D.Tube 0.5: Big Optimizations
Things are moving really quick behind the scenes for DTube. I have been away from my work computer for almost two weeks (with SteemFest and stuff), so when I came back I realised the two other devs @hightouch and @superkoala had done a lot of work on their own. It's only been a month since 0.4 and I'm happy we can keep the pace in developing DTube into a stable project.
DTube is obviously a major player in the STEEM blockchain ecosystem, there is no denying that. I receive countless random thank you messages on both steemit.chat and Discord on a daily basis for my work on DTube. When I asked at my DTube presentation at SteemFest who knew about DTube, it looked to me like everyone in the room raised their hand. That's pretty rewarding. I am confident that this new version will be the most stable yet to use for everyone. Version 1.0 isn't so far away anymore as only a few items of my original roadmap are left.
Jussi
I woke up yesterday and DTube was broken. The steem node we were using in 0.4 had just died apparently. So we decided to patch a bit earlier to 0.5. DTube now uses Jussi just like steemit.com does. Every page will load faster in general :)
This is a great performance improvement for DTube, so thank you @steemitdev for putting Jussi into production recently succesfully!
New Upload
There is nothing that destroyed the DTube experience like waiting 30 minutes for your upload and receiving an error message. Ever since 0.1 I have received countless hate messages because of the bugged uploads. Even @dollarvigilante mentioned it during his SteemFest 2 speach. :facepalm:
The new uploader should fix that problem. This part of DTube is completly open sourced, so you can inspect how it works and what happens to your files if you want: https://github.com/dtube/ipfs-uploader
On top of that, the new uploader adds a bunch of new features:
Server-side encoding to 480p
A big problem for DTube was the complexity of converting a video to the proper format for a random user. Our new uploader does that for you, by creating a new web-compatible 480p encoded video file from your original file upload. That file will properly play in every browser, and load quickly even on a potato internet connection.
This was a much needed feature. Not only a lot of users are uploading videos that have an improper format for the web, a lot of users have a low bandwidth and cannot properly stream the source file.
I personally believe this feature is the best optimization we could do for DTube. It fixes the two biggest issues at the same time.
Queuing System
If I'm correct, you shouldn't encounter it too often, at least with our current upload volume. But basically the new uploader will make you wait before encoding your files and dumping them on IPFS. This will make the upload process much more reliable and easier to reproduce issues when they inevitably happen.
100% Power-Up
You can now power-up 100% of your rewards through DTube. Just click the 'Advanced' button in the new uploader and enable the power-up. Get that fancy icon on Steemit.com to show you are a supporter of the STEEM blockchain.
Choose your Steem Article
Instead of requiring you to go to steemit.com to edit your article, you can now directly do that inside DTube. If you want a custom Steem Article (that doesn't get generated from your video description), you can now do that in the advanced part of the upload page.
Let's talk about tags
Tags are a needed functionality for DTube right now. Everything displayed on DTube needs to have the 'dtube' tag. If we want to make tag browsing possible, we need to have special 'dtube-xyz' tags to be able to fetch the newest, hottest and top trending for this tag. This is why all your tags were messed up when using DTube.
Tag Input is now much more clear
A lot of users have complained how the tags get modified and they do not get added to the normal tags, and they had to edit through steemit.com. Now your normal tags are also added, at the price of creating more than 5 tags sometimes. For instance, if you use 3 tags on DTube, then you will end up with 7 tags in total (dtube, tag1, dtube-tag1, tag2, dtube-tag2, tag3, dtube-tag3). This is actually possible to do in the blockchain, and while waiting for the community feature, there is nothing else we can do to make tag browsing possible in a sane way, i.e. without relying on a 3rd party database.
