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Ask Slashdot: Options Beyond YouTube For An Indie Web Show?
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?
Try Vimeo.
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" 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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The internet does not require you to go through someone else's web service to deliver your content.
You say you are not looking to collect money at any point in distribution. So what do you want? Maybe you want a lot of people to see the show. In that case, Youtube already serves you well for distribution, and you could just focus on advertising/promotion. Or maybe you want clout. Or having colleagues and connections. Or something else?
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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You could try using bittorrent as an additional alternative distribution method.
Check your ISP's TOS and see if distributing from home(non-commercially) is allowed. Web servers and similar servers are usually disallowed but bittorrent might fall into a gray area. It could also be a good reason to upgrade to a business class internet plan.
An alternative to bittorrent distribution from home is a VPS network to do the bittorrent distribution. You will have to examine the VPS provider's TOS at that point, but you should be able to set alerts/warnings when you are approaching the bandwidth limit of each VPS node.
to promote Revision 3. I will certainly take a look at it.
Have you considered archive.org?
The guy who makes Chrontendo puts copies of the episodes of there.
you could, gasp, pay for your own bandwidth.
lose != loose
It's great for keeping the cost down when distributing large files, if you're willing to let distribution depend on more than just a web browser.
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 (the Internet Archive) for no fee which will deliver files to all comers also gratis. I'm not aware of IA discriminating against people doing what you're doing.
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.
You could combine these ideas, they're not mutually exclusive. And I hope you'll consider distributing your multimedia in formats that favor free software such as WebM. Finally, be wary of any provider's changing terms of service should you start talking about something they someday consider important. Commercial organizations and nations don't have permanent friends, they have interests which change.
Digital Citizen
Just put it on the Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. Possibly coupled with one of the services that let you stream torrents in the browser.
Seriously - this stuff is medicinal...
Give Bing a try. They have an interface for every platform.
Grab Procaster, and once your video is made, just stream it through that at high quality settings. You get the benefit of being able to engage a live audience for a while as it streams, and you can have a copy of the broadcast (minus the live chat) available for anyone else to review later on.
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.
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? http://atheists.org/AtheistTV
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.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
oneload.com
Gives you access to any major platform. Check it out and choose one or more distribution points.
You could make the videos available as torrents. Not everyone is willing or able to use a torrent, and it doesn't help people to actually find them, but at least it's a cheap(ish) way to distribute video.
A while ago I used a piece of software called Miro, which I think had some sort of directory of channels and content. (Indeed, I first came across Revision3 through it.) I suppose it's probably worth listing things there. There are probably other directories.
Go jerk off in your eye.
Run your own web server (if your ISP allows & you have the bandwidth) by installing gnump3d. Despite the name, it serves up mp4 files via streaming just fine. Or just run a webserver and serve up the file for downloading.
try filmon.com and gaiamtv.com , put it up on some documentary tubes, anything with an alexa ranking under 10k though I think porn sites have non-porn restrictions hehe. also put it on a torrent seedbox.
My 2c