Video uploads?

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Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
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In 2020, the age of heavy media consumption, would be fantastic to be able to upload vids in STH. Maybe not in posts, possibly a video gallery per user with say over a hundred posts? and then the ability to just hyperlink/thumbnail embed our videos into posts?

Would be great for video tutorials etc, and keeping all IP inside STH as such.

Definitely recommend using HTTP5 AES encryption so that the videos cannot be easily downloaded by regular folk. I did this for a client a few years back as their videos were being stolen and re-uploaded to youtube.

It's 2020 - really think STH should be at the forefront of technological possibilities, indeed makes for great encouragement in as far as user-engagement and retention is concerned.

Hopefully @Patrick has the bandwidth and meaty-enough servers to accommodate ;)

(Maybe a 10 video limit for free, anymore and one could sign-up for a VIP account of sorts and pay say $10 a year annual subscription fee via paypal to have unlimited video uploads?)...
 
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BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Is there a particular reason not to upload it to youtube and embed videos here on STH?
As for stealing video content - if Netflix/Amazon and Youtube can't fix this issue, why do you think that STH admins (All kudos to Patrick and the team - you're doing a great job) could successfully tackle this?
 

Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
503
160
43
Youtube doesn't (as of yet) use encrypted video chunking via Dash for example. Quite a few companies do, including one I rolled out myself for a client, unfortunately the 'open internet' crowd do not like it.

The average opportunist thief will not be motivated at 'pinching' encrypted content, however someone with a little more intent/skill/drive/time to do it is of course able to, many cryptos are easily thwarted.

Keeping content private is quite often an attraction to those who do not desire their video content easily available outside of a community, quite a few specialist 'private' forums do it.

The first-post is a 'nice-to-have' suggestion, not a request nor a demand.
 

Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
503
160
43
If there is interest, I could code up a quick trial platform to show as proof of concept running in a xenforo install. Strangely enough back in 2013 I did just this in a forum I used to run among a group of us consultants, but as they one by one bought into the security of permanent employment with paid holidays the forum just became a ghost town after a couple of years. I used to just have a queue running for uploads, where a couple of ffmpeg threads would FIFO process uploaded vids into highly-compressed chunked streams, only serving the streams according to a valid php session token which timed out the moment a video playback was completed or a maximum of 15 mins of zero activity. Back then Dash wasn't a thing so it was pretty much old school session-key based chunked delivery, which is still quite common really as youtube does it to this day. Encryption is just a whole layer ontop, can do it on the fly, which is fine for small userbases and arguably the ideal way as the encryption keypair is unique each serve, otherwise one can just store pre-encrypted media, though that only really provides a basic level of protection, still good enough against the average script kiddy as long as session security is employed.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
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For now, I think we are just going to use YouTube. YT actually has fairly decent duplicate video searching capabilities.

TBH - I am more in the mode of just keeping STH going right now with COVID19 than trying to do projects like this. I know that is not a great answer, but behind the scenes dealing with chaos as shows get canceled. We cannot even get review units from some vendors because their offices are closed. Sometimes just prioritizing getting to tomorrow.
 

Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
503
160
43
Lol, be wasting money.
...a penny here and a penny there goes a long way to support a community website/forum, it is only wasting money if the site doesn't fullfil a consumer's needs, be it keeping uptodate with tech, be it getting a quick pointer to a great tech sale deal etc... voluntary by all means....

Also of note, considering the lockdown showing to have had quite a big hit on small businesses, any little scheme is better than no scheme.
 

Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
503
160
43
People still fighting over TP down there? I got a pallet of TP for you if you need it!
I do sincerely apologise for the actions of the less fortunate classes, patience is not one of their strengths.
Although I would advise you keep such humour under wraps, for these classes tend to be the kind who punch first and laugh later.