Update 1am: Actually we changed that again to limit it to 5 tags, it was creating some bugs where some videos wouldn't get displayed in new videos. :(
Edit your video
This was a hugely requested feature, and it's finally here! To edit one of your videos, just head to your video and there should be a blue 'Edit' button. It took us this long to introduce this because it's so closely related to the upload page that we had to do both at the same time. And sorry for all typos y'all couldn't fix :)
By the way, if your video is more than 7 days old, then you won't be able to edit your video. This is a limitation of the STEEM blockchain and not much can be done about it.
Switching to different quality in the player
Available as a small button in the control bar of the player. Of course, the source file will remain available as before as the default. Switching between qualities isn't automatic yet, so if you encounter a source file that doesn't play, I invite you to try to switch to the 480p version.
Video Duration shown on the picture
Another basic feature for most video platform websites: displaying the duration of the video on the snap picture. Basically you now know how long a video lasts before clicking it. Convenience for all.
Optimized UI/UX
While 0.4 greatly improved the mobile experience, this patch goes even further. The player now takes the full width of your screen if you are watching on small device or half of your computer screen. By the way all devices and resolutions will be able to adjust pages to get a proper render. We will keep working hard on it to propose the best user experience to everyone. We also made some changes on UI and the general look is approaching what we want.
Channel Page improved
The channel page went through a few changes that are probably only temporary. We now display your cover picture (thanks to img.busy.org) like steemit.com does, and you can subscribe from the page. It's still lacking a bunch a features but it will come :)
Persistant Volume
DTube now remembers your volume settings and keeps it at the same level, instead of turning it back up to 100% on every new video. This is something that is going to improve greatly the comfort while browsing DTube, and I'm unsure why that wasn't done earlier.
Video Description limited in size
Steemians have a tendency to write a lot of text in the description of their DTube videos. That is not a problem anymore, as only the first few lines will be displayed. Users will need to click the 'More' button to read the full description. This will greatly increase the visibility of top comments.
Hidden sub-comments
This is something we are testing in DTube. Instead of showing all comments by default, it will only display the top level comments, and you need to click to open the replies. Again, increasing the visibility of top comments. If you have the #2 comment on a popular video, it doesn't get hidden by the worthless replies to the #1 comment.
This change, if everyone likes it, would also help us move away from the nasty get_state call on the API. This call is very heavy and loads a lot of useless information, but we need it to fetch all comments from a video (and that's how every app does it)
Bug Fixes
We actually introduced a lot of bugs in 0.4 by adding too many UI changes too quickly. This version solves most of the common bugs that were reported, such as the grey screen, the player refreshing after an upvote or comment, etc. If you still encounter some weird errors while using DTube, please keep the bug reports coming. Doing a quick DTube video is a nice way to showcase your bugs.
Final Words
Overall, I am really unsure where DTube will be heading in the future, so the conclusion to this article will be a bit longer.
I said in my previous article that I would publish about the DTube SMT plan, but after coming back from SteemFest, and after talking with interesting persons and learning so many new things, I actually came back home more puzzled than anything on my plan for DTube.
On the budget side, I am not able to pay developers for what they are really contributing yet because all our income is in Steem Power and takes a while to power down. Also we need to pay 3rd parties (AskSteem and IPFS Store) for their services with this income. On top of that, we finally got a dedicated server for DTube that will cost a bit every month. Of course, it would be easier to have money if SMTs were a reality already...
All I am sure of right now, is that whenever Smart Media Tokens go out, the DTube Token will be created. And I want it to be a pretty fair start, unlike the token we are currently using ;-) I also want to reward current DTube users with tokens, in exchange for providing our current small income (content creators as well as curators).
We have been focusing a lot on improving the product. The whole DTube 'Staff' is developers. And I believe this was normal for this project where doing videos right is actually a bit complex and requires a little thinking before coding.
From this version, if the new uploader works smooth and all videos load (which should be the case considering IPFS improved greatly past few versions), I believe we can start doing some 'marketing' and accelerate the growth of DTube.
