Summary
You may already be familiar with DTube (here). In this post I like to share with you my experiences using DTube, as well as present suggestions for the roadmap. I also like to get your feedback on DTube, especially with regards to usage, and your suggestions for improvements of the service. I will provide all feedback and suggestions to the owner and creators of the DTube service.
DTube: What is it?
DTube is a new video platform that is well integrated with the Steem blockchain. DTube allows the uploading of video files and sharing of these video files through the user interfaces connect to the Steem blockchain. DTube is by nature setup as a de-centralised service, like Steemit (the Steem blockchain) is a de-centralised service. DTube is an alternative to the centralised video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo.
DTube stores the video content at ipfs.io (here), a decentralised and distributed content store network. The textual parts of the post and the link to the video content at ipfs.io are stored on the Steem blockchain.
FYI: the Steem blockchain is the content database holding all posts that are published to our community and accessible through user interfaces like Steemit.com, Busy.org, eSteem, ChainBB and others.
image: DTube Content/Video channels
Test Results
Uploading of video content is very easy and has in-build drag and drop feature allowing dragging a video file from you device onto the drop box of DTube upload page, after which the uploading and processing of the video file is automatically started.
After uploading of the video file, DTube asks for a snap shot image that will become the thumbnail to the video file. This snapshot can be created from the video file while this is uploaded, or can be any image uploaded from your own device. When taking a snapshot of the video file, this image is stored on your device locally and subsequently needs to be uploaded to DTube to create the thumbnail.
The third step in the process, is to define the description of the post, the post text and define the tags to the posts, in same style as you know this from creating posts using the Steemit User Interface. The description becomes the post header, the text becomes the body of the post, and the tags becomes the tags as you know them from Steemit.
Uploading
I did not experience any problems with uploading of video files, it may take a bit of time when video files are large, depending on the internet bandwidth available.
Playback - Laptop/Web Browser
Depending on day and time of day, I've experienced different reaction times. Eg last Sunday - yesterday - it took more than 10 minutes before a high resolution video file started playing in my laptop (Chrome) browser, and when played back, the video was also choppy. The available bandwidth at my end was sufficient, therefore the conclusion can be the bandwidth at the DTube service was not sufficient. However today - just before writing this post - multiple videos I tested started playing instantly without being choppy.
Playback - Smartphone/Web Browser
I was not able to play any video file from my iPhone using the native Safari browser as well as the Chrome browser regardless of using a fast Wifi connection or a fast mobile data connection (4G) regardless of trying to start playback of a video file from the DTube user interface or from the post published through the Steemit user interface or eSteem smartphone App. I did not test with Android
Text Editor
The text editor seems to be a plain text editor. Markup commands to format the textual part of the post, are processed in eg the Steemit User Interface, but not in the DTube editor nor in the DTube inbuilt post viewer.
Tags
The first tag is always 'dtube', therefore only the first 4 tags defined in the video posts, are taken into account by DTube. DTube prepends every tags with 'dtube-'. After publication, it is possible to edit the tags in eg Steemit user interface. This allows for instance to remove the prepended 'dtube-' tags and replace them for others more commonly used at Steemit. As always, the first tag cannot be changed, this is the 'dtube' tag.
Updates to Posts
It is not possible to update the post after it is published through the DTube user interface. The post can by edited after publication to the Steem blockchain through eg the Steemit user interface. However, updates to the posts are not fed back to the post in the DTube user interface, while they are updated when accessing the posts through eg the Steemit and eSteem user interfaces.
Video Formats
So far I tested only with .mp4 formatted files. It is not clear to me which other video file formats are supported, eg 3GP format, mkv format, avi format, youtube format, or any other format.
image: DTube upload page
Suggested Improvements
Based on tests as described above, I propose following improvements.
- Increase of bandwidth
- Smartphone playback support
- Video file downsizing tool
- View updates to posts
- Post update support
- Markup editor / viewer
Credits
@heimindanger (here) is the creator of DTube.
The original post to introduce DTube (here).
Your Feedback & Suggestions
I like to get your feedback on DTube, especially with regards to usage, and your suggestions for improvements of the service. I will provide all feedback and suggestions to the owner and creators of the DTube service.