I tried to like Invidious, I really did but it’s just awful. it’s basically painful to use as it is now. I’ve tried to play around with various combinations of settings and browsers and cant find any combination where the video doesnt either:
- take a few minutes to launch
- fail to buffer every 30 seconds or so
sometimes it’ll do both or get “stuck” and then wont buffer at all, or skip frames and then the audio is out of sync with the video - it usually gets stuck at that point though. is there some magic trick that folks use to make it at least moderately usable? or is it just vaporware?
as it is, I’m just going to go back to youtube. it works & works really well. the only thing I found useful about invidous was the ability to export the channels I subscribed to as xml/json. there’s better downloaders, I just dont see the draw for this utility.
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havent tried to switch instances - the one I chose. https://vid.puffyan.us, is hosted in the US. cant migrate accounts between instances (though you can import a subscription list), so it’s a step I just dont feel like doing. I suppose I could but I’m not willing to try 20x instances to find one that works. chalk it up to laziness, apathy, or whatever.
I use Linux and mpv to watch the videos. I use ‘Open with’ firefox extension and configure a shortcut to open links via mpv. That way, I can just right click in the video page >> Open with mpv. Rarely encounter problems this way.
Would you mind sharing the link/author of the extension? I tried searching on Firefox’es site, but only found spammy-looking unrelated add-ons.
Thanks!
I do have Mint installed on a box I use for other tasks, not entertainment though so its specs arent that great. I’ll give it a try I guess (maybe this weekend) but I use win10 as my daily driver
It should not be linux exclusive though. I see that there are some firefox extensions that are targeted for VLC, so you could also try them.
Have you tried finding an instance that is close to your location?
I havent. I chose an instance in my country (US) but with the issue of not being able to move accounts between instances, I have no real incentive to do so - it’s not like youtube is down/not working, it’s got a better uptime than some other websites I could name ;)
account migration in the fediverse really needs to be a thing. ah well
Adding to this, I only get 720p no matter what I do.
yeah, same - and it has issues, as described.
Have you tried piped.video? I recently found it thanks to a bot that replies to YouTube links with Piped links of the same video.
I have not - I’ll give it a look. thanks!
Did you use someone else’s or did you host your own?
Invidious is just a frontend to Youtube like Teddit was a frontend for Reddit. It’s not federated, and Google can and will do everything in their power to make it suck. Just like how Reddit will now destroy Teddit next month.
Peertube is the federated option for video hosting/sharing. But of course, like everything else currently controlled by the centralized mega-corporations, there is a huge network effect hurdle that users need to overcome to get their content off of the user-hostile megacorporations (Youtube) and onto the federated alternatives (Peertube).
I see invidious/teddit/nitter/quetre/rimgo/scribe/libremdb as stop gap band-aids to temporarily give power back to the users, but in the end the owners of the content have full control over stopping these.
This is why it is so important that we promote federated networks like lemmy, mastadon, matrix, peertube, etc… Otherwise the entire internet will be a user-hostile cesspool.
