My Little DTube Uploading Drama

Writing my IntroduceYourself post on Steemit, as I'd mastered the use of the asterisk (asterisk and asterisk) in Markdown, I’d actually felt like some bad-ass code writer. So, brimming with confidence my next challenge would be to create and upload a video to DTube. How difficult could that be?

As my first content post for Steemit, of course I’d wanted my video to shine. And after a few days of carefully clipping together and editing the 5 minute video, then adding appropriate audio and subtitles, I’d finally been happy with the result. With 550MB’s of HD video documenting the fun and frolics of celebrating Thailand’s famous Festival of Songkran around my home here in Northern Bangkok, I’d been good to go.

Around 10pm here in Bangkok (8am in California) I’d figured was the perfect time to upload. Across the world Whales, Dolphins and Minnows would be awake and surely one or two of them would feel the love? So, I opened Chrome, found the appropriate permission key for DTube, iced the champagne, and then dropped the MP4 file into the appropriate box to begin uploading.

As I’d drained my second cold beer, a red alert box flashed ominously onto my screen:
ERROR while submitting to the blockchain.

No problem, I just popped another beer and started the process again. But that time, the same ERROR alert appeared almost instantly. Annoying, and with only one beer left in the fridge, I’d tried again using my Opera browser and encountered the same result as before: ERROR.

Thankfully, DTube came to my rescue with a video explaining what I’d been doing wrong. At 550MB’s my MP4 file had been far too large for DTube and I’d needed to compress it using a free program called Handbrake. (Don’t you love super-skilled people who create amazing software and then give it away for free? Well, possibly not if you own stock in Microsoft)

Handbrake did its job, but by the time I’d compressed the video down to 20% of its original size, the audio had been totally ruined. No problem I’d thought, and after taking the last cold beer from my fridge, I’d dropped the compressed video file back into Power Director, divorced and deleted the compromised soundtrack, added back the original uncompressed audio file and then produced the video again as a new MP4 file.

Bingo, I’d then run it back through Handbrake and created a file size that ought to have been suitable for DTube whilst still maintaining the quality I’d hoped for.

Congratulations your video is now on DTube.

After a few hours of trying, that message had filled me with an amazing sense of relief, and despite having absolutely no idea what 'seeding the video' might actually mean, I’d kept the browser open and shuffled off to bed.

Waking in the morning, I’d excitedly gone to view my beautiful creation on DTube, only to find that I could only play 5-10 seconds before buffering for 2 minutes, then playing for 5-10 seconds and buffering again, rinse and repeat to infinity.

My Internet isn’t the fastest in the world, and hopefully for others the video will play without the buffering, but after 20 hours and receiving zero views, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve missed a vital element in the process of uploading to DTube?

Anyway, if you can watch it then I hope you’ll enjoy it, and if you can’t, then hopefully somebody with more knowledge than I on such technical matters, which is actually everybody, will be able to offer a little advice.

Riding and Smiling as always ……….. Geoff