is enabled.

That doesn't tie into the home or discover videos page, though. Any random user that wonders into YouTube might be searching for something specific, or might just be clicking on random videos on the home page. Eventually, YouTube customizes the content to fit the user's tastes. I don't even have to specifically look at my subscriptions. The main home page already gives me good recommendations.

If PeerTube is going to take off as a YouTube replacement, it needs to find a way to keep new users from immediately clicking away when they browse the home/discover pages.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I dunno. I went through dozens of them. Most only federate with <5 other servers.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 9 months ago

Take a look at this list: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=totalVideos

Sort by most followings and select the first with signups.

[–] MetaStatistical@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It does, but then most admins immediately turn it off. I uncovered this problem a few months ago.

I also agree that this is the single biggest problem they need to solve. If it's not a YouTube replacement, it's not a usable platform.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Congrats! That's really great. Password-protected videos have been a top requested feature for a while! The storyboard will definitely improve scrubbing experience, and chapters the viewing experience.
Big release!

My only wish is that they support sharing bandwidth without having to host a peertube instance. The idea is on their page https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/posts/26/allow-third-parties-to-contribute-bandwidth but for some reason, it's not important to them. I have multiple VPSes each with a few GBs and unlimited bandwidth that I'd happily share, but can't.

What's even worse, they are removing the possibility to share bandwidth without hosting a peertube instance:

We needed to settle a technical debt : v6 removes support for WebTorrent to focus on HLS (with WebRTC P2P). Both are technical bricks used to get peer-to-peer streaming in web browsers, but HLS is more fitted to what we are doing (and plan to do) with PeerTube

I wouldn't want to be a peertube instance admin...

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My only wish is that they support sharing bandwidth without having to host a peertube instance.

Remote runners for transcoding video already exists, so I think it’s plausible that we could get something for redundancy / help with bandwidth as well.

Bandwidth is just not really that big of an issue on PeerTube. If multiple people are watching is watching the same video, they share bandwidth and lots of PeerTube instances have redundancy enabled.

A much bigger issue is storage.

What's even worse, they are removing the possibility to share bandwidth without hosting a peertube instance:

Hardly any instance uses webtorrent, as HLS provides a much better viewing experience. HLS also support P2P.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're missing the point: if I want to contribute bandwidth, I need to host an instance or watch the exact same video somebody else is watching.

Bandwidth is just not really that big of an issue on PeerTube.

Finding a nice video on some random instance but being unable to watch it because it can only provide 100KB/s or worse says you're wrong.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 9 months ago

You’re missing the point: if I want to contribute bandwidth, I need to host an instance or watch the exact same video somebody else is watching.

That's why I said we can hope they expand on the remote runners, so that people can easily install a runner that could share bandwidth. Just like now we have runners, that are very easy to install, that can transcode videos.

Finding a nice video on some random instance but being unable to watch it because it can only provide 100KB/s or worse says you’re wrong.

Bandwidth is not one of the bigger issues with PeerTube and that's coming from someone who hosts a PeerTube instance. Obviously you will have issues, if you host PeerTube on a slow internet connection.

[–] vermyndax@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Thanks for this, I was hoping something like PeerTube existed. Happy to know it does.