Batch Video Importing

Bits on the Run has the ability to import large numbers of videos at once. This is useful for e.g. migrating an existing video library. Both the videos and their metadata (title, description, etc) can be imported.

For now, the importing of a video library is a manual process, for which you have to create a spreadsheet of your videos and contact our support team. This process is most efficient if you have roughly 100+ videos. For smaller amounts, it's easier to use the multi-file uploader inside our dashboard.

Create Your Spreadsheet

To start a batch import, you must create a spreadsheet with your data, for example in Google Docs or Microsoft Excel. In the sheet, add a row for each video you want to import. Add any of the following fields:

url

The full URL to your original video, accessible over the web (e.g. http://example.com/video.mov). We will automatically import this video and create the appropriate encodes. Note this field is the only one that's required.

title

The title of the video.

description

The description for the video, typically 10 to 100 words.

tags

The tags you want to associate with the video. Use comma’s to separate multiple tags (e.g. trailer, comedy).

date

The creation date of your video. You can give a date and time or a date only. You must use this format: YYYY-MM-DD for dates and YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS for time.

link

This is the URL to the webpage on which the video is displayed, the so-called play-page. This URL is used for sharing and SEO. Use a full and valid URL (e.g. http://example.com/page.html).

Note the URLs to your videos much be publicly accessible over HTTP, but they can contain security mechanisms like a signature to prevent full public access. A frequently encountered scenario is when the videos are stored on Amazon S3 and the spreadsheet contains a signed URL for each videos, set to expire after a month:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/bucket/video.mp4?AWSAccessKeyId=ABCDE&Expires=1141889120&Signature=ZYXWV

Custom Properties

You can add other columns, if you want to add specific data for your videos. This specific data will be saved as custom variables for the video. To used custom variables name your tables using the following convention:

custom.yourVariableName

The yourVariableName can be whatever you want as long as you ensure it only contains letters and numbers, not spaces or other special characters. See below for an example.

Send Your Spreadsheet

When you're done inserting videos, please send the spreadsheet to us (e.g. by sharing the Google doc or emailing the XLS). If you have an option to choose or set a character encoding for your spreadsheet, always choose UTF–8! This will save us headaches around special characters.

Here is an example CSV file with three videos. Video URLS and titles are inserted, plus an additional custom field called nodeID:

url,title,custom.nodeID

http://example.com/LJSVMnCF.avi,"Elephant's Dream",9801

http://example.com/ntPYsD4L.mov,"Big Buck Bunny",5589

http://example.com/r3ABWwdO.mp4,"Sintel",11527

You can send us the sheet through support (see the links in the dashboard). Please include your account login name or API key, so we know to which account the videos need to be added. We will then run our import tool to ingest the videos.