What's the best way to share videos on lemmy?

Sparky@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 36 points –

I've tried posting an h264 mp4 file from a webserver i own, and I noticed that most clients fail to load or outright crash when trying to open the post. Some give an "invalid MIME type" error even though "video/mp4" is a valid one. Posting the link as a hyperlink works, but then you don't get a preview. So what's the best way to share video on lemmy? Is it youtube/imgur or am I doing something wrong?

13

Personally deliver a vhs tape to each commenter.

Probably not encrypted, deprecated process

Ask each commenter to send you an unlocked box. Put the tape in the box, lock it, and return it to the commenter.

I've used Catbox with success before, but only for very short videos. Nothing like a video essay.

I assume catbox behaves similarly to a basic nginx instance serving static content. I try to keep my uploads under 50mb to save my own and others bandwidth so yea, no video essays

I did a test of a longer video (10ish minutes). I downloaded it with NewPipe at 360p. It gave me a file just under 13mb. Not sure if catbox does its own compression when you upload.

Here's the results.

So I did some tests, and I think thunder is the only client that handles video badly. It doesn't even try to load the link you sent. In contrast, eternity loads it perfectly fine. I guess I've been on a bugged client this entire time 😅

Videos play fine with Boost too, I have had issues with Sync though.

I also did just what you did but with a hyperlink as well for compatibility. If it outright causes some client to crash, that's a bug in that client.

I've noticed the web clients throw errors, but the thunder app used to crash when loading my post (and for that reason, I switched the preview to a gif)

For smaller videos, catbox should do the trick. If it's of the larger persuasion, I'd go with one of the alternatives to youtube, such as peertube

There is also 0x0.st and file.io to upload small videos!