2016-05-20 04:07:42 +00:00
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# Raw Videos / Audio #
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Want to host your own video/audio files for use on CyTube? For servers with the
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ffprobe module enabled, CyTube supports this! However, in order to provide a
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consistent experience, there are limitations.
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## Hosting the File ##
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CyTube requires a direct link to the file in order to query it for metadata such
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as duration and encoding. The website where you host the file needs to be able
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to serve the video directly (rather than embedding it in a flash
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player/iframe/etc.). It also needs to serve the correct MIME type for the video
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in the `Content-Type` HTTP header, e.g. `video/mp4`.
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I don't recommend hosting videos on Dropbox-type services, as they aren't built
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to distribute video to many users at a time and often have strict bandwidth
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limits. File hosting sites such as Putlocker also cause problems due to being
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unable to serve the file directly, or due to binding the link to the IP address
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of the user who retrieved it. For best results when using raw video, host the
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video yourself on a VPS or dedicated server with plenty of bandwidth.
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Note that CyTube only queries the file for metadata, it does not proxy it for
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users! Every user watching the video will be downloading it individually.
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## Encoding the Video ##
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Current internet browsers are very limited in what codecs they can play
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natively. Accordingly, CyTube only supports a few codecs:
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**Video**
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2020-11-18 07:17:59 +00:00
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* MP4 (AV1)
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2016-05-20 04:07:42 +00:00
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* MP4 (H.264)
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2020-11-18 07:17:59 +00:00
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* WebM (AV1)
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2016-05-20 04:07:42 +00:00
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* WebM (VP8)
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* WebM (VP9)
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* Ogg/Theora
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**Audio**
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* MP3
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* Ogg/Vorbis
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If your video is in some other format (such as MKV or AVI), then it will need to
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be re-encoded. There are plenty of free programs available to re-encode video
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files, such as [ffmpeg](http://ffmpeg.org/) and
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[handbrake](http://handbrake.fr/).
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For best results, encode as an MP4 using H.264. This is natively supported by
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many browsers, and can also be played using a fallback flash player for older
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browsers that don't support it natively. Always encode with the
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[faststart](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#faststartforwebvideo)
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flag.
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### Subtitles ###
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Unfortunately, soft-subtitles are not supported right now. This is something
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that may be supported in the future, but currently if you need subtitles, they
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will have to be hardsubbed onto the video itself.
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