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PeerTube
sviluppato daFramasoft

Frequently Asked Questions

Qualche domanda per scoprire PeerTube
You can also go on the forum to discuss with the community.

Presentazione di PeerTube

PeerTube is a tool that you install on a web server. It allows you to create a video hosting website, so create your "homemade YouTube".

La differenza con YouTube è che non ha lo scopo di creare un'enorme piattaforma centralizzando i video di tutto il mondo su una singola server farm (che è terribilmente costosa).

Al contrario, il concetto di PeerTube è quello di creare una rete di più piccoli provider di video hosting interconnessi.

PeerTube è unico perché (per quanto ne sappiamo) è l'unica applicazione web di hosting di video che combina tre vantaggi:

An open code under a free/libre license

  • PeerTube è fornito gratuitamente, non è necessario pagare per installarlo sul tuo server;
  • Possiamo guardare sotto il cofano di PeerTube (il suo codice sorgente): è verificabile, trasparente;
  • It can be enhanced by everyone's contributions.

A federation of interconnected hosting providers

  • It decentralizes video storage and decision-making power;
  • We can display videos and accounts of other PeerTube websites;
  • It's based on ActivityPub to connect with tools like Mastodon for example.

Peer-to-peer broadcasting

  • It reduces server bandwidth overload if a video becomes viral;
  • We become an actor of the video broadcasting;
  • It's based on WebRTC, a free and open-source project for web browsers.

Sito sviluppato da Framasoft, un'organizzazione educativa popolare francese senza scopo di lucro sulle questioni digitali.

Impiega uno sviluppatore, Chocobozzz, che lavora dal 2018 ai progetti PeerTube:

Moreover, Chocobozzz works on internal Framasoft's projects (Framapad, Framatalk, etc.). In other words, the management of PeerTube projects is operated by only one employee, who has other responsabilities in addition to his workload.

Other Framasoft's volunteers and salaried members also contribute to the PeerTube project on various aspects (strategy, communication, development, community animation). Nevertheless, PeerTube is not developed by a startup with a team of 50 people, and a workflow full of hyper-formatted processes.

Framasoft si prenderà quindi il tempo per migliorare il software progressivamente, al proprio ritmo e con i suoi metodi atipici che, finora, si sono rivelati piuttosto efficaci.

No non lo è.

PeerTube is a software created, developed and maintained by Framasoft, a French non-profit popular educational organization on digital issues. Framasoft has a French culture, respects French laws and is a political actor (« who participates in the life of the city-state ») of civil society.

PeerTube is part of several actions assembled by Framasoft in the Contributopia roadmap. These actions aim to propose alternative digital tools to those coming from surveillance capitalism, so that people who do not recognize themselves in such a system can create spaces of freedom.

Di conseguenza, lo sviluppo e/o la gestione di PeerTube di siti web associati al progetto PeerTube (joinpeertube.org, instances.joinpeertube.org, search.joinpeertube.org, ecc.) potrebbe non piacere a tutti (in particolare a causa di idee, ideologie di culture diverse).

Rispettiamo e ricordiamo che tutto il software del progetto PeerTube è software libero e può essere installato con il proprio nome di dominio.

Possiamo rispondere con un: certamente no!

The ambition remains to be a free and decentralized alternative: the goal of an alternative is not to replace, but to propose something else, with different values, in parallel to what already exists.

Yes, Framasoft holds the "PeerTube" trademark in several countries for preventive purposes.

Framasoft affirms here its intention to not use intellectual property for predatory purposes or to constrain legitimate uses of the software. However, Framasoft reserves the right to use trademark law, especially in case of damage to the image of the PeerTube project, edited by Framasoft.

We recommend you to create your own digital identity, without using "PeerTube" for your project (software name, website domain...) to not confuse people about who is behind the website/project.

For more information, please refer to our Trademark Code of Conduct.

PeerTube is just the name of the software. You can install it on your server, and choose the name you want. For example, Framasoft's PeerTube platform is named FramaTube.

No it's not an octopus, it's a cuttlefish! From Latin sēpia, it's the reason why the mascot of PeerTube is called Sepia.
It has been created by David Revoy (illustrations are under CC-BY).

Sepia can also help you to search PeerTube content like videos or channels on Sepia Search!

