TinglyTube Notices

Showing 11 to 15 of 41 notices.
TinglyTube was down for 10 hours, and I'm extremely sorry.

On February 4, 2022, at around 6:30-7 pm (EST) TinglyTube suffered an approximately 10-hour outage until it was brought back up around 5 am today (February 5, 2022), but how and why did this happen?

Well, while TinglyTube has a small but incredible development (and engineering) team, they are mostly off on the weekends unless specifically called in, leaving me (JJ15ASMR, Co-Founder, CEO, & CTO of TinglyTube) to be the "first responder" to any issues that arise on the backend of the site before our development team is called in to assist.

And there's usually never been an issue with it being that way, however, it relies on me to be awake during a majority of the day and constantly checking in on TinglyTube as I usually do. However, my second semester of high school started this week which has required me to start waking up much earlier again than I was during break (I go to online school which makes it better though :) because of this, I've been getting quite tired in the evening's unless I force myself to stay awake until a more proper time to fall asleep, but considering it's a Friday with nothing else I need to do, I decided to lay down for a minute, but setting no alarm for myself, that turned into a full 10 hours of sleep... all while TinglyTube went down shortly after.

And remember what I also said about needing to also constantly check in on TinglyTube? Well, that's a very important part of the equation because we don't have any server monitoring system in place to automatically check and notify us if something is down, not responding, or not working. Which should be in place, and is my fault for not. The closest thing we have in place is Munin, which is a simple open-source resource and network monitor, it doesn't alert us, but it does track and create graphs representing resource and network usage, which is how we have this graph showing our shameful downtime gap:



As said before, this is my fault completely as TinglyTube is my passion and I am responsible for making the big decisions regarding it which include how our infrastructure is set up and monitored. And I am extremely sorry to the TinglyTube community and our team for this horrible mistake of not having a monitoring/alert system in place.

Obviously, an apology is not the only thing needed to make this right, something also needs to be done to prevent this in the future, so as such, a proper monitoring and alert system have been set up this morning that will notify I and our development team through a variety of ways (email, SMS, & phone) in case of a future outage or other issue(s) so that they be fixed in minutes not hours.

As for "why" this happened, we're not entirely sure yet, there are so many moving parts that play a role in making TinglyTube work that could have malfunctioned or possibly been overloaded, but the biggest priority was getting things back online, which was actually quite simple in a way because all that was needed was a forced restart of our server, and things were back up and running within about 20 minutes once everything started back up again. We are investigating to find the root cause though because if it's something we can also fix and prevent in the future, we will.

If you have any questions or concerns about the downtime/outage, please contact us via our Support/Feedback form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

- Jacob Daniel (JJ15ASMR) Co-Founder, CEO, & CTO.

161   2 years ago
Create awesome looking custom thumbnails using the NEW Canva button! 🖌️✨



Last month we finally introduced the ability to add Custom Thumbnails to your videos and we're excited to announce a super amazing update to the custom thumbnail feature!

Maybe you're not sure what image editing software you need, how much it will cost, and how long it will take to learn the ropes of it, well, wonder no more! You can now create an awesome-looking thumbnail without ever leaving TinglyTube or downloading any software using the NEW Canva button!

For those who aren't aware, Canva is an amazing (and free) graphic design platform that allows anyone to create almost any kind of design in minutes using a large repository of professionally created templates, graphics, photos, backgrounds, and more (which includes uploading your own images)!

Once your video is successfully uploaded, you can go to the "Edit Video" page for the video you want to add a custom thumbnail to by clicking/tapping your username at the top-right corner of the site (or the person icon) and then selecting “My Videos” from the dropdown list, and then clicking/tapping the "Edit" icon under the video (for in-depth instructions on this with screenshots, please check out our Custom Thumbnails help article here).

Once on the Edit Video page, scroll down and under the "Upload a Custom Thumbnail" file input, you'll see the beautiful purple "Design on Canva" button, give it a big ol' click, and the Canva 'studio' will launch.



Once in the studio, use the menu on the left to access a variety of design elements (such as graphics, photos, and text) or upload your own images, you can also select a pre-made template that you can tweak to 'fit' your video, once you're done with your masterpiece, simply click/tap the "Use as Custom Thumbnail" button to the top-right of the studio and within seconds your design will be exported back to TinglyTube, then hit the "Save" button on the Edit Video page and your Canva design will automagically be added as your video's custom thumbnail!



Note that you will need a Canva account to create a custom thumbnail using the Canva button, if you don't have one already, you'll be prompted to create one when you click on it, it's quick and you'll be able to get right to creating your custom thumbnail as soon as you create an account. Also, while most design elements and templates are free, some are "Pro" which requires a paid Canva account (which is not mandatory).

We hope that this update allows even more creators to create great-looking custom thumbnails with ease.

If you experience any problems while trying to use the Canva button, then please let us know using our Support/Feedback form, we're always ready and happy to help you!

149   2 years ago
Custom Thumbnails have arrived! 🎨🖼️ (and a How-To on them!)



