this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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Call to Lemmy app/UI devs: please improve video support (lemy.lol)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Everyone knows what they want to improve in their software. However, I am opening this post to raise awareness on this issue. It’s just a humble request.

As you know, large video subreddits contribute greatly to Reddit reaching a large user base. For example, when you open the homepage, you can see many subreddits such as r/interestingasfuck, r/funny, r/yesyesyesyesno, r/unexpected etc.

Lemmy is Reddit's alternative for text posts, but unfortunately not for videos at the moment. To fill this gap, I have opened the [email protected] community and shared a few posts. But these videos are inconsistent between applications and UI’s.

For example;

  • Voyager can open videos inline without any problems.
  • Mlem showing it as URL and opens the browser instead of playing.
  • Lemmy default UI is worst. It doesn’t even show the link. You have to click it’s title to see the video but it’s visually not a link. (looks like this one only occurs on mobile)
  • Alexandrite shows as a link.

Yes, video hosting is expensive. However, before solutions such as torrents and IPFS, we must ensure that direct videos work smoothly. This is my $0.02 opinion.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't think your description of the problem is quite right, but I do believe that there is a problem. Here's what I see on lemmy-ui:

It shows no thumbnail, but the standard "play" icon, centred.

That's different from any other kind of post. Text posts:

Have no thumbnail, and a "text bubble" icon, centred.

Link posts:

Sometimes do, sometimes don't have a thumbnail. If no thumbnail, they have an "external link" icon, centred. If there is a thumbnail, that same external link icon appears in the upper-right corner.

And finally, image posts:

Have a thumbnail of the image with an "image" icon in the top right.

In the case of image and video posts, clicking on the thumbnail/icon creates an "expando" where you can see the image/watch the video inline.

This is good UX, in my opinion. However, unfortunately, your instance is failing to load the video for me. It's not caused by the expando, because this happens even if I go straight to the video itself in a new tab. So it's probably a problem with the instance, not with Lemmy.

But as I said at the start, there is a problem here.

First and foremost, a complete lack of any thumbnail for the videos. Thumbnails are good! Videos should also get them.

And well-known popular video sites should also be supported by the video expando. From a UX perspective, it would be better to be able to watch YouTube directly inline, rather than being forced to go through to youtube.com.

Also as a second related UX issue, text posts can be viewed from the feed page, but unlike videos and images, it's not done by clicking the thumbnail, but by clicking the little "+" sign next to the title. In my opinion this is inconsistent and not ideal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I guess the problem is about mobile version of it. See this: https://lemy.lol/comment/9734206

About the video playback problem; I’m not sure. I can play videos in Safari without a problem but can’t on Firefox. Maybe a codec problem? Can you try the video with another browser to confirm me please?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Pull requests welcome.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely. I’m not someone like who “I’m not doing it but you should do it this way” guy but this particular problem is bigger than a single pull request.

There are tens of apps/web UI’s with different languages/frameworks. I can’t make PR for all of them :/

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 4 points 6 months ago

There are only two official ones though:

  • Lemmy web UI
  • Jerboa Android app

Set the bar in one or both, and others will likely follow.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy default UI is worst. It doesn’t even show the link. You have to click it’s title to see the video but it’s visually not a link.

If you click the thumbnail (or the arrow where the thumbnail normally is) it in-lines the video. So it works, it's just not the most intuitive behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Are you sure? It’s not like that on me. At least on mobile.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good luck with your community!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Thanks! I’ve created it months ago. Unfortunately it looks like video support is not improved from then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

You should check if there is an issue on GitHub for this. If not, open one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Right now I'm torn. I do not want to host videos. Pictures are expensive enough for me. However, I would like to see videos standardized. As you mentioned every ui handles them differently, I'd like to have a standard way that videos are handled. On the backend, something similar to pictrs would be great to enable/disable videos and enforce things like compression, video length, resolution, and more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I've been japping about this forever now. I honestly think this is Lemmys biggest Hurdle at the current moment