Multiple syncs and mirrors across different providers or platforms

Hi all.

According to information from the PeerTube documentation: joinpeertube/news/release-4.3:

Automatic import of videos from a remote channel

This is the feature you’ve been waiting for: ability to automatically import all videos from a remote channel (from another video platform) into one of your PeerTube channels. Really useful if you are a video maker publishing on several platforms who wants to make your channels visible on PeerTube.

As we can see in the documentation there is a way for PeerTube to automatically import videos from a remote channel. For example, in theory you could import your YouTube videos into PeerTube or Vimeo, Twitch etc into PeerTube too. The problem that I think is complicated with this feature, is that it is not a specified protocol, something like matrix or IPFS.

In general, a network protocol is responsible for an established set of rules that determine how data is transmitted between different devices on the same network. Without a network protocol it is difficult to think about or analyze how data is transmitted between different devices. Generally speaking, what I’m asking for here is a technical specification of something I call: « Multiple syncs and mirrors across different providers or platforms » or « ppsm(protocol for sharing, managing videos) ».

I would like to discuss in this topic how to guarantee video transmission, storage, synchronization, sharing, availability, decentralization, interoperability in a specified way, a technique that can be used not only by PeerTube, but by any person or company. Today there are things like Matrix and IPFS, but none of these protocols were designed to work with video or only with video.Generally video files have more data than images and text files. So, as they are large files, we need to have an efficient way to manage them regardless of the platform, service.

I’ve been using PeerTube for a long time and an interesting or recent discussion was whether or not PeerTube should use the IPFS protocol. In theory, the main argument is that it would be interesting to use IPFS as a backup. That is, a way where you have a copy of your video. But things like IPFS don’t work privately, they work publicly, if you have videos for your channel members that you don’t want to be public, using IPFS protocol might not be a good choice. This happens when you have videos where you teach people something and only invited members can access the private content.

Of course what I know and what I’m asking for here could be complex compared to network protocols like Matrix and IPFS. Anyway, this is an open post and I would like to hear different people in this process of building this concept or even clarify doubts if I said something wrong or incorrect. Thinking briefly and generally, this allows to have:

  • Backup: you guarantee that you will have a copy of the video stored in different places, this increases the availability of the video and also the security that you will have copies stored in different places, which avoids any loss of information or data.

  • Interoperability: in addition to backup, video availability and security to avoid data loss, you have the guarantee that the system will work correctly, because there is an interoperability process (which is the ability of a system to communicate transparently, or closest to that, with another system, so that one system transfers and uses information uniformly and efficiently across multiple organizations).

  • Distribution and decentralization of platforms: you guarantee that your video will reach many people, regardless of the platform or service. That is, there will be a partial or complete decentralization and distribution of the information or content of the video.

  • Greater data management, information: you could in theory manage different comments or the availability of your videos for different platforms, without having to open individually account by account to check what users or members are posting, commenting, sharing.

  • Censorship limitation or restriction: Different platforms or services may limit or restrict a monthly or annual or weekly amount of video to be posted, shared or stored. This ensures that even if there is a limitation or restriction, you will be able to use another service or platform to reach your target audience. As a content creator, this feature would be interesting to allow the content creator to send x amount of video or content on different services and platforms without having to manage it manually.

  • High demand and availability automatically or scheduled: As the number of members of your channel grows there is a need to increase the demand for videos or technical staff or look for some way to increase the availability or reach of your video to the greatest number of people. This allows, with synchronization and multiple mirroring, to manage high demand and availability automatically or on a scheduled basis.

  • Control of data, platforms and availability: With this feature you will have greater control over data sharing and also over the platforms or services that host your video.

  • Ability to automatically import videos from a remote channel, plataforms, services or as well as the ability to manage video metadata, which includes license/intellectual property information, tags, and other types of metadata.

  • More secure when migrating or importing my videos from different service providers(Vimeo, PeerTube, Twitch, DailyMotion, Piped etc) in case any platform ceases to exist or falls into disuse for most people.

  • Encrypt video addresses: This allows only the person responsible for the video to know where their video is being shared. The information of those who share the video is encrypted.

  • Temporary video host: Send, receive, share, store or use videos temporarily. That after a while is deleted, something similar to the Pastebin feature only instead of text or code snippets, the idea is that the video is deleted after a time in which the organization or user defines it to be deleted. This is interesting when you have some course material, that you don’t want your users to send the material link for free.

Notes

  • Initially I think of using the bson format, which is a json format for binary files. formats like bson are good for the rest architecture which is heavily used in apis. Another advantage is that the bson format is widely used by different cloud platforms. That is, it is an already existing and known format. What can facilitate ppsm(protocol for sharing, managing videos) or multiple syncs and mirrors across different providers or platforms.
  • I think in general terms using api to send and receive certain videos from different platforms through the rest architecture.
  • My conceptual idea is to make a network protocol similar to IPFS, Matrix, BitTorrent. Where you have bridges that are connectors, where you can share or manage your video in different places, including saying what part or time you want to share it with people.
  • What do you all think of this idea: multiple syncs and mirrors across different providers or platforms or ppsm(protocol for sharing, managing videos)?

If there is any feedback here I would be happy.

It seems this post is about PeerTube, not Mobilizon. Can an admin move it ?

Hi, thanks for the feedback. I noticed that I had placed the post in the wrong place, I have already corrected this problem.