The following web browsers are supported by PeerTube:

  • Firefox 78+ on desktop
  • Latest Edge version on desktop
  • Latest Chrome version on desktop
  • Safari 12.1+ on macOS
  • Latest Chrome version on mobile
  • Latest Firefox on mobile
  • Safari 12.4+ on iOS

I want to watch videos

  • Enjoy a player with many features
    • See the different chapters of the video in the progress bar
    • Preview the video frame while scrubbing the progress bar
    • The size of the player is automatically adjusted according to the video ratio
    • Choose subtitles, playback speed or video resolution in the player settings
    • Communicate with the streamer and other viewers using the livechat PeerTube plugin
  • Diventa attore della diffusione dei video che guardi
    • Aiuta il sito Peertube a condividere video e lives usando P2P
    • Easily disable P2P in your account if logged-in or in your anonymous settings
  • Customize the interface
    • Update your name, avatar or description in your profile
    • Set your appropriate NSFW policy (display, blur or hide NSFW videos)
    • Choose a PeerTube theme to change the look and feel of the interface
    • Automatically filter videos depending on many criteria (language, category, live/VOD etc)
    • Choose your autoplay policy
  • Manage your library
    • Use the built-in Watch Later playlist and add easily videos in it
    • Organize videos in public or private playlists
    • Richiama automaticamente la visione dei video dell'ultima visita
    • Check your watch history in a dedicated page
  • Subscribe to channels
    • Subscribe to local or remote channels to be notified when they publish videos
    • Display videos of your subscriptions in a dedicated page
  • Share and interact with videos and playlists
    • Share the video or the playlist URL/embed with attributes (automatically start/stop at, loop enabled, muted...)
    • Download a video using a dedicated modal
    • Comment, reply and rate videos using PeerTube or an ActivityPub compatible software (Mastodon, Pleroma...)
  • Search videos, channels and playlists
    • Search local or remote videos, channels and playlists
    • Use many advanced filters (tags, category, licence...)
    • Use the video URL, playlist URL or channel handle/URL to fetch remote content

No we don't, because PeerTube is not a service but a free software. This means that anyone can download and install PeerTube to host videos on a specific domain name (this is called "hosting a PeerTube platform/website"). Framasoft has no control over who downloads PeerTube and who installs or uses it. Nor does Microsoft or Adobe have any control over who uses Word or Photoshop and for what purposes.

Framasoft only hosts and promotes two PeerTube platforms: https://framatube.org and https://peer.tube

Also, Framasoft hosts and promotes only one PeerTube search index: https://sepiasearch.org

Administrators have full control of the content they accept and they decide whether sensitive content (violence, pornography etc.) is displayed by default or not. In its default configuration, PeerTube hides videos that contain sensitive content.

Therefore, you may find inappropriate videos on some PeerTube platforms. But it's far from being the majority of the PeerTube content. For example, in September 2021, the 900 platforms listed on our public index host only ~1% videos tagged as containing sensitive content.

See the dedicated section in the PeerTube documentation: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/report

Your web browser sends a view to the server after 30 seconds of playback. If a video is less than 30 seconds in length, a view is sent after 75% of the video duration. After giving a view, that IP address cannot add another view in the next hour. Views are buffered, so don't panic if the view counter stays the same after you watched a video.

I want to upload videos

  • Find the PeerTube website that suits you best
    • Join a PeerTube community depending on its topic, terms of services or code of conduct
    • Talk to administrators and moderators that are real people, not robots
  • Upload and import videos
    • Upload or import videos from the web (Youtube, Dailymotion...) or from a torrent file
    • Automatically synchronize a remote channel or playlist
    • Set metadata: category, licence, language, tags, description, thumbnail...
    • Choose video privacy: public, unlisted, password protected, internal or private
    • Add subtitles
    • Add chapters
    • Easily disable comments or download
    • Upload an audio file and an image and let PeerTube take care of creating the video!
  • Manage your videos
    • Get detailed statistics on your videos (views, watch time, unique viewers...)
    • Cut, add a watermark, an intro/outro to your videos directly from the web interface using the PeerTube studio
    • Upload a new version of the video if your administrator enabled this setting
  • Diretta streaming
    • Publish live videos in PeerTube using your favorite RTMP compatible software (OBS, Restream, ffmpeg...)
    • Create permanent lives to stream multiple times inside the same live (URL doesn't change for the viewers)
    • Let PeerTube create a replay of your live sessions
    • Communicate with your viewers using the livechat PeerTube plugin
  • Manage your channels
    • Create multiple channels inside your account to group your videos by topic
    • Personalizza il tuo canale usando un nome apposito, un banner e un avatar
    • Set a Support button for your channel to explain how to support your work
    • People can subscribe to your channel from a PeerTube website or from an ActivityPub compatible software (Mastodon, Pleroma...)
    • Create public playlists assigned to your channel to organize your content or remote videos