Recruiting popular YouTubers into DTube and grow the STEEM userbase really quickly. I noticed a recent example of that when a popular French YouTuber talking about crypto @hasheur recently started posting on DTube, a lot new french speaking users joined SteemIt (and DTube probably).
I am thinking about how to give reasons to steemians to upload and upvote DTube videos. We can see nowadays how many people have suddently started using Utopian (mostly producing translations or suggestion ideas), because of the huge delegations received after @elear announced his plan to redistribute beneficiary rewards to delegators. I am thinking of creating a similar system for DTube, but right now we cannot afford to send back our income to other people...
As usual, feel free to vote and comment about your ideas, suggestions, bug reports, questions, if you like our new pictures for this article, or whatever you'd like, I will try to answer all relevant comments in the upcoming days :)
I love your Steemwhales site you created. Is there any chance you could update the database? I would greatly appreciate it and even make a post about it, to spread the site again.
Greetings from germany
https://steemit.com/dtube/@shanto24/qhkxy5jo
What a difference between dtube a couple months ago and dtube now. Great work guys it really shows when using the app.
That is quite a list of improvements and I am really stoked. I know this is a complicated project that is not easy but it really is something the internet needs to break the YouTube monopoly on video content.
I am one of the people that migrated from YouTube due to their censorship. Although I will still post the occasional video to Youtube at some point as Dtube continues to improve I may completely abandon it.
Thanks for all the hard work @heimindanger ! (And team)
Hi, I just testet d.tube with a small music-video (not my content), and I have a question depending on that. I don't want to hurt the original creators of music, but I want to "remember" very good classics from 20 years ago or older. I know that the video quality can not compete with todays music-videos, but there was a lot of good music bevore MTV was life :-) .... now my question: Is there any limitation/regulation/possibility inside d.tube to upload and share such content without hessations? Can I go for it? Or would this be a NOGO?
Even if D.Tube does not regulate content and you might get away with it, just don't do it! (Unless you have the content owner's permission, then by all means go ahead)
I am aware what DRM means and what the author rights are, but isn't it possible to find a way within the blockchain to contribute both - the author and the admirer of a great pice of art (not every music is art to everyones ears, but still it is art) .... the "test"-post I selected was from an artist who is not alive anymore, but the rights to publish his great work (with or without altering) are 70years prohibited. This is way to long in my opinion
I hope there will be a way to reward both producers and distributors in the future. It was actually this very idea which brought me to Steemit in the first place. I really liked the idea that you could share other users' content on your own blog in a legit way with the rewards being split. Unfortunately this only works if the content creator used Steemit in the first place, but I hope that after a while, Steemit will grow enough to establish a new standard in value distribution for content. Oh, and I do agree that the 70 year limit is really long;)
"this is way too long in my opinion" - @cryptomum
yeah, welcome to the club. We can thank Walt Disney for that!
I'm currently considering using D.Tube in addition to my YouTube channel, but today when I tried to upload my first video the upload failed after about 50%, so it's not exactly off to a good start. I haven't given up on the idea though, so I will try again in a week or so.
That happens to me too. It gets frustrating but hopefully it will get better with more updates.
Yeah, the story of my Dtube life lol. I tried countless times to upload. It seems to jam at like 90% for me. However, I am very happy about the new improvements. Thank you for all your work @heimindanger
It has happened to me also but some hiccups are to be expected on new technology like this. I'm not sure if it is more problematic at certain times of the day.
I uploaded today and I have to say the improvements are a great step in the right direction. A lot more user friendly and I didn't have to go back into my steemit post to re-edit it. If the improvements continue at this pace in a couple years Dtube will be a very competitive platform.
Mine upload ok but viewing them is stuck sometimes ... but that's maybe because of my crappy connection sometimes :)
most of the errors are because of the snaps. Use the app Photo & Picture Resizer to crop your snaps by 40%, that should solve 90% of your upload problems. give it a try if you like, i've already uploaded 10 episodes with no problems what so ever after using that app :)
I always resize no my HD video snaps to 750px width, that works.
