Is there a way to post video on Lemmy?

submitted by gedaliyah

When I try to post, it uploads and generates a link but it doesn't show up in the post. Is this a platform limitation?

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8 Comments

🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️ , edited

Afaik, Lemmy only supports static images. Even uploading a .gif results in a non-animated image.

All you can do is link to a video hosted elsewhere.

teft , edited

You can hotlink gifs. Don’t upload them since it will load them in the video player. It you use

![](gif url here)

that will hotlink the gif.

Deceptichum

Do I look like a know what a gif is

HarbingerOfTomb

Gifs can be uploaded but there's a low size limit. Still trying to figure it out. Probably varies by instance.

🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️ , edited

That appears to be true seeing as @Deceptichum uploaded a working .gif to their instance. I guess the ones I've tried were too big.

Björn Tantau

I don't even know how to properly configure it on my own instance. I thought I had configured it properly to handle large gifs, but then it still doesn't work sometimes for some random reason.

Doesn't make it easier that lemmy uses pictrs 4 when pictrs 5 is currently the stable version. But I have no idea if Lemmy can handle that.

Admiral Patrick , edited

What format does it get converted into? Can you post a link that you got back (even in the comments)?

Each instance can configure pict-rs (the media subsystem, basically) a number of different ways or even disable videos entirely (or convert them to gifs, etc).

Regardless of format, Lemmy+Pict-rs isn't really setup for videos longer than a few seconds (pict-rs has to transcode the upload, and there's a hard timeout between Lemmy and pict-rs). Most people either upload to catbox and put the .mp4 link as the post URL or post a YT or Peer Tube link.

Em Adespoton

Sounds like a client limitation?