Essere libero non significa essere al di sopra della legge! Ogni provider di PeerTube può decidere le proprie condizioni d'uso rispettose della propria legge locale.

For example, in France, discriminatory content is prohibited and may be reported to authorities. PeerTube allows users to report problematic videos, and administrator must then apply its moderation in accordance with its terms and conditions and the law.

There are none at the moment: PeerTube is a tool that we wanted neutral in terms of monetization.

However, the uploader can display a support button under the video. This button displays a frame in which people who upload videos can display text, images, and links freely (link to Patreon, Tipeee, Paypal, Liberapay...).

We did not go any further, as we refuse to tie our code to a particular content funding method, that might not fit all communities and deter others. It's the reason why we encourage developers to use the PeerTube plugin API to create their own monetization system.

I want to administer a PeerTube platform

  • Free and open-source software
  • Federation with ActivityPub
    • Enable or disable federation for your instance
    • Display videos/accounts of other instances on yours
    • Automatically follow instances from a public index
  • P2P with WebRTC
    • Reduce your server bandwidth using P2P on VOD and live videos
    • Enable or disable easily P2P for your instance
    • Help (or get help) other instances using PeerTube redundancy
  • Video transcoding
    • Optimize videos and generate multiple resolutions using ffmpeg
    • Enable additional video extension (.mkv, .mov, .avi...) or audio uploads
    • Generate HLS playlists or raw MP4 files
    • Customize ffmpeg transcoding profile using PeerTube plugins
    • Transcode videos by remote runners
  • Diretta streaming
    • Enable live streaming for your instance
    • Aggiungi la capacità per gli utenti di pubblicare un replay delle loro dirette
    • Set simultaneous live streaming limits (per user/instance)
    • Enable live streaming transcoding in multiple resolutions
    • Customize ffmpeg live transcoding profile using PeerTube plugins
    • Transcode lives by remote runners
  • Video imports
    • Enable video import using youtube-dl (Youtube, Dailymotion...)
    • Enable video import using webtorrent (torrent file or magnet URI)
  • Strumenti di moderazione
    • Enable or disable signup, approve manually new users or set upload limits
    • Assign moderator/admin roles
    • Manage abuse reports on videos, accounts or comments using a dedicated dashboard
    • Blocca automaticamente i video di utenti non ancora fidati in attesa dell'approvazione dei moderatori
    • Blocca determinati video e indica una ragione
    • Bandisci utenti locali, silenzia gli account o le istanze
  • Highly configurable
    • Easily set instance metadata: name, description, main categories...
    • Create your own homepage using markdown or HTML
    • Search and install PeerTube plugins or themes
    • Use external auth (LDAP, OpenID Connect...) using auth plugins
    • Choose default user settings (NSFW policy, comments/download/P2P enabled, etc)
    • Store videos and lives in the server filesystem or in object storage
    • Diffondi un messaggio agli utenti utilizzando un banner

The installation guide is here (only in English).

Minimum hardware requirements:

  • 1 vCore
  • 1.5 GB of RAM
  • Enough storage for videos
  • 20Mbit/s upload network speed
  • Enough bandwidth to broadcast videos

Recommended hardware requirements for a big instance to handle 1,000 concurrent viewers (see our blog post about our viewers stress test):

  • 4 vCore
  • 4 GB of RAM
  • Enough storage for videos
  • 1Gbit/s upload network speed
  • Enough bandwidth to broadcast videos
  • Read the scalability guide if you plan to have many users or viewers

If you plan to do transcoding on the same machine as the PeerTube instance:

  • 8 vCore
  • 8 GB of RAM

For a more detailed guide about hardware requirements:

CPU

Except for video transcoding, a PeerTube instance is not CPU bound. Neither Nginx, PeerTube itself, PostgreSQL nor Redis require a lot of computing power. If it were only for those, one could easily get by with just one thread/vCPU.

