4.4 KiB
This is a video hosting system similar to Mediagoblin but using webtorrent to help distribute the files to or between clients. This should be more practical for situations where a video becomes popular because the load is then spread across the network, with performance increasing with the number of nodes. However, the torrenting aspect of it only works with WebRTC enabled browsers and so this means it's unlikely to fully work with a Tor browser. Without WebRTC then from a user point of view it's effectively the same thing as Mediagoblin.
Installation
Log into your system with:
ssh myusername@mydomain -p 2222Using cursor keys, space bar and Enter key select Administrator controls and type in your password.
Select Add/Remove Apps then peertube. You will then be asked for a domain name and if you are using FreeDNS also the code for the domain which can be found under Dynamic DNS on the FreeDNS site (the random string from "quick cron example" which appears after update.php? and before >>). For more details on obtaining a domain and making it accessible via dynamic DNS see the FAQ. Typically the domain name you use will be a subdomain, such as video.mydomainname.net. It will need to be a domain which you have bought somewhere and own and not one of the FreeDNS subdomains, otherwise you won't be able to get a SSL/TLS certificate for it.
Although PeerTube can handle a few formats webm is the currently recommended one. Other formats might not play in some browsers or on some libre distros.
Initial setup
Navigate to your site and select Signup to create a new account. By default the maximum number of accounts on your system is limited to a small number so that millions of random internet users can't then begin uploading dubious content. After that it's pretty straightforward.
If you wish it's possible to turn off further signups via the Administrator control panel under App settings for peertube.
Importing videos from YouTube/Vimeo/Dailymotion
It's possible to import videos from the main proprietary video hosting sites. Only do this if they're videos which you made, or if the license is Creative Commons. Hosting arbitrary videos under nonfree licenses is likely to get you into trouble, and we know how that works out from the P2P wars of the 2000s (i.e. badly).
Go to the Administrator control panel, select App settings then peertube then Import videos from YouTube/Vimeo/Dailymotion. Enter your PeerTube login details and then you may specify either the individual video URL or the channel URL if you want to import a whole channel.
Importing videos from your desktop
The most convenient way to add new videos to PeerTube is if you have the syncthing app installed. Set up syncthing with a folder called ~/Sync in your home directory. Create a subdirectory called ~/Sync/peertube_upload. Within that directory make a text file called login.txt. This will contain your PeerTube login details.
The first line of login.txt should be your username, the second line should be the password and optionally the third line can contain the words public and/or nsfw, if you want to make imported videos immediately public or mark them as not suitable for work.
Prepare your videos preferably in webm format. Other formats may be poorly supported, especially on libre distros. To minimize bandwidth usage try to keep your videos as small as possible. Giant videos with incredibly high resolution tend to result in a bad user experience. Often just converting your videos to webm using ffmpeg will keep the size down.
Now copy or drag and drop your videos into the ~/Sync/peertube_upload directory. Syncthing will sync to the server and automatically add the videos to PeerTube. Depending on how large the videos are this may take some time.
Imported videos can be seen by logging into PeerTube, selecting My account then the My videos tab. You can then view them, add a description and select to make them public if you wish.