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Selectable alternate audio tracks on PeerTube videos, so multilingual creators stop uploading one video per language

other real project •• multiple requests

Creators and multilingual organizations on PeerTube -- the federated, self-hostable YouTube alternative -- want selectable alternate audio tracks (e.g. dubbed languages) on a single video instead of uploading one copy per language. PeerTube supports multiple subtitle tracks but only one audio track, so today people duplicate uploads, wasting storage and splitting their view counts, comments, and audience. The long-open request is still drawing fresh interest from multilingual companies, filmmakers, and screen-reader users.

builder note

Frame it as 'one upload, many languages' for dubbed and multilingual channels, not a generic player tweak; the duplicate-upload pain (storage plus split audience) is the real wedge, and since HLS already supports multiple audio renditions the hard part is the transcoding pipeline and a clean track-picker in the player, not the spec.

landscape (3 existing solutions)

Multilingual and dubbed-content channels on the federated, self-hostable YouTube alternative have no way to attach selectable audio tracks; HLS already carries multiple audio renditions, so the gap is PeerTube's transcoding pipeline and player UI, not a fundamental limitation.

PeerTube (current) Supports multiple subtitle/caption tracks but only a single audio track per video; the feature request (#939) is still open and unimplemented after years of demand.
Duplicate-upload workaround Uploading one video per language wastes storage on the instance and fragments view counts, comments, and the audience across copies.
YouTube multi-language audio The incumbent already offers selectable dubbed audio tracks, setting an expectation PeerTube can't meet -- a concrete reason multilingual creators stay on YouTube.

sources (1)

other https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/939 "very useful for multilingual companies that rebroadcast internal meetings" 2018-08-21
peertubefediversevideoi18naccessibility