You will hugely benefit from at least a second thread though, because of transcoding. Transcoding is very cpu intensive. It serves two purposes on a PeerTube instance: it ensures all videos can be played optimally in the web interface, and it generates different resolutions for the same video.

Transcoding can also be offloaded to other machines using remote runners.

RAM

1.5 GB of RAM should be plenty for a basic PeerTube instance, which usually takes at most 500 MB in RAM. The only reason you might want more would be if you colocate your Redis or PostgreSQL services on a non-SSD system.

Storage

There are two important angles to storage: disk space usage and sustained read speed. To make a rough estimate of your disk space usage requirements, you want to know the answer to three questions:

  • What is the total size of the videos you wish to stream?
  • Do you want to enable transcoding? If so, do you want to provide multiple resolutions per video? Try this out with a few videos and you will get an idea of how much extra space is required per video and estimate a multiplication factor for future space allocation.
  • Which sharing mechanisms do you want to enable? Just web video, or also HLS with P2P? If you want both, this will double your storage needs.

If you want to store many videos on your PeerTube instance, you may want to store videos externally using Object Storage.

In terms of read speed, you want to make sure that you can saturate your network uplink serving PeerTube videos. This should not be a problem with SSD disks, whereas traditional HDD should be accounted for: typical sustained read rates for a well tuned system with a 7200rpm hard disk should hover around 120 MB/s or 960 Mbit/s. The latter should be enough for a typical 1 Gbit/s network uplink.

Network

A rough estimate of a traditional server's video streaming network capacity is usually quite straightforward. You simply divide your server's available bandwidth by the average bandwidth per stream, and you have an upper bound.

Take a server for example with a 1 Gbit/s uplink for example pushing out 1080p60 streams at 5 Mbit/s per stream. That means the absolute theoretical upper capacity bound is 200 simultaneous viewers if your server's disk i/o can keep up. Expect a bit less in practice.

But what if you need to serve more users? That's where PeerTube's federation feature shines. If other PeerTube instances following yours, chances are they have decided to mirror part of your instance! The feature is called "server redundancy" and caches your most popular videos to help serve additional viewers. While viewers themselves contribute a little additional bandwidth while watching the video in their browsers (mostly during surges), mirroring servers have a much greater uplink and will help your instance with sustained higher concurrent streaming.

At the moment, you can't deploy multiple PeerTube nodes behind a load balancer.

But some pars of PeerTube can be horizontally scaled to bypass the following limits, as described in our scalability guide:

If you notice performance problems or a bottleneck at your scale, don't hesitate to create an issue to discuss it.

Framasoft tries to make around 4 major releases per year. Releasing a new PeerTube version takes a lot of our time, so we cannot change this release cycle.

There is no LTS version: only the latest stable version of PeerTube is supported by Framasoft.

If you want to test the PeerTube develop branch, we provide nightly builds.

We try to keep compatibility with the latest minor version (2.3.1 with 2.2 for example). Unfortunately we don't have enough resources to keep compatibility with other versions.

"It's outrageous and unconscionable: you're releasing a PeerTube version that doesn't contain the necessary tools to effectively manage videos claimed by rights holders, or to effectively manage the issue of online harassment in comments, or to effectively manage monetization through advertising, or to (insert here your request to PeerTube). It will never work! What do you intend to do about it?"

You're right. PeerTube is not the perfect tool, far from it. And we never promised this software would include all the features corresponding to every use cases.

Remember that PeerTube has only one full time developer and a small handful of very involved volunteers. It is not a product developed by a start-up with a full time team and significant financial support.

So if you feel that PeerTube does not currently meet your needs, it's simple: don't use it right now. We remind you that we don't make money developing PeerTube, and if we obviously hope for its success, Framasoft does not depend on it to continue its activities.

