path: root/README.md

<h1 align="center">
  PeerTube
</h1>

<h4 align="center">
Federated (ActivityPub) video streaming platform using P2P (BitTorrent)
directly in the web browser with <a href="https://github.com/feross/webtorrent">WebTorrent</a>.
</h4>

**PeerTube is sponsored by [Framasoft](https://framatube.org/#en), a non-profit
that promotes, spreads and develops free culture in general, and free-libre
software in particular. If you want to support this project, please [consider
donating them](https://soutenir.framasoft.org/en/).**

<p align="center">
  <strong>Client</strong>

  <br />

  <a href="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube?path=client">
    <img src="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.svg?path=client" alt="Dependency Status" />
  </a>

  <a href="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube?path=client#info=dev">
    <img src="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/dev-status.svg?path=client" alt="devDependency Status" />
  </a>
</p>

<p align="center">
  <strong>Server</strong>

  <br />

  <a href="https://travis-ci.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube">
    <img src="https://travis-ci.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.svg?branch=develop" alt="Build Status" />
  </a>

  <a href="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube">
    <img src="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.svg" alt="Dependencies Status" />
  </a>

  <a href="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube#info=dev">
    <img src="https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/dev-status.svg" alt="devDependency Status" />
  </a>

  <a href="http://standardjs.com/">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-standard-brightgreen.svg" alt="JavaScript Style Guide" />
  </a>

  <a href="https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/#peertube">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/%23peertube-on%20freenode-brightgreen.svg" alt="PeerTube Freenode IRC" />
  </a>
</p>

<br />

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://peertube.cpy.re">
    <img src="https://lutim.cpy.re/mRdBAdeD.png" alt="screenshot" />
  </a>
</p>

## Demonstration

Want to see it in action?

   * [Demo server](http://peertube.cpy.re)
   * [Video](https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/f78a97f8-a142-4ce1-a5bd-154bf9386504)
     to see how the "decentralization feature" looks like
   * Experimental demo servers that share videos (they are in the same
     network): [peertube2](http://peertube2.cpy.re),
     [peertube3](http://peertube3.cpy.re). Since I do experiments with them,
     sometimes they might not work correctly.

## Why

We can't build a FOSS video streaming alternatives to YouTube, Dailymotion,
Vimeo... with a centralized software. One organization alone may not have
enough money to pay for bandwidth and video storage of its servers.

So we need to have a decentralized network of servers seeding videos (as
[Diaspora](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora) for example).  But it's not
enough because one video could become famous and overload the server.  It's the
reason why we need to use a P2P protocol to limit the server load.  Thanks to
[WebTorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent), we can make P2P (thus
bittorrent) inside the web browser, as of today.

## Features

- [X] Frontend
  - [X] Angular frontend
- [X] Join the fediverse
  - [X] Follow other instances
  - [X] Unfollow an instance
  - [X] Get for the followers/following list
- [X] Upload a video
  - [X] Seed the video
  - [X] Send the meta data with ActivityPub to followers
- [X] Remove the video
- [X] List the videos
- [X] View the video in an HTML5 player with WebTorrent
- [X] Admin panel
- [X] OpenGraph tags
- [X] OEmbed
- [X] Update video
- [X] Videos view counter
- [X] Videos likes/dislikes
- [X] Transcoding to different definitions
- [X] Download file/torrent
- [X] User video bytes quota
- [X] User video channels
- [X] NSFW warnings/settings
- [X] Video description in markdown
- [X] User roles (administrator, moderator)
- [X] User registration
- [X] Video privacy settings (public, unlisted or private)
- [X] Signaling a video to the admin origin PeerTube instance
- [ ] Videos comments
- [ ] User playlist
- [ ] User subscriptions (by tags, author...)
- [ ] Add "DDOS" security


## Installation

See [wiki](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/wiki) for complete
installation commands.

### Front compatibility

  * Chromium
  * Firefox (>= 42 for MediaSource support)

### Dependencies

  * **NodeJS >= 8.x**
  * yarn
  * OpenSSL (cli)
  * PostgreSQL
  * FFmpeg

#### Debian

  1. Install NodeJS 8.x (current LTS):
     [https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions](https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions)
  2. Install yarn:
     [https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install](https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install)
  4. Run:

```bash
    $ apt-get update
    $ apt-get install ffmpeg postgresql openssl
```

#### Ubuntu 16.04

  1. Install NodeJS 8.x (current LTS): (same as Debian)
  2. Install yarn: (same as Debian)
  3. Run:

```bash
    $ apt-get update
    $ apt-get install ffmpeg postgresql openssl
```

#### Arch Linux

  1. Run:

```bash
    $ pacman -S nodejs yarn ffmpeg postgresql openssl
```

#### Other distributions

Feel free to update this README file in a pull request!

### Build from the sources

```bash
    $ git clone -b master https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
    $ cd PeerTube
    $ yarn install
    $ npm run build
```

## Usage

### Production

If you want to run PeerTube in production (which might be a bad idea for now :) ):

```bash
    $ cp config/production.yaml.example config/production.yaml
```

Then edit the `config/production.yaml` file according to your webserver
configuration. Keys set in this file will override those of
`config/default.yml`.

Finally, run the server with the `NODE_ENV` environment variable set to
`production`:

```bash
    $ NODE_ENV=production npm start
```

The administrator password is automatically generated and can be found in the
logs. You can set another password with:

```bash
    $ NODE_ENV=production npm run reset-password -- -u root
```

**Nginx template** (reverse proxy): https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/master/support/nginx <br />
**Systemd template**: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/tree/master/support/systemd

You can check the application (CORS headers, tracker websocket...) by running:

```bash
    $ NODE_ENV=production npm run check
```

### Upgrade

The following commands will upgrade the source (according to your current
branch), upgrade node modules and rebuild client application:

```bash
    # systemctl stop peertube
    $ npm run upgrade-peertube
    # systemctl start peertube
```

### Test with three fresh nodes

```bash
    $ npm run clean:server:test
    $ npm run play
```

Then you will get access to the three nodes at `http://localhost:900{1,2,3}`
with the `root` as username and `test{1,2,3}` for the password.

### Other commands

To print all available commands, run:

```bash
    $ npm run help
```

## Contributing

See the [contributing
guide](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md)
to see how to contribute to PeerTube. Spoiler alert: you don't need to be a
coder to help!

## Architecture

See [ARCHITECTURE.md](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md) for a more detailed explanation.

### Backend

  * The backend is a REST API.
  * Servers communicate with each others with [Activity
    Pub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/).
  * Each server has its own users who query it (search videos, query where the
    torrent URI of this specific video is...).
  * If a user uploads a video, the server seeds it and sends its followers some
    metadata (name, short description, torrent URI...).
  * A server is a tracker responsible for all the videos uploaded in it.
  * Even if nobody watches a video, it is seeded by the server (through
    [WebSeed protocol](http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0019.html)) where the
    video was uploaded.

Here are some simple schemes:

<p align="center">

<img src="https://lutim.cpy.re/6Qut3ure.png" alt="Decentralized" />

<img src="https://lutim.cpy.re/NvRAcv6U.png" alt="Watch a video" />

<img src="https://lutim.cpy.re/pqKm3Q5S.png" alt="Watch a P2P video" />

</p>