Often, I try to find 10-20 minute videos about interesting scientific topics, ttrpg design or board game design. In the past I used YouTube to scratch that itch, but I love PeerTube’s vision so I thought I change to PeerTube for that.
However, I find it much harder to quickly find a good video. Good doesn’t mean professional, but clear title, good mic and mostly fluent presentation of the given topic. I use the PeerTube search; not on a specific instance.
Is there a trick to improve results? Are my topics too niche? What are your experiences?
I alsi wish search was better.
But I’ll often look at https://piefed.social/f/fediversevideos and see who uploaded something new. If your on piefed, you can subscribe and it pulls a collection of channels across the entire peertube/fediverse.
How do you search PeerTube?
You don’t. That’s what’s preventing PeerTube from being successful.
PeerTube isn’t going to be a drop-in replacement for Youtube, but it can provide a back-up or alternate source for a channel that might break some guidelines or risk mass reports. I like using it through NewPipe/PipePipe to blend with other sources. You can make a playlist with Youtube, Soundcloud, Peertube, Bandcamp, and BilliBilli, and aside from buffering the experience is seamless
One option is https://sepiasearch.org/
Cheers! It provided some good results, but still not perfect.
You have to remember that YouTube has 20 years of content and is ran by an advertising agency that also specializes in search algorithms, and they make money by having ads watched along videos that retain attention enough to motivate people to watch another one (usually meaning quality videos, though algo slop is also a consequence). PeerTube is a little over 6 years old, is almost entirely operated by volunteers and donations, and the whole fedi, including PeerTube, is only near .0001% of youtube’s user base. While the community is improving at a rapid rate, near every topic outside of the fediverse itself simply is by YouTube standards still niche, especially if you only watch in English.
Searching curated instances like https://fedi.video/ is probably the best we have right now if you don’t want to sift for gold yourself, outside of requesting more creators (preferably those you’re patreoning) to join or at least allow reposting.
Coming from a consumer perspective No, I don’t have to remember all that. I like the idea of PeerTube, but if it currently is not meeting my needs (content + search-ability), I will keep it in mind, but not use it.
Thanks for the link to fedi.video! Sadly, the results aren’t much better (be it not enough matching content or a bad algorithm).
