Have you ever noticed your old and some times even not so old @dtube videos stop playing? When you upload a video to D.Tube, their server stores your files on a short term node which then gets deleted for reasons including not being popular enough to generate a traffic that will keep the cache fresh. After being deleted from DTube server, the playability of your video will depend whether there is an IPFS node connected to the Internet that is sill pinning (keeping the file in cache) your video file. In most situation, there will be no other IPFS node keeping your file because that does not happen automatically, there might be some that keeps it temporarily but it will likely be deleted sooner or later (more like likely sooner than later).
What are the solutions?
Choice #1 - Setup your own IPFS node
If you want job well done, do it yourself. Well not always 😅 but if you have the technical skills or are willing to learn, you could investigate this path and setup the IPFS software on your desktop or a server if you have one, that machine would be switched on 24/7. As you add a video to D.Tube you will also pin it on your IPFS node or you can do the other way around: add it to your IPFS node and copy/paste the hash into D.Tube.
But this is not the topic for this post.
Choice #2 - Request a pin from a public IPFS node
Some of us, including me, are running our own IPFS node and are providing free or paid pinning services. As part of my Witness campaign, I used to run an instance of Dtube Community Support but the project is not maintained anymore so I started writing my own code which is not automated yet and you need to request a pin for your videos individually.
Where to find public @dtube and @dsound public IPFS nodes? The answer is: in One Love DTube Discord server: https://discordapp.com/invite/T7nxjV5
Disclaimers: I'm not affiliated with OneLoveDTube and their services, I'm only providing free IPFS pinning and using their Discord server as a way to expose the service to interested members.
Join that server and enter the #community-backup channel. In that channel, live community IPFS bots that will await for you to request pinning of your videos. There are multiple bots owned by different developers and communities. My bot is called @steemulant and will respond to various commands:
Different bots might respond to different commands but the most common ones for pinning videos are:
!ipfs URLpin the source video!ipfs240 URLpin the 240p video!ipfs480 URLpin the 480p video!ipfs720 URLpin the 720p video!ipfs1080 URLpin the 1080p video!addvideo URLpin the video
The URL provided can be either a Steemit or D.Tube/DSound URL, some bots might support other Dapps URLs.
Here is an example of one of the members requesting a pin of the source video:
The OneLoveDTube community also provides paid services including pinning your video for life and access to their video uploader which offers several advantages over uploading via D.Tube's website. For more info, head towards https://oneloved.tube/
Here are the stats of my IPFS node as of today:
- Number of pins: 1286
- Repo size: 52.87 GB
- Repo version: fs-repo@7
- Rate In: 21.38 KB/s
- Rate Out: 6.49 KB/s
- Number of connected peers: 119
Support me by voting for my Witness
I’m running a Steem Witness node (server) for over a year now. That node is participating in block production and signing and is part of the Steem blockchain network that powers all Steem Dapps.
Running such server is not free and requires regular monitoring. Steem Witnesses are rewarded from the Producer Reward pool but Witnesses ranked below 20 are rewarded with a ridiculous amount that barely covers our server cost, some of us are even running it at loss.
As Steemian, you have the power to elect which Witness should be ranked higher by casting a Witness vote for their account. The vote casting is free and you can cast up to 30 votes and have the ability to modify your vote at any time if you change your mind.
If you like the work I do for the community and the Steem blockchain, please consider casting a Witness vote for me and also consider voting for other Witnesses. Being ranked over 100, I don’t appear in the official Witness list at https://steemit.com/~witnesses however, scroll down to the bottom, type my username quochuy in the first text field and simply click the VOTE button and it’s done. Thank you in advance.
Related content
Summary of some of my other contributions
| Project | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Steemed Phish | Chrome browser extension to make external links more visible and alert you on Phishing/Scamming links | Steemed Phish |
| Dtube Community Support | This project by @evildido allows users to run their own IPFS node and pin videos in order to cache them for longer. Dtube has the tendency of deleting non-popular video after few days only. I helped Dockerizing the project for an easier deployment on almost any platform. I've also contributed by running two nodes, one in Australia and one in Canada to cache #teamaustralia and #teamnz videos. | Dockerizing Dtube Community Support |
| DiscoSteem Bot | This is a Discord/Steem bot project by @planetenamek. When I started Steemulant Bot for the Vietnamese community, I didn't know the existence of DiscoSteem Bot and wanted something written in NodeJS. I've ended up continuing my own project as it contains code and logic for personal use and for the Vietnamese community. But I've decided to share some useful features that can benefit the users of DiscoSteem Bot and will continue to add more functionalities as I go. | Dockerizing DiscoSteem Bot |
| A Dollar A Day | This is a project run by @pennsif and will donate 15 SBD every day to a charity | "A dollar a day" fundraiser - Karaoke Singing: Le chanteur malheureux |
| Team Vietnam | I started a new Vietnamese community on Discord and developed @teamvn, a community bot to help grow the Vietnamese community and help them create higher quality content. | |
| POCKET-JS | This is my Javascript (NodeJS) port of the POCKET confirmer by @biophil. POCKET is an experimental crypto token on top of STEEM. | POCKET-JS Confirmer |
| Skippy Bot | I've written this Discord bot for @teamaustralia, it has three main features: a level bot (like Tatsumaki but with Australian animal images), a chatter bot and a footer banner generator for both @teamaustralia, @teamnz and @steemph | Witness Update 2018-07-30 - Team Australia's Skippy Bot |