Yes it does!Since the first stable release of PeerTube in October 2018, every release added or improved moderation features:

  • PeerTube 1.1 ha aggiunto azioni collettive nella tabella degli utenti amministratori e disattivazione di istanze/account;
  • PeerTube 1.2 ha aggiunto la possibilità di annullare la federazione di un video sulla lista nera; il sistema di notifica ora mostra rapporti e nuovi utenti;
  • PeerTube 1.3 ha aggiunto la possibilità per gli amministratori di mettere automaticamente in quarantena nuovi video per utenti nuovi/non attendibili fino a quando un moderatore non li esamina. Anche la gestione dei seguaci dell'istanza è stata rielaborata: l'interfaccia utente è migliorata, la richiesta di essere seguiti può essere negato;
  • PeerTube 1.4 ha aggiunto un sistema di plugin e si è assicurato che i plugin possano, ad esempio, inserire automaticamente nella lista nera dei video o rifiutare i commenti in base a qualsiasi regola (simile a Pleroma MRF);
  • PeerTube 2.0 la configurazione ora chiede all'amministratore di rispondere alle domande riguardanti la loro politica di moderazione e la dedizione ad essa. Crea una funzionalità per seguire automaticamente un indice pubblico delle istanze di PeerTube parte del nucleo di PeerTube, invece di lasciare che gli amministratori lo scrivano da soli. Ciò consente agli amministratori delle istanze di seguire automaticamente le istanze di un "elenco da seguire" di loro scelta; un elenco che è auto-ospitabile, in modo che le comunità possano crescere al proprio ritmo;
  • PeerTube 2.1 ha aggiunto una modalità di riservatezza interna ai video (tali video non verranno condivisi al di fuori dell'istanza) e aggiunto un accesso rapido agli strumenti di moderazione sotto i commenti e gli hook per creare plug-in di registrazione (geoblocking o captcha ad esempio ); alcuni plugin di terze parti già dimostrano questa capacità. Questa versione pone anche l'accento sulla descrizione delle funzionalità di moderazione all'interno dell'interfaccia: avvisi per le funzionalità che potrebbero aumentare il lavoro di moderazione come l'autofollow e descrizioni ai menu a discesa delle azioni.
  • PeerTube 2.2 ha migliorato notevolmente la gestione degli abusi video (ricerca, visualizzazione degli abusi, azioni sul video o sull'account, ecc.), aggiunto hook di moderazione e helper nell'API dei plug-in e Framasoft ha sviluppato un plug-in sperimentale di silenziamento automatico basato su elenchi pubblici.
  • PeerTube 2.3 ha migliorato il rapporto modale e aggiunto la selezione dei motivi predefiniti. Questa versione ha permesso di eliminare tutti i commenti di un account e Framasoft ha sviluppato un plug-in Blocco automatico dei video sperimentale basato su elenchi pubblici.
  • PeerTube 2.4 ha aggiunto la possibilità di segnalare account e commenti, un sistema di messaggistica tra il segnalatore locale di un abuso e i moderatori e una visualizzazione di gestione degli abusi per gli utenti.
  • PeerTube 3.0 ha aggiunto una vista dedicata per gestire i commenti dell'istanza (elenco, filtro, rimozione in blocco ecc.).
  • ...

PeerTube developers are committed to develop and improve moderation tools to make instances always easier to manage. We welcome you to take part in discussions to help ongoing efforts in that direction or suggest new ones!

Si, la versione core di PeerTube (senza plugins/temi installati) è compatibile con GDPR:

  • P2P can be disabled by default
  • It doesn't send personal data to any third party if P2P is disabled
  • Users can delete their account
  • Users can export their data and reimport it in another instance (in PeerTube >= 6.1)
  • PeerTube provides a privacy guide to help admins to fill their Terms

It probably means that we moderated your PeerTube platform after an abuse report and found out that:

  • there is problematic content hosted by the platform (not only one video/account/channel or two, but severals)
  • the platform doesn't seem to be properly moderated or lacks federation policy ( = lack of ToS or CoC in the about page)

Framasoft remains the sole judge of this notion of “abuse”.

I contribute to the source code

PeerTube uses ActivityPub because this federation protocol is recommended by the W3C and is also used by other projects like the social network Mastodon.

IPFS is a great technology, but it still seems too young for streaming large files. The PeerTube P2P system based on well established protocols like HTTP and WebRTC, and the redundancy system are more easy for us to use and to maintain.

DTube does not seem open source, because publishing only compiled code hinders freedom of modification.

PeerTube does not impose any remuneration model. This is the choice we have made, and others (like DTube) have made other choices. So it's up to you to see what suits you.

For historical reason :)

We have a policy for contributions related to security. Please refer to our security policy and advisories.