Fanvids: Time To Build Them A Home
There are over 4 million fanworks listed on AO3. But fanvids have gained little traction....and very little attention or support from AO3. Vids (like fan art) are lost in the fanworks crowd, stuck on the back shelf, and not easily filtered or located. Fans must upload their vids to increasingly hostile streaming sites and run a constant risk of DMCA strikes, takedown notices and channel deletions. In many ways, fanvids are still stuck in the same nomadic environment that fanfiction inhabited before AO3 was founded in 2009.
A few vidders are using AO3 to create a "home base" for their streaming vids. By embedding a fanvid on your AO3 page, you can keep all your comments and kudos even if your vid is yanked from Youtube or Vimeo or your account is wholesale deleted. You can hand out a single link to people (a link to the AO3 vid "home page") and you will only need to update the embedded vid if and when as needed. Currently here are some of the video hosting sites that are "whitelisted" for embedding on AO3
YouTube
Vimeo
Vidders.net
VidderTube
Internet Archive (yes you can upload your fanvids to the Internet Archive)
So...... as of Feb 2019, how many vids are on AO3?
8,760 (plus or minus).*
How many vidders have uploaded their fanvids?
1514 (plus or minus)*
There are over 4 million fanworks on AO3.
Fanvids consist is .2% (.002).
What can we do to improve AO3 to make it a better home for vidders and their fanvids?
1. Let your favorite vidders know about AO3 and that they can create a stable home base for their vids (we have a tool...let's use it)
2. If you are a vidder, create a page for each of your vids (those who do not participate are often never counted)
3. If a streaming site that you use (or would like to use) is not supported on AO3, contact AO3 and put in a request (as more fans move to federated fandom sites running PeerTube and Hubzilla, will AO3 be able to speed up site whitelisting? The Critical Commons website is no longer functionally whitelisted because they have not turned on HTTPS. Is anyone from OTW working with them? Looking for workarounds?)
4. Push AO3 to offer more support for locating and showcasing vids on AO3. (ex: Make the Video tag canonical so we can set up feeds. Are there other improvements we can ask for?)
5. Push the OTW to revitalize the Vidding committee (This will require that vidders and/or fans of fanvids volunteer)
6. Other ideas?
*Thanks to Garfield for doing the hard work of locating and categorizing the fanvids currently on AO3 and where they are stored. He points out that some vid pages on AO3 may have vids embedded or hosted in multiple locations.
EDITED TO ADD AO3 SUGGESTIONS FROM BELOW
*Make the Video tag canonical so we can set up RSS feeds/notifications of new fanvids
*AO3 should add Video Element Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/video
and related, Track Element Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/track
and the podfics out there could probably also use the Audio Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/audio
Vidders and podficcers would be able to use different hosting providers, would be able to offer more accessibility options like subtitles, and would reduce the need for site by site AO3 whitelisting. [A Dreamwidth post with
comments | Post or read on Dreamwidth| How to use OpenID]
A few vidders are using AO3 to create a "home base" for their streaming vids. By embedding a fanvid on your AO3 page, you can keep all your comments and kudos even if your vid is yanked from Youtube or Vimeo or your account is wholesale deleted. You can hand out a single link to people (a link to the AO3 vid "home page") and you will only need to update the embedded vid if and when as needed. Currently here are some of the video hosting sites that are "whitelisted" for embedding on AO3
YouTube
Vimeo
Vidders.net
VidderTube
Internet Archive (yes you can upload your fanvids to the Internet Archive)
So...... as of Feb 2019, how many vids are on AO3?
8,760 (plus or minus).*
How many vidders have uploaded their fanvids?
1514 (plus or minus)*
There are over 4 million fanworks on AO3.
Fanvids consist is .2% (.002).
What can we do to improve AO3 to make it a better home for vidders and their fanvids?
1. Let your favorite vidders know about AO3 and that they can create a stable home base for their vids (we have a tool...let's use it)
2. If you are a vidder, create a page for each of your vids (those who do not participate are often never counted)
3. If a streaming site that you use (or would like to use) is not supported on AO3, contact AO3 and put in a request (as more fans move to federated fandom sites running PeerTube and Hubzilla, will AO3 be able to speed up site whitelisting? The Critical Commons website is no longer functionally whitelisted because they have not turned on HTTPS. Is anyone from OTW working with them? Looking for workarounds?)
4. Push AO3 to offer more support for locating and showcasing vids on AO3. (ex: Make the Video tag canonical so we can set up feeds. Are there other improvements we can ask for?)
5. Push the OTW to revitalize the Vidding committee (This will require that vidders and/or fans of fanvids volunteer)
6. Other ideas?
*Thanks to Garfield for doing the hard work of locating and categorizing the fanvids currently on AO3 and where they are stored. He points out that some vid pages on AO3 may have vids embedded or hosted in multiple locations.
EDITED TO ADD AO3 SUGGESTIONS FROM BELOW
*Make the Video tag canonical so we can set up RSS feeds/notifications of new fanvids
*AO3 should add Video Element Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/video
and related, Track Element Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/track
and the podfics out there could probably also use the Audio Embed Support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/audio
Vidders and podficcers would be able to use different hosting providers, would be able to offer more accessibility options like subtitles, and would reduce the need for site by site AO3 whitelisting. [A Dreamwidth post with
comments | Post or read on Dreamwidth| How to use OpenID]