An important part of getting viewers to want to click on and watch your video is drawing their attention and enticing them, this is the purpose of the thumbnail image for your video, it’s the first and biggest thing viewers see before reading your title and ultimately deciding to click.

Previously, when you uploaded a video on TinglyTube, our system would automatically generate 20 thumbnails for you to choose from to serve as the thumbnail of your video, however, we realized that creators (Including our own CEO, JJ15ASMR) sometimes didn’t like the ones that were generated or felt that a custom one would fit their video much better, and we agree!

That’s why we’re happy to announce the arrival of Custom Thumbnails! Yep, they’re finally here and available for all creators! Keep reading to learn more :)

You can add a Custom Thumbnail for your video in two ways:

1. During the uploading and encoding process

Once your video is uploaded and you’re redirected to the Upload Status page, under your video’s thumbnails you’ll see a button that says “Upload Custom Thumbnail”, click/tap it, and a box will pop up where you can choose an image from your device.



Once you’ve selected an image, it’ll be previewed for you under the file input, if it looks good, click “Upload” and you should see a green success message at the bottom of your screen.



2. After the uploading process 

After your video is uploaded and processing has been completed, you can add a Custom Thumbnail to your video by clicking/tapping your username at the top-right corner of the screen and then selecting “My Videos” from the dropdown list.

(On PC)



(On Mobile)



Locate the video that you want to add a Custom Thumbnail to and click/tap the “Edit” icon underneath it, scroll to the bottom of the edit page and you’ll see a file input, click/tap it to choose an image from your device.



Once you’ve selected an image, it’ll be previewed for you under the file input, if it looks good, click/tap “Upload” and you should see a green success message at the bottom of your screen. You can also click/tap the “X” icon under it to remove the image your selected.



And that's it!

Just a note: We recommend creating your custom thumbnails with a dimension of 1280x720 (16:9 aspect ratio) and exporting them as a PNG file, however, we also accept most of the popular image formats. This will ensure that they look their best once we downscale and compress them :)

We hope that adding the ability to add Custom Thumbnails to your videos makes the creator AND viewer experience much better for you, and if you have any suggestions for us on how we can make it even better or if you’re experiencing any issues, feel free to let us know via our Support/Feedback form

152   2 years ago
Say "Hello" 👋 to our Redesigned Player! 📺



We're already 7-days into 2022 and starting the year off with a bang in our first order of business: Redesigning the video player.

While the previous player worked well and did its job, it had its issues:

  • Its font size and controls were pretty small, even on desktop, making it hard for those with reduced eyesight to navigate the player, especially when in fullscreen.
  • It didn't respond to spacebar presses, so when you tried to pause/play a video using the natural instinct learned from other video websites, the page would just jump down!
  • The player would always set the volume to high when you went to another video (even if you adjusted it), instead of staying consistent.
We took those issues and some design inspiration from other video players to the drawing board, and after some work and tweaks, we're excited to introduce our Redesigned Player! (Which you may have already seen since we swapped it out yesterday :)

Our redesigned player features:
  • A bigger player font and controls (especially on desktop), making it easier for those with reduced eyesight to navigate the player.
  • A control bar that is practically transparent making it as minimally invasive as possible, while still allowing for the increased font size.
  • A variety of intuitive keyboard hotkeys (including responding to spacebar presses).
  • A new volume slider that also persists across videos, so you no longer have to adjust it each time for every video!
A side-by-side comparison of the old and new player:



Now back to one of our favorite additions to the redesigned player, Keyboard Shortcuts! Here's a quick list of the ones currently available and their functions:
  • Up/down arrow keys or mouse wheel to control volume.
  • Right/left arrow keys to seek 5-seconds forwards or backward.
  • M key to toggle mute.
  • F key or double-click to toggle fullscreen.
  • 0 key to restart the video.
  • 1 - 9 keys to skip through the video by sections (e.g., 0 is 0%, 9 is 90% and 5 goes to the video midpoint).
  • :SLDkjjrfasljk;idfohdg to summon the Tingle god who will bless you with the ability to not wake up tangled in your headphones.
We hope that you're excited as we are about the redesigned player and that you like it! If you have any questions, feedback, or concerns for us, don't hesitate to let us know via our Support/Feedback form.

165   2 years ago
TinglyTube now accepts a wider variety of video file formats! 📁



We're happy to announce that we now accept a wider variety of video file formats in addition to the MP4, AVI, FLV, and MOV formats that we accept.

The full list of file formats that we now accept are:

  • MP4
  • AVI
  • FLV
  • MOV
  • MKV
  • MPG
  • ASV
  • MPEG
  • XVID
  • DVIX
  • 3GP
  • 3GPP
  • RMVB
  • RM
  • DAT
  • WMV
  • OGG
  • OGV
  • WEBM
So no matter whatever file format your video's in, we should be able to gladly accept and process it!

We hope that this improvement makes the uploading process and creator experience easier for you, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to contact us via our Support/Feedback form (you'll also no longer need to enter your name or email address if you're logged in, it's now automatically filled in for you!)

125   2 years ago