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Where are all the videos and gifs? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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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?

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[–] 158 points 3 years ago* (6 children)

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

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  • [–] 92 points 3 years ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 84 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 30 points 3 years 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.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years 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.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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).

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    ani.social

    I love that lol.

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

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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
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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 years 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.

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