Play videos from direct link

soapingtime commented 1 year ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Videos aren't displayed properly without clicking on the link - killing engagement for any cool projects

Describe the solution you'd like

Add a playable embed with the default player that plays the video, and add a thumbnail based on the first frame

Describe alternatives you've considered

Player cards like twitter does? Not a big fan of this because it has the same problem of killing engagement

Additional context

Example post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mbdv5fpty2wlssfwwpys2boh/post/3k5vpxekc3k27

Example screenshot:

mschwendener commented 1 year ago

Videos are on the roadmap: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/1052

soapingtime commented 1 year ago

Videos are on the roadmap

I don't think embeds are though?

pfrazee commented 1 year ago

Embeds to third party services aren't atm. I'm not overly fond of the performance of the embedded players, personally, but I'm open to discussing it

P4tr0ll commented 1 year ago

Would the embeded video be played directly from the external URL? If so wouldn't this be prone to abuses like?:

Changing the source file to a different content at a later date or serving something different depending on other factors like user's country (Regular posts are not editable).
Collecting user info (IP, user agent etc.) when connecting to the external URL. (Users are more beware when they know they're knowingly clicking on links, but not when displaying external sources).

soapingtime commented 1 year ago

I don't think either of these are problems that aren't present with normal web sites though. As long as you convey that it's from a website then I don't think it should matter too much

TodePond commented 11 months ago

If I post a youtube link, I'd expect it to embed, like it does on X

HeyItsLollie commented 11 months ago

Embeds to third party services aren't atm. I'm not overly fond of the performance of the embedded players, personally, but I'm open to discussing it

Surprised by this tbh. I would've figured that support for third-party embeds would come long before native audio/video media support, especially considering the comparatively lower cost for implementing embeds VS native media support, and the high demand for media support in general.

I'm going to just roll off a bunch of thoughts regarding this.

Firstly, the simple fact is people expect embeds to work. If you post a YouTube link on Twitter, Cohost, Tumblr, even Discord, it will embed. The same goes for SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Streamable and Imgur in some cases. You can just play media from another platform without having to leave the platform you're currently using.

From a creator's point of view, having that media be able to embed directly in a post is especially important. It's one less point of friction - a user can see the post, click on the embed, and experience it. If they want to view the embedded content more directly, the embed will often give the option to view it in a dedicated window, improving their viewing experience. Otherwise, it's just as easy for the user to hit "back" and continue reading their feed.

Bluesky lacks support for gifs, videos, and audio. Media support on Bluesky has been in high demand for a long time. Embeds would provide an effective stopgap for this. People will happily adapt to posting their game-dev WIPs or their stream clips via YouTube, Twitch, Streamable, etc, just as long as they have something they can use while they wait for native support.

Finally, the file formats typically associated with these sorts of media types are costly for storage and delivery. Being able to take advantage of embedding from other media platforms isn't just a little nice-to-have thing, it's going to be important for offsetting the financial cost of hosting a Bluesky instance in the first place.

timonsku commented 11 months ago

I would also love to see media embeds to be possible. Even if it starts with being limited to well known platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. That seems like a low hanging fruit compared to the high effort and cost of media handling on the social server.

Unlike Twitter or Mastodon it would be nice if those would also work on mobile and not just web. On these other platforms they make you go to the website instead of playing the embed in the app directly.

A lot of content I create is video which I currently can not share on Bluesky effectively. For more professional content creators its also a very important tool that the video views go through the platform they host on. Twitter was always a rough place for YouTube and Music creators due to the massive derating that such links would get. I'm hoping that Bluesky can be more equitable there but it would first need to allow a more seamless integration of external media. Cohost does this really quite well.

fenarinarsa commented 10 months ago

For the tracking issues, what's can be done is to request the embedded player only when the users click/tap on the card. I think that's what the Mastodon/Fediverse clients do.

Also btw it would be cool to support other services than YouTube, and also PeerTube players.

adamatic-me commented 10 months ago

I would love showing the embedded player. People are known to be much more likely to interact with content that does not take them away from the site.

Maybe just from a whitelisted group of sites? It seems relatively easy compared to hosting the videos yourself, and gives much of the benefit for video creators.

I just prototyped the Vimeo player by pasting the embed code into dev tools, and it looks fine, and works.

pfrazee commented 10 months ago

I have a branch where I was able to prove it's possible to get a decent embedded player experience. Sadly it's gotta wait while other features take priority, but my biggest concern was jank and I now think, yeah, it can happen

TodePond commented 10 months ago

Ship it! You got this!