This platform is going to DIE. They are allowing full movies and pirated videos up there and these assholes ar making money off it. No chance in hell it will go anywhere if they allow this trend. Pathetic!
I don't agree with you on that for certain reasons.
Dtube started not so long ago unlike Youtube that's been around like forever.
The developers of dtube are on a constant grind to make the platform better and they are doing a really great job in that aspect.
Rome wasn't built in a day, hence, come back in a few years time to say something like this, one thing I'm very sure of though, in a few years time dtube would have grown so much that you won't have the chance to say something like this. Thanks, God bless
The community needs to police this and downvote accordingly.
I hope the whole system fails after some corporation sues them. They should be monitoring this but are allowing a wild wild west to take place. It's disgusting
have you looked at the content being placed on d.tube ? Also community will downvote pirated content, so "quote" Assholes "quote end" won't make money of pirated content.
@roelandp - I already see some dude making $3 from an episode of The Office. $3 might not be a lot to some, but for others it can make a difference. I will downvote them all though, thanks man
Please do downvote ALL pirated and copyright infringed videos. The problem though is that not all copyright infringements are easy to spot, and sometimes it can be a legitimate owner of a Youtube channel reposting their content on Dtube, and you should not penalize them because you did not realize it was their own original content.
I guess all legitimate youtubers should make their account names match their youtube channel names, and mention in their video description that it is in fact their own original content.
You are talking about .00000001 % of the community here. If pirated and copyrighted content was well rewarded, that's what the majority of Steemit would be. It's NOT.
I believe people uploading piracy are upvoting themselves mostly, it's always the same amounts they get. If you feel rewards are unfair, you can downvote, in the end the same amount of money gets distributed through steem everyday, so by downvoting what you consider shit content and taking rewards away from it, these rewards are redistributed to all other contents, so you are not really wasting your power.
Thanks for the reply. But don't you believe some measures should be put in place at some stage to ban such pirates? How will you guys handle a law suit etc, do you really want to deal with that headache.
Yes some measures should, have you suggested any? No you simply wish for the death of the platform. Everyone else here is suggesting solutions.
What measures do you think need to be put in place?
You don't fully grasp the implication of blockchain tech bro.
Hint: the concept of free open source software is going to be applied to everything.
Oh really? So you guys think that full movies and series will go up and nothing will happen? All will be dandy? Riiiight. Keep dreaming.
Full movies have been available through software like bittorent for a long time and nothing happened.And now IPFS is taking it to the next level. So yeah all is dandy in a decentralized world :)
You are raising a very important point that absolutely ALL Steemit witnesses should lose some sleep over...
They said that about the tape cassette, then the CD, then the MP3, then napster, then everything else, yet here we are still ticking.
The Dtube devs aren't the ones posting pirated stuff. Of course they should be rewarded for their work.
Your comment seem to be based on the premise of pirating being immoral.
But many disagree with that premise.
Your comment is very subjective.
Disagreed with you completely. DTube is amazing, still slow compared to the mainstream rip off Youtube who does not pay a single penny to its users rather than they selected Youtube stars. Agreed with you in the subject of original content creators but the film industry make billions every single day, let the pirates earn some bucks...Or are you the world Saviour, detective?
Hi, I just wanted to say hi and wish you merry christmas. Also a big thank you for keeping me on your auto-voter.
So I guess those people who think there is nothing immoral about pirating would not think it immoral if I stole their car or any other of their property I think I might want to sell or use.
So you feel it's perfectly fine to upload a movie and make money off it? That's weak man.... Freebooting fucking pathetic mentality
Pirating isn't good in the societies we live in. Only because copywrite was created...... You know? That jumble of bold letters coded onto a screen which you pair meaning to?
