A few days ago, @eddiespino posted a walkthrough of the new 3Speak platform. You can check out the post and video here. I thought I'd give it a try and see what it's like. While I'm recording I might as well tell you about this platform called Yappr. It's currently on testnet, but it will soon be released on the @dashpay Evolution protocol. There are a some folks who use and support Dash on HIVE, so I'd recommend coming over and testing it out. I think you'll like it.
Sign in with Keychain & Hive Auth
This was something that really needed to be implemented in the Hive decentralized ecosystem. It just didn't make sense to have to use the old email and password way to log in. It's unsafe and it does not provide privacy. Keychain and Hive Auth don't require you to provide name, phone number or anything like that. You just need your Hive keys.
3Speak Monitor
This is a new tool that let's you monitor the process of uploading, encoding and publishing your videos to the blockchain in real time. Pretty cool feature, if you ask me.
Things that could be improved
You still need a double thumbnail
If you upload any screenshots or photos to your post, they will override the video's thumbnail. To get around this, you need to upload the thumbnail to the body of the post, which is not terrible, but also not ideal.
Timestamps
I'm a big user of platforms like YouTube. One of the features I like, is being able to navigate a long-form interview and focusing on my favorite parts. This is also very useful when commenting on the video. You can reference an exact timestamp for discussion or feedback. the viewer can click on the time stamp and it will take them to the exact part in the video itself. Super useful.
Upload a caption (SRT) file
An SRT file (SubRip Subtitle) is a plain text file containing numbered caption blocks, each with a start/end timestamp and the corresponding text, used to add synchronized subtitles or closed captions to videos. Most video editing software let's you export an .srt file for you to upload to YouTube, for example. That way, the platform doesn't need to generate automatic captions, just interpret the text file you uploaded.
I'm going to keep playing with the new platform and see if I can find anything else that could be improved. Right now, I'm pretty satisfied with the improvements :)
▶️ 3Speak