An author is a person who creates a Geminar using a video link. Frankly, all registered users can become an author: Just create a Geminar as per instructions given here, and you'll become one!

Firstly, you would need to have a link to the original video where the video was hosted. There are several ways described below. Secondly, you would need to install a simple Audio broadcasting software at your computer. That's described after we explain how to get the link to your video; which is to be used when creating a Geminar.

Then; you also need to install a notification app. So that you would get important notifications for events happening at your Geminar. Explained at the end.

Geminars itself does NOT host your videos. You need to host them at other places and use their links here, as described further here.

If you have uploaded your video at a PeerTube instance, then you need to know the embed link.

But before that: What is PeerTube? It is a fantastic P2P (peer-to-peer) project initiated by an organization in France. They created a substitute for YouTube by providing the complete open-source code for anyone to start a PeerTube server (or instance). There are many such instances. For the full list, see this link Choose the one that is most appropriate for you, read their terms and conditions, create an account there and upload your video there.

Once you upload a video; you would need the embed link.

Refer the above image. Click on the Share button on the main video at your PeerTube page. Then select “Embed” at the top part of the dialog, and ensure that you select Only Display Embed URL at the bottom of the dialog as you can see in the above image.

Then from the top part of the dialog, copy the embed link. That is the link you'll have to provide when creating a Geminar.

Bunny Stream is an excellent and quite economical CDN service that you can use to keep your video files. We have given detailed documentation on how you can upload videos from your computer to your own account at Bunny Stream. In fact, we have even written two nice utilities to help you upload videos to your own Bunny account. One of them works inside your browser itself.

As those utilities works on your own computer, be assured that your credentials to your account at Bunny will never be given to us.

See this page on how to upload to your account at Bunny Stream.

There are other places where you can upload your videos. One famous, free place is File Garden Make sure that you read the terms of their service (check if they permit use of the videos there on sites such as Geminars) Then get the link (usually .mp4 or .webm ) you have to provide to create a Geminar.

Note that many file hosting services do not have a CDN (Content Delivery Network). That means the video that you had uploaded to their service will be streamed from the same location as their server. So those people who are far away from that server may find the video to be slow. A CDN places the same data on multiple servers across the world; and then the video streaming is done from the server closest to the viewer. That is why we like Bunny Streams, as the videos are streamed via a CDN.

As an author; you would be stepping into your own Geminar to interact with the audience there. Firstly, you would be chatting with whoever who have left messages on your Geminar. Secondly, you may also want to speak to your audience. For this, we have setup a simple; yet sophisticated Icecast2 server for each author of each Geminar. To broadcast audio to our Icecast2 server, you would need a software.

The easiest one is BUTT – which works on Windows and Linux. Install that and read our instructions here. If you do not want to use a personal computer for this; but instead, you prefer to use your own mobile phone; then install the CoolMic app on Androids.

Now you may not be always at the Geminars website. So how do you know if someone is keen that you interact with them at your Geminar page? Worry not. Geminars sends a simple notification using an app called “ntfy.sh” You should install that app on your phone and set it up. Once it is properly setup, you can then get notified whenever someone “beckons” you to come to your own Geminar page. Read more about notifications here.

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