Upload Directly from Final Cut Pro
Apple's Final Cut Pro suite comes with helpful application for uploads: Compressor. It has built-in FTP support, which allows you to upload your Final Cut edits and Motion composites directly to Bits on the Run.
Step 1: Encode
When publishing files through Bits on the Run, your original video should be of the highest quality possible. This ensures that Bits on the Run can generate various smaller transcodes of your video tuned for bitrate switching and mobile phones.
If your content is in HD, you could use a preset that encodes your edit to H264 (MP4/MOV) video at 720p with a datarate of 5000kbps. For SD video, you could use a slightly lower bitrate (e.g. 3000 kbps). For audio, use AAC with a bitrate of e.g. 256 kbps.
Regardless, do not use Apple Pro Res (since we don't support it) or an uncompressed video format (risk of upload timing out).
Step 2: Upload
Next comes the actual shortcut of letting Compressor immediately upload your files. Add a new destination, and choose remote. The destination inspector will open and you will be able to add your FTP information:
- The host name should be ftp.bitsontherun.com.
- The file path should be empty (our FTP is just a drop box).
- The user and password are the same as you use for logging in the dashboard.
- The compressor FTP client cannot handle email addresses as a login name. If your email address is your login name, you will have to update your login name in the account tab of the dashboard.
Step 3: Complete the Upload
At this point, the compressor will encode your files to a high-quality intermediate and then immediately upload the videos to Bits on the Run. Next, Bits on the Run will archive this intermediate video and transcode web-optimized versions of it (180p, 270p, 480p, 720p).