I’ve noticed that on Lemmy there aren’t really any videos/gifs as I scroll. I just see post titles, links, or images.
Is there a reason videos and gifs aren’t showing up on my feed?
Lemmy doesn’t really support embedding videos yet. It’s a highly requested festure so i think we can be assured it’ll be here within a future update.
Quite possibly not. Remember that the admins running lemmy instances have very limited revenue so paying for servers is an issue. Some instances even encourage posting links instead of images to save on cost.
Videos are in a league of their own when it comes to size and therefore the server power needed. Lemmy probably can’t afford it. Its the prive we pay for no ads. You have to link videos.
Embedding videos doesn’t require local storage of videos. When you embed a YouTube video, you’re just linking a container which loads and displays the video from YouTube’s servers.
But that’s not really a feature of Lemmy itself, but the program reading it.
For example, if I’m using a Lemmy app on my iPhone and I see a post with a YouTube link, the app is the one that needs to implement this embedded view feature.
Yes, but I assume the OP is referring to lemmy-ui, which is the built-in frontend for desktop and mobile in the browser, which does not at this point support dynamic conversion of youtube links to embed cards AFAIK. App support of embeds will obviously be on a app-to-app basis.
Lemmy does serve up its own UI which reads itself and that UI doesn’t support embedding videos.
Ah I see, I’ve only been using it from wefwef so far.
Yeah, my instance has a 100kb file size limit on images and recommends posting links as well. Not sure how that’s gonna play out long term. With sites like gfycat shutting down and nuking their content, I wonder if we’re exiting the era of free hosting and sharing as well.
I’m not sure if Lemmy already does it or not but I wouldn’t mind if it also compressed attached pictures to save on storage and bandwidth like some other forums does (eg compress picture to <1mb).
I wouldn’t mind if it also compressed attached pictures to save on storage and bandwidth
It already does depending on the instance configuration. In my instance, all images are converted to WEBP and downscaled to 1000 pixels max either side.
ani.social
I love that lol.
Is there somewhere in the docs that explains how to configure your instance to compress images like that?
ani.social
I love that lol.
hehe
Is there somewhere in the docs that explains how to configure your instance to compress images like that?
The Lemmy docs are kind of lacking admittedly but you can configure image compression through
pict-rs. You can find all the environment variables you can use here.My
docker-compose.ymlfile includes this:pictrs: image: asonix/pictrs:0.4.0-rc.9-linux-arm64v8 environment: - PICTRS__MEDIA__PREPROCESS_STEPS=resize=1000 - PICTRS__MEDIA__MAX_FILE_SIZE=8 - PICTRS__MEDIA__MAX_WIDTH=10000 - PICTRS__MEDIA__MAX_HEIGHT=10000 - PICTRS__MEDIA__FORMAT=webpThanks a ton!
Huh. Good point. I kinda assumed differently. I have no doubt it’s heavily requested tho. Guess things just wont be as convenient.
But why not even links to videos or gifs
Glad to hear it’s a requested feature. It kinda just hit me that it seems empty with no videos or gifs as you scroll. They definitely need to implement an embedded video player instead of links to videos/gifs.
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GIFs work. At least in the comments they do. Videos can be (somewhat) embedded if you use an external host (i.e. catbox).
GIF sample:
I’m a bitter old man who dislikes inline gifs in the comments, is there a way to block it like I did with RES on Reddit?
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I’m not aware of an option like that but that sounds like a good feature.
I’m a bitter old man who dislikes inline gifs in the comments
I’ve waffled on this issue over the last 25 years, but agree that the option to show/block should still exist.
First I was against it.
- Mostly because it was change - cluttering my once pristine BBSs
Then I enjoyed it.
- Because it added some liveliness to the threads I read, and because I was in a smaller collective of folks that knew how to do it without being annoying.
Then I was against it again.
- Because the forums/boards because overstuffed with people shitposting ONLY animated gifs.
