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Bits on the Run

FTP Batch Uploading

With Bits on the Run, you can upload large files or batches to your account using the well-established FTP protocol. This protocol is safe, fast and reliable. Additionally, you can send us a spreadsheet to batch-ingest your video metadata. Please Note: We only offer this service for batches of over 100 videos.

Upload Your Files

There are countless FTP applications available, for Mac and/or Windows. We recommend FileZilla, a free and open-source tool that works on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can download FileZilla here.

After downloading, start up FileZilla and open the site manager (found under File -> Site Manager). Create a new Site with the following information:

  1. Host: ftp.bitsontherun.com
  2. port: 21
  3. Servertype: FTP - File Transfer Protocol
  4. Logontype: Normal
  5. User: Your Bits on the Run login name.
  6. Password: Your Bits on the Run password.

The above settings should work with other FTP packages as well, though they may have a different naming system. If you want to use another FTP package, and you have any questions regarding it, please contact the developer responsible for your program.

After connecting, you can upload files by dragging them into our empty dropbox. Our system detects when a transfer is completed and then automatically transcodes the video. Should the transfer get interrupted (e.g. your laptop’s battery runs out), it is possible to resume a transfer: When you login to our FTP again, the half-finished upload will still be there. Drag the video into our dropbox again and then confirm with FileZilla that you want to resume the transfer.

Do not direct FileZilla to append to the video, since that means the entire file is appended for the existing video, resulting in a useless video!

Create a Spreadsheet for Metadata

When you want to save metadata for your videos (and you have at least 100 videos), you can do this via FTP. You must first create a spreadsheet with that data. Create a new spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, OpenOffice Calc, etc. Now, you can add a row for each video that you want to import. Add any of the following fields:

  1. filename: The exact unique file name of the video including the extension. We use this field to match your FTP'ed files to your metadata.
  2. title: The title of the video.
  3. tags: The tags you want to associate with the video. Use comma’s to separate multiple tags (e.g. trailer, news).
  4. description: A description for the video.
  5. author: The name of the author or copyright holder of the video.
  6. date: The publish 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.
  7. link: This is the URL to the webpage on which the video will be displayed. We use it for sharing and video sitemaps and RSS feeds. Use a full and valid URI (e.g. http://www.example.com/path/to/your/video.html).

You can also 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.

Send your Spreadsheet

When you're done inserting videos, you need to save as or export the spreadsheet to a CSV file. This should be a pretty straightforward process. If you have to option to choose or set a character encoding for your spreadsheet, always choose UTF–8!

Here is an example CSV file with three videos. All standard metadata fields are inserted, plus an additional custom field called nodeID:

filename,title,tags,description,author,date,link,custom.nodeID

LJSVMnCF.avi,Elephants Dream,"blender, animation","Elephants Dream is the world's first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender.",Blender Open Movie Project,04/04/2006,http://orange.blender.org/,9801

ntPYsD4L.mov,Big Buck Bunny,"blender, animation",Big Buck Bunny is a short animated film by the Blender Institute. It is made using free and open source software.,Blender Open Movie Project,11/28/2008,http://bigbuckbunny.org/,5589

r3ABWwdO.mp4,Sintel,"blender, animation",Sintel is a fantasy computer generated short movie. It's the third release from the Blender Open Movie Project.,Blender Open Movie Project,07/21/2010,http://www.sintel.org/,11527

Next, contact us to note you want to do a batch import and send us your CSV file. We will then use our administrative tools to match your metadata with the files you have uploaded. Again, we only do these imports for batches of 100 videos or more.

Please remember that if you start to edit the metadata of the newly uploaded files yourself, the CSV file import may either fail for those videos or it may overwrite your changes.