The new version of PeerTube 2.3 was recently released . PeerTube is a decentralized platform for organizing and distributing video. It offers a vendor-independent alternative to YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo, using a P2P-based content distribution network and linking visitors' browsers.
The new version highlights several improvements focused on federated networks, screen space optimizations, an automatic blocking plugin (alpha) , among others. In addition, following the general trend in the use of inclusive terms, the developers have renamed the "videos blacklist" function to "videos blocks/blocklist" in this new version .
For those unfamiliar with PeerTube , it's based on the use of WebTorrent , which runs in a browser and uses WebRTC technology to establish a P2P channel—direct communication between the browser and the ActivityPub protocol. This allows disparate servers to be joined with video on the overall federated network, where visitors are involved in content delivery and have the ability to subscribe to channels and receive notifications of new videos.
The web interface provided by the project is built using the angular framework.
The PeerTube federated network is formed as a community of small, interconnected video hosting servers, each of which has its own administrator and can adopt its own rules.
Each video server plays a role similar to that of BitTorrent, where the user accounts of this server and their videos are located.
The user identifier is formed in the form "@ username @ server_domain". Data transfer during viewing is done directly from the browsers of other visitors viewing the content.
In addition to distributing traffic among users watching videos, PeerTube also allows sites launched by authors for initial video placement to cache videos from other authors, forming a distributed network not only from clients but also from servers, in addition to providing fault tolerance.
Main new features of PeerTube 2.3
In this new version, one of the highlights is the improved means for building federated networks, as it now provides an additional configuration for streaming video to other networks that are not included in the public lists.
In addition, support was implemented for sorting video files by screen resolution in reverse order. Full descriptions of video objects can now be sent via ActivityPub.
Another new feature accompanying this version is the proposed alpha version of the Automatic Video Blocking plugin to allow blocking of videos based on public blocklists.
Furthermore, in PeerTube 2.3, moderators now have the ability to bulk delete comments for a specific account and disable accounts while viewing thumbnails. Support has also been added for predefining typical deletion reasons.
Global search support has been added (disabled by default and requires administrator activation) and the use of all available screen space has been optimized when displaying a grid of thumbnails.
Other notable changes in this new version include:
- The administrator has the ability to define the banner that is displayed on the pages of the current PeerTube instance.
- Added video counter and channel information to "My Videos" page.
- Simplified navigation menu in the administration interface.
- Provided the ability to restrict access to RSS feeds with new videos for specific channels and accounts.
- To process images, instead of the binding Sharp library, the jimp (JavaScript Image Manipulation Program) module is used, written entirely in JavaScript.
Finally, if you want to know more, you can consult the complete list of changes as well as the download links at the following link.