Ask Slashdot: Options Beyond YouTube For An Indie Web Show? 60
New submitter Deltree Zero writes: I have an indie TV-style education/entertainment show which focuses on medicinal cannabis growing and use in Maine, product reviews, guests, etc. I have been creating the show at home using a very passable camera, editing with Lightworks, and have been distributing it via YouTube. I am five monthly episodes in, and besides needing a small upgrade in the microphone department, production has settled in to a workable quality level that I can be proud of. I am not looking to collect money at any time during distribution. The show is getting quite popular and I was wondering if any Slashdot readers had any advice on how to distribute my show other ways than YouTube. I see Roku is an outlet like this but my show must first pass through some sort of content filter and I am still waiting to hear if medicinal cannabis is on the "no-no list." There are other indie TV-style channels I have heard of, Revision 3, for example. What other indie channels exist that might deliver my show at low or no cost? What other methods of digital distribution make sense for an upcoming web show looking to free itself from YouTube as its only distribution point?
Vimeo (Score:2)
Try Vimeo [vimeo.com].
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Is there some reason that vimeo would be particularly useful for this poster?
Well, this particular poster doesn't really explain what his needs are, or why he is dissatisfied with YouTube, or much of anything else, other than that some sites may theoretically have an anti-medical-dope policy, but he isn't sure about that. So just listing random sites that host videos is about the best we can do.
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I thought other forms of digital distribution for web shows were my clearly stated needs? I never mentioned dissatisfaction with youtube, I just wanted to know if other users of this site had any additional ideas.
Considering that Youtube is going to be most people's default choice, it's probably a good idea to indicate specifically why you're looking for other options.
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I suspect that his intended audience has a deep-seat dis-trust of establishment types, and the Youtube/Google conglomerate have long since out ran their antiestablishmentarianism days!
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there's two ways.
1) use a video hosting site such as youtube, vimeo, amazon or who the fucking ever.
2) OR host your own site. many popular online content creators do both, as their own site gives better advertising money BUT it's useless to try to find new viewers unless you're on youtube.
if you want to generate money, get on patreon. and keep the vids where they are, making exclusive content to patreon supporters is unlikely to generate too many new supporters so try to keep it all available anyways. if pe
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Not really.
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Not true, otherwise nothing would play on my Flash-free computer. Maybe you should use a better browser?
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Not on Windows and not using Chrome either. I said I was Flash-free.
Gaming review revenue model clone (Score:2)
" I am not looking to collect money at any time during distribution."
Not when you can get kickbacks from the products and people you interview.
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Confused about your goals. (Score:2)
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A host of options (Score:2)
Depending on the quality of you show, your options could range widely from Vimeo/Twitch to iTunes/Amazon. Since your streams may be considered 'illegal' in some parts of the world, I recommend doing it yourself on a video streaming hosting, making available over BitTorrent and a darknet advertising the alternative options through your regular channels just in case you have to deal with a takedown.
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if you "collected" money... (Score:2)
you could, gasp, pay for your own bandwidth.
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Host on your own website, consider archive.org (Score:2)
You could host the multimedia files on your own website, which would let you move your domain and/or provider to an amenable ISP whenever needed while retaining the same URLs for your visitors. There are ISPs such as Dreamhost.com that will host email and websites and their accompanying data files at reasonable costs with lots of bandwidth should your show become popular. I don't work for them but I've worked with their hosting and found it to be reasonable.
You could host files on archive.org [archive.org] (the Internet
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You could consider delivering pointers to your shows delivered cooperatively via BitTorrent with magnet URLs posted to popular BitTorrent-based sharing sites so the public can keep your shows downloadable even if you find hosting hard to come by.
This touches on an interesting idea which I wonder if anyone has built: a video distribution system built on BitTorrent. It seems like a clever way of using the network strength instead of these monolithic companies storing and sending all the data, requiring massive resources. It seems like it could work as long as you had enough nodes (especially offering the first few blocks - improve quick-start behaviour) and it would scale with popularity of the channel: a channel could just provide an RSS feed in
If it ain't broke don't fix. it. (Score:2)
The population of Maine is 1.33 million.
YouTube is the simplest and most reliable way of reaching your target audience and establishing the legitimacy of your project, assuming that the medical and not recreational uses of marijuana are your real concern.
The geek will propose setting up a darknet, when the real need is for openness and exposure.
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liveleak or dailymotion (Score:2)
I also try and avoid google products. I found that the transcoding works best on liveleak and dailymotion. The other free video hosting providers seem not to be able to handle 1080p very well...
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Maybe Atheist TV? (Score:1)
Just use youtube (Score:1)
Everyone knows Youtube, it's free, it allows unlimited bandwidth (unlike Vimeo) if you get enough subscribers you can alter the channel design fairly significantly.
Everything else I have tried sucks, or cost, or limits.