The decentralized platform for organizing video hosting and video broadcasting PeerTube 4.3 was released. PeerTube offers a vendor-independent alternative to YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo, using a content distribution network based on P2P communication and linking visitor browsers. The developments of the project are distributed under the AGPLv3 license.
Main innovations:
- Implemented the ability to automatically import videos from other video platforms. For example, a user can initially post a video to YouTube and set up automatic transfer to their channel based on PeerTube. It is possible to group videos from different platforms in one PeerTube channel, as well as limited transfer of videos from specified playlists. Enabling automatic import is carried out in the "My library" menu through the "My synchronizations" button in the "Channels" tab.
- Work has been carried out to modernize the user interface. The design of the account creation page has been revised, on which the number of stages during the registration process has been increased: displaying general information, accepting the terms of use, filling out the form with user data, requesting the creation of the first channel, and information about successful account registration. Changed the location of the top elements on the login page to make informational messages more visible. The search bar has been moved to the top center of the screen. Increased font size and corrected color.
- Expanded options for embedding videos on other sites. For embedded live broadcasts in the player integrated into the pages, in the moments before the start and after the end of the broadcast, explanatory splash screens are shown instead of emptiness, which creates a feeling of failure. Also implemented is the automatic start of playback after the start of a scheduled live broadcast.
- Added new options to customize your PeerTube node. The administrator is provided with the means to start work in batch mode on federated nodes (Federation), for example, to remove certain subscribers from all controlled nodes at once. Added options to disable transcoding to change the resolution of downloaded videos or live broadcasts, including the ability to disable transcoding of videos with a resolution higher than the maximum allowed in the settings. The ability to selectively delete files from videos has been added to the web interface, which can be useful for freeing up free space (for example, you can delete videos with a resolution higher than the specified one at once).
- Optimizations have been made to improve performance and increase scalability.
The PeerTube platform is based on the WebTorrent BitTorrent client, which runs in a browser and uses WebRTC technology to organize a direct P2P communication channel between browsers, and the ActivityPub protocol, which allows you to combine disparate video servers into a common federated network in which visitors participate in content delivery and have the ability to subscribe to channels and receive notifications of new videos. The web interface provided by the project is built using the Angular framework.
The PeerTube federated network is formed as a community of interconnected small video hosting servers, each of which has its own administrator and can adopt its own rules. Each server with video plays the role of a BitTorrent tracker, which hosts the user accounts of this server and their videos. The user ID is in the form "@user_name@server_domain". Browsing data is transmitted directly from the browsers of other visitors viewing the content.
If no one is watching the video, the return is organized by the server to which the video was originally uploaded (the WebSeed protocol is used). In addition to distributing traffic between users watching videos, PeerTube also allows hosts launched by authors to host videos for the first time to cache other authors' videos, forming a distributed network of not only clients, but also servers, as well as providing fault tolerance. There is support for live streaming with content delivery in P2P mode (typical programs such as OBS can be used to control streaming).
To start broadcasting via PeerTube, the user only needs to upload a video, a description, and a set of tags to one of the servers. After that, the movie will be available on the entire federated network, and not just from the primary download server. To work with PeerTube and participate in the distribution of content, a regular browser is enough and no additional software is required. Users can track activity in selected video channels by subscribing to feeds of interest on federated social networks (such as Mastodon and Pleroma) or via RSS. To distribute video using P2P communications, the user can also add a special widget with a built-in web player to his site.
Currently, there are about 1100 servers, maintained by various volunteers and organizations, for hosting content. If a user is not satisfied with the rules for placing videos on a particular PeerTube server, he can connect to another server or run his own server. For quick server deployment, a pre-configured Docker image (chocobozzz/peertube) is provided.
Source: opennet.ru