Content should be free. Probably not the content that you find pre-2009 but everything thereafter should be free. Society develops as fast as those who run it. Look at bitcoin, doing its lunges. The money is moving and the companies will follow. They will deal with it all and a resolution will come to play in time. - look, the fence isn't that bad. Calling the glass a container with liquid is the same as saying its half full. or half empty..
also @diskidomain those words wont get you far here. What are your honest thoughts on constructive criticism?
Here for the discussion, not the argument
@kodieamos - thanks for the reply. Sorry man but I don't feel original content creators should feel obliged to work 100's of hours on work and then some douche thief comes along and steals thier work and monetizes off it! That's the issue here. If ORIGINAL content creators got rewarded for their original work, the ecosystem would thrive. Instead, we have little runts sitting and waiting to steal content daily. These same runts like Ladbible have massive followings and obivously get better reach or engagement. That is simply unfair! No two ways to look at it. It shouldn't be about the money, but when you see thieves profiting off your hard work, it's disgraceful. I have had this happen to me multiple times. I am a creator and to see my original work get stolen and then viewed 14 MILLION times by some theif scum account, I have every right to be upset.
The whole point of the Blockchain is to protect content fairly I believe. But now sites like this are going to make the issue worse? No thanks, won't be a part of it. I will stick to Youtube then and feed the giant I hate rather...
If Dtube welcomes the pirates and the thieves, then do they welcome child porn and ISIS beheading videos and things of that nature too?
"Pirating isn't good in the societies we live in. Only because copywrite was created...... You know? That jumble of bold letters coded onto a screen which you pair meaning to?
Content should be free. Probably not the content that you find pre-2009 but everything thereafter should be free. Society develops as fast as those who run it."
Stealing cars isn't good in the societies we live in. Only because theft laws were created...... You know? That jumble of metal which you pair meaning to?
YOUR car and all of your belongings should be free for anyone to use. Probably not if your car is pre-2009 but everything thereafter should be free for anyone to use. Society develops as fast as those who fuck it up!
How long did YouTube go with pirated content on it? Years?
And do you understand decentralized? There is no way to stop it or take it down...the content isnt on servers under any one entities control.
@taskmaster4450 - So basically, it's a fully fledged perfect hub to PIRATE to your hearts content? Awesome. This is what we needed :( I'm done then. Sadly my followers and people begging for content will just have to accept my days are over.
Are you really going to come at me from this perspective?
Get your head out of your ass. The Internet, you know that thing that is about 25 years old, is the biggest copy machine in the world. Do you really think that D.Tube is required to steal content? It has been going on since the internet came into being.
You are complaining about a portion of the population that takes content yet are state that you are going to keep posting on YouTube which is 100% oppressive and censoring.
And you attack D.Tube? How dare you? Who the hell are you to attack a platform that can provide a voice to millions of people who live in tyrannical societies? No you get your panties in a ruffle since you some takes a few dollars out of your pocket.
Like most people who want freedom, you cant handle. You still want big brother to take care and protect you. Kneel at the altar of the oppressor all the while complaining.
You are right, get to YouTube and let google protect you.
@diskdomain Stop crying! Show me original content on internet that has value, please.
Except some media news, everything is rewritten, redone, rehearsed, simply stolen as you call it, it's all about those who can make money of it.
Accept it, this is the reality of life. Thank you
You aren't a content creator obviously, you don't get it. Peace
freaking dtube wont let me login keeps saying my key is wrong when ive copyied and recopped the private posting keey from here multiple times and username exactly makes non sense!
Did you click on 'show posting key ?'
Here is an help : https://about.d.tube/#faq1
You and I always have the option to flag those videos if they are not in the public domain. If they are copyrighted, the owners still have the option to send a DMCA takedown notice.
Unlike YouTube, the amount of money a video makes on DTube is publicly viewable so it's very foolish of these users to upload these movies, advertising how much illegal money they are earning. Don't won't have any defense when they are caught.
