Why do you think it's badly federated? I've never been unable to find my peertube account from anywhere I've tried - Mastodon, Firefish, Friendica, Pixelfed, or Lemmy.
I might have no idea how it works, but I can barely ever find anything, let's say looking for crusader kings content. Either it doesn't exist (possible) or the instances are badly federated and I can't find that stuff searching on one of them.
I use Peertube a bit but I have to agree with you on the search issue. I have a very hard time finding what I am looking for. I generally add channels based on recommendations I find on Lemmy and Mastodon.