I wish Peertube was more usable. The UX is generally subpar (although impressive for an ActivityPub-based system). There's also the problem that hosting servers to host video is _so damn expensive_. There is literally only one Peertube instance I ever watch videos on (https://tilvids.com/) and I'm honestly considering stopping using it altogether. I'm not sure what I want out of Framasoft really, but I don't think Peertube or any similar solution becomes viable soon without socializing costs for video hosting, encoding, etc.
Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I wish to support, which again means the costs are all centralized and extremely high.
You can configure your server to download and mirror videos from other instances, but (iirc) only if the remote instance allows it, and if it allows your instance to "follow" it.
The fact that you haven to follow other servers as a server is insane. It also really fucks up federation, because some instances do not allow follows at all. Tilvids does not, which was a major factor in me shutting down my instance.
That said, the mirroring system is really nice. You have all sorts of dials to cache only the x most popular videos for y days and up to z GB. You can have it mirror videos from user subscriptions in a similar way, and right next to the 'download video' button is one that says 'mirror' that does what you think.
P2P as a client is a whole different matter, and I also have never, ever seen my client uploading. I think this is purely a function of how few users are actually on peertube. The chances of you watching the same video as another person on the planet is incredibly small.
I really, really want to like peertube, but it really is completely unusable. Discovery is abysmal because there's no global search. You can't rely on federation to find content because federation is opt-in and has a crazy nonsense mechanism.
Peertube is not fit to run a single-user instance like mastodon unless you only want to publish. It simply doesn't work at all if you only wish to consume video. The only real way to use the service at all is to sign up on the biggest instance you can find and hope they have interesting videos.
I have a server with tons of free disk and a big fat fiber line, and the idea of mirroring peertube videos of small creators sounds like a perfect use for my spare resources. I would love to mirror tilvids to help reduce their server load, but I simply can't because they choose to disallow it.
The only alternative is LBRY/Odyssey, which is vastly more popular, but has some serious issues with violent/extreme/illegal content and is fully wrapped up in blockchain bullshit.
On top of the video player hover over the "x peers" on the bottom, it will tell you how much data you downloaded, uploaded, and how much of the download came from peers or the server.
Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I wish to support, which again means the costs are all centralized and extremely high.