Bits On The Run
A Bits on the Run Free Account gives you 1 GB of platform usage and 5 GB/month of video delivery. On average, these account limits allow you to host a 1 hour video library (in total), and stream roughly 20 hours of video to your viewers. We recommend a Free Account for Bloggers, individuals & sites just getting started with online video.
Pro AccountA Bits on the Run Pro Account allows user to pay for exactly what they need. It uses an easy and convenient Pay-as-you-Go system which does away with the hassles of contracts and monthly commitments. It's a lot like your typical prepaid mobile plan: simply charge up your account and use the system. We draw down on your balances based on your usage. When your balances get low, simply recharge. Use as little or as much as you need. It's that easy.
Please note that once you sign up for a Bits on the Run Pro Account, your account balances will reflect the payments you make. This means that if you upgrade from a Free Account, you will no longer be entitled to the free account limits.
Back to TopYou can upgrade to a Bits on the Run Pro Account by signing in to your existing account and Making a Purchase Here. As soon as your payment is confirmed, you account will be transformed to a Bits on the Run Pro Account, and your account balances will reflect what you have paid for.
If you do not have an existing account with Bits on the Run, no problem! Simply Upgrade Here!
Back to TopTwo terms often used in the video streaming business are bandwidth and traffic. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of throughput a connection can handle (e.g. 100mbit or 1gbit). Traffic on the other hand is the actual amount of data being sent (e.g. 2.31 GiB). At Bits on the Run, we use video delivery to indicate how much traffic you use.
What is considered part of video delivery?At Bits on the Run, we only account for video downloads and streams as part of video delivery. Traffic generated by thumbnails, embed codes, players and feeds is not included. We also only charge for the bytes of a video downloaded or streamed. If, for example, a visitor starts a half-hour video on your website and then stops when only 20% has been loaded, only 20% is accounted for. You only pay for what you use.
ExampleIf you upload a video to our system, it will be converted for online playback. You can decide to embed one of these conversions, e.g. the TV H.264 one, in your website. If the conversion is 50MB large, and 10 users watch it all the way through, your video delivery will be 500 MB. If the eleventh user only watches half of the video, your video delivery will become 525 MB. Next, if one user decides to also download this conversion to his iPod, your total video delivery will become 575 MB.
Back to TopWe use PayPal to process most payments. Paypal allows for secure payments by bank or by credit card (Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Discover). After the checkout, your platform usage and video delivery are instantly updated and reflected in your account.
Credit CardsWe accept credit cards for USD orders only. We use a secure service for accepting credit card payments. After the checkout, your platform usage and video delivery are instantly updated and reflected in your account.
Bank transfersWe also support manual bank transfers, whereby we simply give you the invoice after the checkout. You yourself have to transfer the funds to our bank account. When the money lands in our bank account, your platform usage/video delivery are updated.
Purchase ordersI you are unable to use direct payments (for instance if you work with purchase orders), you can contact our sales team for more information. Note that it is already possible to put a custom reference on our invoices, through the Your reference input in the checkout screen.
Back to TopIf you have a Bits on the Run Free Account, you must upgrade to a Bits on the Run Pro Account to increase these limits. You can do this by making a payment here.
Pay As You GoThe pay as you go model is all about being flexible and starting slowly, growing as you go. If you don't know how much video delivery you will use, you can start with your lowest estimate and keep an eye on your usage for the first few days to see if you're using more or less video delivery than expected. If you need more video delivery (e.g. after a spike) you can simply buy more.
Back to TopDepending on your method of payment it sometimes takes a day or more for us to receive it. In these cases your account is updated as soon as we receive the payment. The speed of payment processing depends on chosen payment method.
You checked out with PayPalA payment with PayPal is usually instant, but in some cases can still take a little longer for Paypal to approve your payment.
There are always delays if you choose an e-check as your payment method with PayPal. PayPal holds the payment until the e-check has cleared. As soon as this happens PayPal sends us an under water message and we immediately update your account.