Using wefwef at the moment (Apollo inspired) you can use it on android desktop and iPhone as it is a webapp and they show up as a link for me that I can then click and doesn’t embed it or inline it.
It’s not a gif for me, just a still image.
What client are you using? It plays as a GIF on the browser but it might be a still image in a mobile app.
Yeah on Jerboa it looks like a still image. Still some work to go.
I’m using Thunder and it’s a gif.
Thunder looks sick! I’ll try that out :)
It’s a gif for me.
Are you using an app or something that maybe doesn’t support it? Or on kbin or something maybe?
It’s not a gif for me, just a still image.
It’s not a gif for me, just a still image.
I dunno what it is with catbox but nothing from there ever loads for me.
Catbox has a FAQ and lists connectivity issues in certain countries like Australia, Ireland/UK, Iran, Afghanistan or users of Comcast and Quad9.
They block some countries. I’m in Indonesia and I can’t open catbox too without using VPN.
It’s not a gif for me, just a still image.
It’s not a gif for me, just a still image.
When people say “gifs” nowadays they don’t mean actual .gif files, .gif files are very outdated and barely used at this point.
Gif has just become the term for short videos without sound
I think actual .GIF files are still used but oftentimes they’re just converted to .WEBM’s without sound.
I’m waiting for
- Instant Regret
- What could go wrong (it’s there but not much input)
- Damn that’s interesting
- Public Freakout
Or some funny fail videos
Be the change you want to see
Yes I want all those on Lemmy!
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It will. Reddit only added video hosting in the past couple years. Before that, everyone just linked imgur and other hosting sites.
I bet the largest servers will eventually have their own hosting platform too, but for now it’s one of the growing pains.
Hosting videos requires a lot of storage, before reddit hosting images/videos most used services where imgur, streamable, gifycat…
On small instances hosting videos could be an issue with storage and bandwidth, hosting externally is always a best option
The whole thing is really a bit ironic. Market analysis shows that video content makes users stay longer, so Reddit pushes for more video content. Hosting video content is expensive, so Reddit pushes to make more money off users. Users get fed up and leave.
I guess peertube is the example to look at now for video hosting in the Fediverse. It’s a complicated challenge for sure.
Ironically, reddit did just fine without hosting videos for… Well, like ten years.
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Who says Lemmy should/must/has to be a “serious Reddit replacement?”
Who decides on what features it needs to be a “serious Reddit replacement?”It has already replaced Reddit for me with it’s current feature set (I’m just waiting for my GDPR export to go through to bail out from there),
I suspect certain video oriented communities will go elsewhere. /r/combatfootage was my only Reddit video community, so it hasn’t impacted me much.
I’m running !spacemusic@lemmy.ca now which occasionally links to YouTube videos when other sources aren’t easy to find. We will see how that goes.
Probably features will get added over time. Maybe the federated video hosting stuff will take off some day. But from a bandwidth perspective, that might be hard for these volunteer run servers to handle.
Q: why do we need native hosting?
IMO, adding native video support was a huge blunder on Reddit’s part, and the expense of it is likely a factor in how desperate they are to squeeze money from their users now.
Let Lemmy and Kbin do what they are good at: aggregating links. Let others be good at hosting videos.
If the Web client can eventually be improved to properly embed Vimeo/YouTube/etc links so they can be played inline, that seems like a good enough experience to me. Making a good video player is hard. Reddit’s native player sucks and Lemmy/Kbin are open source with even less resources.
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One downside of using a 3rd party to host media is when it shuts down like gyfcat will in September, it will result in a lot of broken links with media forever lost.
Self hosting has less chance of losing the media at the cost of having to pay for media storage.
As a new website, I’d definitely prefer kbin or Lemmy to just focus on the core product and not self host media yet.
Linkrot is also just a fact of life on the internet. Something we probably need to get used to once again.
Lemmy can already follow PeerTube channels. I’m sure proper support for this will hit kbin soon, too. People can utilize existing PeerTube instances, or set up their own if they’d like to publish videos to the fedi.
