Notes
Lessons learned from today’s jam session over zoom:
- Self-hosting vs youtube/loops.video/etc
- Youtube embeds are the most reliable way to get feed readers to do inline playback, unfortunately
- Same reason to not use the nocookie version of youtube - it could bork in feed readers. Might be able to get clever with serving the stock version to RSS and nocookie version to website if I can wrangle the complexity. (Update: yes I can!)
- Self-hosting is fine for non-blog stuff (e.g. work portfolio) or “video postcards” that are functionally similar to animated GIFs.
- Embedding
- Default embed code is hidden for youtube shorts; right click or ctrl click on the video itself on youtube to see a secret secondary menu.
- Layout
- Surprise! The default embed breaks on mobile. Oh the irony.
- Added a little bit of CSS to make it responsive for mobile.
- Also cleaned up the desktop view to make it fit vertically.
- Playback
- A pleasant surprise: interface for embedded shorts is remarkably restrained.
- Doesn’t crowd the playback w/ controls or social buttons for hearts, likes, etc.
- Has a nice simple black screen at the end with a button to replay, instead of the usual kaleidoscope of recommended videos.
- Using nocookie version strips back the interface even further, like getting rid of the subscribe and reply buttons. Unfortunately it also adds a permalink button, which is yet another motivation to use the generic video tag for my own videos on my site and save the youtube embed for the rss feed.
- Whether youtube serves up the shorts interface or regular one seems to be a black box of autodetection based on factors like orientation and length of the video, as well as possibly also whether the device is mobile or desktop. Desktop seems to still serve up the regular interface and associated clutter of “you might also like” recommendations.
- Of course the version on youtube itself sucks (tiktok-style crowding of the playback interface with social buttons, feed of suggested videos from other randos) so I’d never want to send that out. Good motivation to create standalone pages on my own site for clips I want to share.
- The landing pages for each video on loops does better than youtube (example) with a simple page for just the one video, although it still has the distracting social buttons for hearts and etc. Loops could be a good fallback option if I don’t have a video on a post already, e.g. like if I want to share something while on the go, or maybe go with Mastodon instead (example) because it has built in social replies. I can also see the two interplaying as complementary services, e.g. posting to loops and then boosting the link on Mastodon for the interaction and posting to my own site for non-social sharing, sort of like having comments off.