In some cases PayPal holds a payment under investigation, which means they verify the validity of the payment. As a result we do not receive the payment until the investigation is done. You can contact the PayPal directly to speed up the process.
If your payment processed within your PayPal account and your Bits on the Run account hasn't been updated, you can contact us. Please provide us with your PayPal transaction id, so we can check the payment from our end.
You checked out with a Bank TransferIf you checked out with a Bank Transfer your account will not be updated until the money has been transferred from your bank and received by our bank. With international transfers it can take a few days or in rare cases more than a week.
We check our account every weekday to see which payments we receive. If your payment takes over a week to arrive, you can contact us to investigate. Please provide us with your bank details if you do.
Transfers within the Netherlands usually take one day, or 3 days if you transfer just before the weekend.
Back to TopFree Account Users accounts will be closed for inappropriate use of service is determined by the LongTail Video Team. As long as you are using the service as intended, your Free Account and its respective user account limits will be available indefinitely.
Bits on the Run Pro AccountsBits on the Run Pro Accounts will be closed if the platform usage balance in your account has been at zero GB for 30 days or more. This is due to the hosting costs we will incur on your behalf. To avoid permanent removal of your account, you should be sure to track your balances and recharge your Platform Usage Balance before it reaches zero GB.
You will receive an email every time either your video delivery or platform usage cross the 100GB, 10GB, 1GB thresholds. These are designed to help remind that your account balances are dropping. This email also contains a link to the payment page, prefilled with the video delivery and platform usage amount good to cover you for another three months. You will find an overview of your balances and usages, in your home and account tab in the Dashboard.
Back to TopFree Account Users accounts will be closed for inappropriate use of service is determined by the LongTail Video Team. As long as you are using the service as intended, your Free Account and its respective user account limits will be available indefinitely.
Bits on the Run Pro AccountsBits on the Run Pro Accounts will be closed if the platform usage balance in your account has been at zero GB for 30 days or more. This is due to the hosting costs we will incur on your behalf. To avoid permanent removal of your account, you should be sure to track your balances and recharge your Platform Usage Balance before it reaches zero GB.
You will receive an email every time either your video delivery or platform usage cross the 100GB, 10GB, 1GB thresholds. These are designed to help remind that your account balances are dropping. This email also contains a link to the payment page, prefilled with the video delivery and platform usage amount good to cover you for another three months. You will find an overview of your balances and usages, in your home and account tab in the Dashboard.
Back to TopUnfortunately it is not possible to run the entire Bits on the Run suite on your own servers. Video management (CMS + API) and transcoding will have to run from our servers. We don't have any short-term plans to also offer a for-download version of the system.
Back to TopYes you can. Bits on the Run includes a large number of options to tweak the style, layout and colors of your players. You can find those in the Players tab of the CMS.
SkinsOne setting that immediately impacts the look of a player is its skin. We have a number of player skins available in the system, and 100+ more can be downloaded from our addons pages.
PluginsOne of the unique advantages of the JW player is that it supports a wide arrange of add-ons that can be used to tweak both functionality and appearance of the player. You can find these in the AddOns Library. Installing them is as easy as adding a flashvar to the player.
Custom playersIf you want to create a completely different look and feel, you can build your own playback application (in Flash or any other programming language). Any videos, thumbnails and playlists can be directly loaded from our contentserver.
Back to TopEmbedding a video on your site is very easy. First upload a video to Bits on the Run. In the details page of that video (click on the video title in the overview), you will find a form called Embed Codes. It has a yellow button. Copy the contents of the Embed code input box and paste it in the HTML code of your own website. That's it!
More infoMore info, e.g. on how to set a specific Player or Conversion, can be found in the publish a video tutorial.
Both the tutorials and support forums also have hints for embedding videos in sites built with specific blog tools or CMS systems.
