We have chosen to do so as follows: on the one hand we will work primarily in the coming months to improve these tools within PeerTube itself (in the <i>core</i> of the software). On the other hand, we will also focus, in parallel, a large part of PeerTube's development effort during 2019 on the integration of a plugin system, which can be developed by the communities.
This v3.1 also changes the way transcoding tasks are managed. Before, and for each instance, transcoding occured chronologically as users were uploading videos. Thus when a video maker was uploading several videos in a row, he prevented video transcoding from other users of the instance. Therefore we have <strong>modified the priority management system for these transcoding jobs</strong> so that when a user upload several files at the same time, the transcoding of some of his videos is de-prioritized (they are on standby) if another user upload a file. In other words, administrators can give an higher priority to optimize jobs and can decrease priority of transcoding jobs depending on the amount of videos uploaded by the user in the last 7 days. This prevents one single user from blocking other people's contents' uplaods: it's more fair. Besides, administrators can now see the progress of video transcoding in the list of on-going jobs on their instance.
This version also includes a notification system that allows users to be informed (on the web interface or through email) when their video is commented, when someone mention them, when one of their subscriptions has published a new video, etc.
Thus, it is now possible to authenticate users via an external server (OpenID or SAMLv2 compatible) or via an LDAP directory. This work was made possible thanks to funding from the <em>"Direction du Numérique pour l'Éducation du Ministère de l'Éducation et de la Jeunesse" (France)</em>.
To support the installation of these plugins, we have just created <a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://joinpeertube.org/plugins-selection">a new page</a> in which we will often highlight a plugin selection. Thus we hope that more and more instance administrators will install them to improve their instance features.
Transcoding? It's the process of converting an audio or video file from one encoding format to another so media files can be visible on different platforms and devices. On PeerTube, we use the FFmpeg program to transcode the videos you upload. You probably have noticed the warning message when you post a video saying "This video is being transcoded, it may not work properly yet". In fact, until transcoding is complete, your video may not be seen from all your devices.
Until now, transcoding rules were the same for every PeerTube instance: you couldn't modify them. From this v3.1, <strong>you can create transcoding profiles by installing plugins on instances</strong>. Instance administrators can select a transcoding profile adapted to their needs after installing a plugin. We hope many of them will create such plugins to customize their FFmpeg settings.
We recommend not to install PeerTube on low-end hardware or behind a weak connection (for example, on a RaspberryPi with an ADSL connection): this could slow down all federations.
Users who report an item are notified when their report status changed (accepted/rejected) and when they get a message from moderators. They can see the list of reports they made in <i>Account Settings</i> - <i>Misc</i> tab - <i>My Abuse Reports</i> page. In this page, you can send a message to your instance moderators by clicking on the bubble-shaped icon in the <i>Messages</i> column.
Version 2.2 includes many improvements to make PeerTube's interfaces more pleasant to use. The most visible improvement is definitely the <strong>search bar</strong>. Located in the top right, this search bar now offers indications to make an efficient search. For instance, you can search for a channel with its name but also by using the @channel_id@domain form.
