@pixelfed: Loops is a new platform for sharing short videos, and it's open source + federated Using #ActivityPub

gedaliyah@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 590 points –
pixelfed (@pixelfed@mastodon.social)
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This is very interesting, but makes me wonder if nonprofit initiatives will be able to host video sharing platforms in the fediverse, because of the server damends of it.

It certainly is possible but the more fancy stuff would need to be locked behind some paywall. Hosting 720p30 content is very doable but if users have the option they will of course upload everything and their mother in 4k60 at which point gl with the storage costs alone, nvm the need for hardware acceleration.

It'll definitely need some kind of quality enforcement to make hosting work. It'd be really useful if the app would automatically transcode to the server's preferred quality when uploading, using the uploaders device. If the server has to transcode all the video the compute costs could get astronomical.

There should be no reason not to transcode onboard, right? Modern mobile devices could probably process video no problem and then the upload would be smaller and quicker than sending the original. Only issue might be long videos, but I think there's a case to be made that these types of platforms should have a firm duration cap of only a few minutes tops.

Seems this would be a great way to drive financial support.

I've reprocessed my own video down to 480, and am surprised at how much stuff is perfectly viewable at that resolution, even on larger devices.

It's too easy to save stuff at a higher than needed resolution.

This is only semi-related but do you think it's possible to use a neural network to optimize compression?

Edit: wait I just realized I'm stupid this is 4/5 of Nvidia's AI ventures.

everything and their mother in 4k60

Here before someone makes a "yo mama" joke

yo mama's bitrate is so large that nobody's video decoder is up to the task

Makes me wonder if we could get an open source Google-style ad platform that only works in the fediverse and directly funds whoever's server is being used.

Oh man I can't wait for the rational, level-headed discussions that would come out of this.

But yeah I do think a project like this will be inevitable, it just remains to be seen how palatable people will find it

Nah, I'd much rather go down the micro transaction route. You get to watch some portion of the video (say, 30s), then you need to pay a few cents to continue.

We'd need a centralized payment service to keep costs down, but the rest can be decentralized. I'm thinking we'd use something like GNU Taler, so you'd load up your account, use Taler to pay creators, and then creators could cash in every to often.