Back to TopCurrently the fields Title, Author, Tags, Description, Date and Link are available for your videofiles. Of course it's up to you which fields you use. However, it's not possible to add custom property fields.
TagsNote that categorization through the 'tags' input is powerful and flexible. We sometimes receive questions for adding a licensee, editor or category field. All these filters can be added by setting custom tags.
Back to TopYou can also manage audio files through Bits on the Run. You can upload most audio formats and embed them just like videos.
MP3 ConversionWe also have an MP3 conversion format, which allows users to render an MP3-only version of their videos. These MP3 files can then be exported as RSS feeds and with players. See the transcoder documentation for more info. This way you can also offer a podcast version of your video.
Back to TopIt is possible to manage multiple regular accounts with a single so-called reseller account. This option is useful for web design or video production studios that want to manage the videos and the usage of multiple clients within Bits on the Run.
Contact usPlease contact us if you are interested in a reseller account.
PaymentsResellers still pay us the regular fees for video delivery and platform usage. A reseller's video delivery and platform usage is simply the sum of all their sub-accounts. Because of this aggregation, resellers profit from lower prices than users that run multiple accounts separately.
Back to TopBits on the Run is rich in features but still easy to use. To keep it this way we are very careful with adding more features, buttons and options. This way we keep it hassle free!
Feature requestsOf course we very much value (and encourage) feature requests from clients. If you have an idea, either post it on the support forum or just contact us. If it's a good idea and of use to multiple clients, we will add it to our roadmap.
APIWe will not implement custom features that are user specific, however, a lot of the requested functionalities can also be implemented on the client side, by using our system API or our player API. Thus, it is still possible to build your desired feature through the use of our API's.
Back to TopYes, you can. We indeed offer FTP for uploading files to Bits on the Run. You can use any FTP client and login at ftp.bitsontherun.com with the email and password you also use for logging in to the CMS. Note that FTP acts as a drop box: you can only upload files to us, but not edit or delete your files.
FilezillaIf you don't have an FTP client on your computer, we recommend you use Filezilla, which is a free, open-source client for Windows, MAC and Linux.
ResumingOur FTP server supports resuming of previously aborted uploads. If your FTP transfer fails (e.g. because your laptop battery ran out), reconnect to our server to see the half-finished upload still listed. Re-upload the file, chossing the resume option on your FTP client. Do NOT use the append option, since that will result in a useless video.
Back to TopOur videos are served using a mechanism called bitrate switching. This means that the quality of your videos will adapt to the bandwidth and screen size of your viewers.
Back to TopThere's a lot of different of video containers, codecs and formats out there. These add up to literally thousands of different combinations. While we do our best effort to support as many formats as possible, we simply cannot ensure that any uploaded video will work.
Supported formatsHere is a list of video formats we do support:
Since we use the FFMPEG framework for transcoding videos, all other formats supported by FFMPEG can be uploaded too.
Not supportedA couple of formats we occasionally encounter, but NOT support are:
If your uploaded video fails to convert, you can submit a bug report, so we can take a look at it. If you do want to have your video working instantly, you can try to first convert it on your own computer, e.g. with QuickTime Pro.
Back to TopWe all hate waiting, however encoding video takes time. Obviously, the larger the video the more time it takes. As a rule of thumb, presume that one minute of video takes one minute of rendering. So for a ten-minute movie, the first conversion will be available in about ten minutes. Small videos render faster. Big videos render slower.
QueueIf the number of to be encoded videos is bigger than the number of available encoding slots, we enqueue your video. We strive to keep the queue always under 10 videos, so you will never have to wait longer that, say, half an hour.
ThumbnailsAfter uploading a video, the metadata ( duration/dimensions/filesize ) and thumbnail of a video are available within a few seconds. If you refresh the details page 5 seconds after an upload has been completed, the thumbnail is usualy there. When you upload or select a new thumbnail, these will also be rendered within a few seconds.
