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Micro.blog launches new 'Studio' tier with video hosting

(heydingus.net)
89 points justin-reeves | 1 comments | 12 Nov 25 13:46 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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simonw ◴[12 Nov 25 16:21 UTC] No.45902045[source]▶
> Because if hosting videos were easy, YouTube wouldn’t be the only game in town.

Is self-hosting video still difficult, today in 2025?

My intuition is that there are less formats to worry about today, and serving video from static hosting that supports HTTP range headers may be enough for most devices to work.

What are the remaining hard problems? Maybe mechanisms to negotiate lower resolution for slower connections?

UPDATE: Looks like this offers some answers to my questions: https://help.micro.blog/t/micro-blog-studio/4081

The hardest bit appears to be HLS - HTTP Live Streaming - the thing where a video gets divided up into lots of little .ts segment files and served via a m3u8 playlist.

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jshen ◴[12 Nov 25 17:03 UTC] No.45902611[source]▶
The other issue is that it's expensive. You can put a video on youtube for free and they carry the cost and cover it with advertising. If you self-host and your videos get a LOT of traffic it gets expensive quickly.
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skydhash ◴[12 Nov 25 17:12 UTC] No.45902723[source]▶
LOT of traffic is a big if. A lot of videos only have 1k+ views and I will believe those are mostly drive-by viewing. Using a CDN can help you if you go viral.
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1. dewey ◴[12 Nov 25 17:45 UTC] No.45903173[source]▶
A video CDN isn't cheap though, so outsourcing that to YouTube is the best option for most people.