100% agree, I think adding native video was the first step in what felt like a progressive “TikTokification” of Reddit
It will. Reddit only added video hosting in the past couple years. Before that, everyone just linked imgur and other hosting sites.
I bet the largest servers will eventually have their own hosting platform too, but for now it’s one of the growing pains.
If those video-heavy communities want to host their own instances and cover the cost of hosting those videos, then that would be cool.
The thing with individual- and community-based hosting, though, is that the hidden costs of the social web become visible very quickly. Those were externalized to the VC backed vultures, and now those vultures are clamping down on us and demanding their fill.
We paid a price for things like free video hosting. Now we’re aware of the costs and need to make conscious decisions around it, not friction free ones.
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This. I wish I could upvote more than once. Oh wait, I can. Boosts count double.
Huh. Does that mean we can triple upvote?
As far as peoples’ reputation points are concerned, yes. But of course we’re mature, sophisticated kbin users who don’t care about such trivial things. Only the unwashed masses on Reddit do that.
Video centric subs existed before Reddit added their own hosting service. Just use a 3rd party service like YouTube. Or setup your own instance and pay for the hosting costs.
Reddit adding video hosting was probably the beginning of the downfall of Reddit. Hosting videos is expensive. So the focus shifted to milking more money out of the users
I have seen couple videos, one was a drone killing Russian soldiers, other ones were for porn. So it may just be lack of interest, or lack of convenience to share videos.
What more can you need?
Cat videos?
I’m more of a dog person, but I suppose that is missing.
What I would do is upload videos to peertube instance (the peertube servers are better equipped for storing videos and most of them are free + offer more or less unlimited storage) and for pictures use plethora or pixelfied. Lemmy and mastodon are just one aspect of the whole fediverse, there’s all sorts of instanced equipped to be all sorts of things https://fediverse.info/
Didn’t one of the larger gif sites announce their discontinuation?
Yeah, Gfycat is going away
That’s gonna suck when all those gifs disappear
You can go to/c/kidsbeingderps to see some gifs in action. It’s a new community so there’s not much, but hope it grows. Using Memmy app, I can see the gifs in action as I scroll, similar to Apollo.
Why isn’t that a link… Is that a Lemmy thing or an instance thing or an app thing? These tiny UX friction points are important for retention.
Sorry, I made a typo in the link. It should work now.
Because they left out the instance.
I’ve always hated reddit hosted videos, the performance was terrible. A link to youtube was always so much faster. I guess it made sense for subreddits that focused on video content, but I never cared about any of those.
Doesn’t need to be hosted on the server. Just need the client’s to support smooth embedding from other video hosts like peertube.
I’ve always hated reddit hosted videos, the performance was terrible.
Me too! And they never had any sound when I maximized them. It was awful!
Gifs in the comments? Nice.
Is there a setting to disable gifs and other images in comments? Or at least minimize them so I have to click before they appear?
Still pretty raw and there’s a lot of things that would need to change if people want a more reddit-app like experience. Reporting posts, collapsing comment chains, nsfw designation, automatic image display opt out, etc.
The platform is gaining users and people are implementing changes frequently, so if it continues to grow I’d expect to see a more familiar set of tools appear.
This is why I prefer kbin over Lemmy. – I’m posting this on kbin.social right now.
Kbin honestly looks like a drop replacement for Reddit. If you were not paying attention and had given Kbin the Reddit logo, you could easily mistake this for Reddit. Plus it is further developed along.
Except for the ability to sort by top.
It’s because the Top is judged by the amount of boosts, not the favorites or upvotes.
I would say it reminds me of Reddit circa 2010. It’s still pretty rough around the edges but it’s also the most fun I’ve had on the Internet in years.
Unfortunately it looks like Lemmy is going to get all the mobile apps, though.
It’s harder to make apps for kbin right now, but that will change in hopefully a month or so
Kbin is newer and the dev, Ernest, is getting more help from the community now that its growth has exploded
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/127572/Ernest-Appreciation-Post