Back to TopWe support a maximum filesize of 5GB per video. Generally, files up to about 500MB will upload fine to the CMS. For bigger files, we advise using our FTP uploading. FTP can resume after a failed upload and it can also queue a list of files.
Transcoding before uploadingFor people who transcode videos before uploading (e.g. if you export from a video editor), we have a few tutorials that explain how-to do this with popular software packages:
Back to TopYes, it is indeed possible to use your original video for streaming, without transcoding it. This can be set up by creating a so-called Passthough template. The only thing this template does is copy the file to the CDN, skipping over the transcoding stage. Learn more in this tutorial.
CaveatsThree caveats exist when streaming your own files:
RTMP is a dedicated streaming protocol from Adobe for their Flash Plugin. We indeed offer RTMP streaming. However, we use HTTP streaming by default, since it works on HTML5 (iPad/iPhone). If you want to switch to RTMP streaming, please make sure to read through the pros and cons (below) and then contact us.
Pros and ConsThere are a few pros and cons to RTMP streaming when compared with HTTP streaming. Take good note of these before deciding on a switch:
Bits on the Run includes the widely used JW Player for its video playback. However, you are free to use whichever player you prefer. There are certain restrictions though if you use your own player.
Any playerAny standalone player that can play FLV or MP4 is supported. You can also use a customized version of the JW Player. You can even create your own Flash, Silverlight or HTML5 sites.
Content schemePlease read through our contentserver docs to learn how to access the various conversions, thumbnails and feeds associated with your video.
RestrictionsBecause we do not control the custom videoplayers, certain advanced functionalities of Bits on the Run are not available when using custom players:
We are planning an integration of live streaming for a future release of our system. However, to date it is not possible to do live streaming with Bits on the Run. Our videoplayer is capable of it, but our management console has no functionalities for setting up live streams yet.
Back to TopWe use EdgeCast as our global CDN for delivery of your videos. This means we can always manage your traffic, no matter how large your volume or how geographically spread your audience.
BOTR servicesAll our systems and services (API, CMS, FTP, Transcoders) run from a dedicated farm at Peer1, one of the world's largest hosting providers (they used to host YouTube). Each component runs, load-balanced, off multiple servers, ensuring there's no single point of failure. Even during system updates, content serving will never be interrupted.
Back to TopWith devices like iPads and iPhones becoming ever more popular, it is imperative that your video can play across all devices. This is why all our JavaScript embed codes will automatically load an HTML5 player for devices that don't have Flash installed.
What about Silverlight?Silverlight is Microsoft's alternative for Adobe's Flash plug-in and was officially released in 2008. We do not have a built-in Silverlight player avaible directly within our system.
Back to TopYes, you can indeed share embed codes in video players. You can also share the link of a specific video or channel. The sharing features can be set on the details page of a Player, and the link can be set within the details page of the Video/Channel you are showing.
ShortcutsOur sharing functionality includes shortcuts for:
At present, we offer API kits for PHP and Python. The latest version of these kits can always be downloaded from the integrations page.
No JavaScriptWe do not offer kits in JavaScript (or ActionScript), since these are client-side languages. Directly connecting to Bits on the Run with your API key and secret is very strongly discouraged! Anybody will be able to see your key and secret - which allows them to upload or delete videos from your account! Always use JavaScript or ActionScript in combination with serverside scripts that do the actual calls.
Built a kit?If you have built an API kit in another language or for a certain framework/CMS, we'd be very happy to help you share it with other users. Please contact us, so we can place it on our integrations page, crediting and linking the original author.
Back to TopThe player included within our system is the widely used JW Player. This player indeed features a complete JavaScript API. You can learn more about this in our player API section. We also have a few tutorials on player JavaScript interaction.
playerReadyBeware that there are various ways to hook up the videoplayer with JavaScript (e.g. hardcoding the ID of the player or traversing the DOM for an embed tag). While various methods may work, we only support connecting the player through a global playerReady function.
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