Canadianrenegade,
I agree @heimindanger and the team should be thanked for all the hard work on Dtube. I was so excited to see the announcements of the updates/changes to the platform. I'm relatively new to Steemit. Tried out Dtube several times with much disappointment of its lag. Was hoping to post videos of my travels. After the announcement, my excitement has rekindled. I hope to be a part of and support this community for a long time to come. There is so much potential for Dtube and Steemit as a whole. Keep up the great work everyone!
I think Phillip defranco needs to be introduced the most his followers will come and steemit will flourish
He has invested in YouNow, they are launching Rize next year
Готов опубликовать несколько видеороликов на платформе, я устал от ограничений на YouTube
good and nice
that was so amazinG
I'd like to commend the team for getting an idea off the ground and having it run(production).
However, It would not be out of place to mention that the platform is for public usage and not for Dtube team consequently the team needs to take feedback from visitor and act on those things that would aid the platform to excel.
No matter how fantastic you project is, once you do not have users signing up the project is doomed.
Please guys, there should be some form of moderation on the platform to mitigate issues surrounding copyrights and piracy.
Keep up the good work.
I have high hopes for Dtube, and part of their value comes from speculation, but enough content providers take their job seriously, we can easily move the masses towards the platform by showing our own progressive success. So the best we can do for the future is keep on creating, resteeming, engaging and keeping up with eachother's content. The future is bright if we all work towards this together. Happy early new years btw :) right around the corner
Nice comment
Now I really gotta check out Dtube. Sounds like a lot of fun! Super props for @heimindanger
hello
It is great to see the improvements that you have implemented. I posted a few new things today just to play with them. It is nice to have video more integrated into steem. I will post a little more to see how things go. Good work.
please vote me
not only you who experience such things, I've made dozens of videos that are posted to youtube but with a matter of days, my account is closed. and the funny thing is my new account was also closed as well, but only filled video that actually the result of my creation.
there is now a new service such as d.tube, I will try the service .... good idea!
I just started to relax and I am studying hard !! I'd like to share with you a lot of information and help.
Nice comment
great
you are right
you just already said ....what i am going to tell.....
Nice,comment!
Thanks 🙂
wellcome
Cool!
Hey guys! I just wanted to give a shout out on how awesome you guys are doing! As a senior software developer I understand the struggles of putting a large system together. It is a part of my life every day. So great job and I look foreword to seeing how far this goes. Furthermore, if you ever need any help please feel free to reach out and I will see what I can do. @heimindanger
P.S. With heimindanger as your name, can I assume you play LOL? If yes, I do to and would love to play with you sometime! My IGN is tytondon.
Now is much better!
Excellent work! If you can get the metatags in place to make sharing in Facebook and other sites to work correctly (as in my Github/Utopian ticket) and also get DTube videos to embed in steemit posts (and elsewhere), you will be pretty close to striking distance of Youtube's crown :)
Doing that is pretty difficult to achieve with the way DTube works right now... We are looking into APIs offering the service but it would most likely be costly
The metatags part would be easy - just a couple of hours work perhaps..
The embedding on facebook part is something I don't know the correct answer to as I've never tried to find out.. I will keep an eye out for answers that might work. :)
Amazing to see so many updates on DTube!
I've always been looking for an alternative to youtube, so I'm excited to see all the changes happening to this platform.
By the way it was great meeting you at Steemfest, please get in touch via email or steemit chat.
The best work in progress alternative to youtube as far as I am concerned.
Thanks for reaching out :) I'll keep in touch with you soon, I've been super busy to prepare this update
Really an alternative to youtube @sirwinchester
Excellent! I'm loving on my DTube more and more! @heimindanger we are due for an update interview. Let's talk! Thanx for what you're doing here. Merci!
I can't upload a video. Well actually, I can't post it.
The videoupload finishes, then it wants me to upload a snapshot. Then this happens -
and i am stuck :(
I click send - nothing happens!
Thank you in advance!
P.S.: Upvoted for visibility!