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?

  • wildchandelure@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Lemmy doesn’t really support embedding videos yet. It’s a highly requested feature so i think we can be assured it’ll be here within a future update.

    • MajesticFlame@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • 312@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • trifictional@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • 312@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • masterspace
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            1 year ago

            Lemmy does serve up its own UI which reads itself and that UI doesn’t support embedding videos.

      • kiddblur@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • sorenant@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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).

        • hitagi@ani.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • dasprii@lemmy.froztbyte.dev
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            1 year ago

            ani.social

            I love that lol.

            Is there somewhere in the docs that explains how to configure your instance to compress images like that?

            • hitagi@ani.social
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              1 year ago

              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.yml file 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=webp
              
      • wildchandelure@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Huh. Good point. I kinda assumed differently. I have no doubt it’s heavily requested tho. Guess things just wont be as convenient.

    • sneezelord@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • hitagi@ani.social
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    1 year ago

    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:

    • sorenant@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • igorlogius@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can use a userscript manager like greasymonkey to inject a javascript snippet that will hide images in comments which have obvious urls to gifs and replace them with actual links or hide them

        here an example snippet:

        (() => {
          let timerID;
          function onChange() {
            Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.comment-node img[src$=".gif"]')).forEach((e) => {
              const src = e.getAttribute('src');
              if (typeof src === 'string' && src.startsWith('http')) {
                e.setAttribute('src', '');
                const a = document.createElement('a');
                a.innerText = 'link to gif';
                a.href = src;
                e.parentNode.appendChild(a);
              }
            });
          }
          // if we have many mution events, wait until the site has settled
          function delayed_onChange() {
        	  clearTimeout(timerID);
        	  timerID = setTimeout(onChange, 500);
          }
          function init() {
        	  // start observer
        	  new MutationObserver(delayed_onChange).observe(document.body, {
        	    attributes: false,
        	    childList: true,
        	    subtree: true,
        	  });
        	  delayed_onChange();
          }
          setTimeout(init, 500);
        })();
        
      • ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • hitagi@ani.social
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        1 year ago

        I’m not aware of an option like that but that sounds like a good feature.

      • dismalnow@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.
      • hitagi@ani.social
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        1 year ago

        Catbox has a FAQ and lists connectivity issues in certain countries like Australia, Ireland/UK, Iran, Afghanistan or users of Comcast and Quad9.

      • lontong@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        They block some countries. I’m in Indonesia and I can’t open catbox too without using VPN.

    • NotAPenguin@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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

      • hitagi@ani.social
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        1 year ago

        I think actual .GIF files are still used but oftentimes they’re just converted to .WEBM’s without sound.

  • Gevian@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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

    • trifictional@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Generator@lemmy.pt
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        1 year ago

        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

        • sab@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • Troy
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      1 year ago

      Ironically, reddit did just fine without hosting videos for… Well, like ten years.

        • ShittyKopper [they/them]@lemmy.w.on-t.work
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          1 year ago

          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),

        • Troy
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          1 year ago

          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 [email protected] 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.

    • zalack@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • mehble@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Kichae@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Linkrot is also just a fact of life on the internet. Something we probably need to get used to once again.

      • Kichae@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • strangematter@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        100% agree, I think adding native video was the first step in what felt like a progressive “TikTokification” of Reddit

    • trifictional@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • AshLassay@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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

    • Kichae@kbin.social
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      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.

  • myxi@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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/

  • Linux-Is-Best@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • inverimus@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • foxrumor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Doesn’t need to be hosted on the server. Just need the client’s to support smooth embedding from other video hosts like peertube.

    • BrerChicken @lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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!

      • whatsuphotdog@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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?

        • RemembertheApollo@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.