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Technical SpecsOct 1st 2014, 7:34pm
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Uploading Tons of Videos From a Single Meet, Fast!

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RunnerSpace.com/Help   Oct 18th 2013, 9:27pm
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Over the years we, at RunnerSpace, have figured out a few little tricks and methods in order to get our many, many videos uploaded as quickly as possible.  The author of this article has spent countless track meets recording races and uploading them as the meet progresses clinging to the hope that the internet will have proven fast enough throughout the day to have as few videos left to upload at the end of the day as possible! This guide will help you upload five videos or 200 videos in much less time than you might think it would.  Here are a few tricks, in order of how you would tweak your uploading process so that turning around and uploading the next video will be an efficient process. 

Note: this is not a video uploading tutorial.  For a more comprehensive guide to uploading videos, click here

One final thing before we begin, it should be noted that nothing affects uploading time more than these two variables: internet speed and file size.  There are ways to check these stats:

  • Free internet speed testing websites are widely available and we highly recommend you become familiar with the speed of the places near you that offer internet access.  Who knows, the local internet coffee shop may provide faster internet than your home, and for this project, this could save you hours and hours of sitting around waiting for uploads to finish. 
  • The size of your file will also greatly affect how quickly your video is uploading (a video half the size will take half as long to upload!).  There are free basic video editing software programs or apps available besides the expensive video editing platforms the professionals use to make complex videos.  These simple programs can "process" your video down to a much smaller file size without losing any noticable quality.  Be warned, though, that based on the speed of your computer, this may or may not be an efficient use of your time.  If uploading the full sized video is faster than processing the same video down to a smaller size, it would make more sense to just upload the original video file.  There are many options for free programs, do a Google search for "free video processing software," and pick your favorite!

Now that you're armed with high speed internet and smaller file sizes, you're ready to upload efficiently!  Let's do this!

  1. Open your Upload Video link in a new tab.  This will help in the following ways:

    - You can upload from multiple tabs at once (only recommended for extremely fast internet speeds!).

    - Once uploaded, you'll be able to return to this form with much of the data still in place (helpful when uploading very similar videos: 100m Heat 1, then 100m Heat 2).
    - Having an entire tab dedicated to uploading videos will save you from accidentally closing this popup you normally work with when simply clicking Upload Video rather than opening it in a new tab.
  2. Lock in your attachments.  We admit, this one is a bit of us hacking our own website, but it's a real timesaver!  
    - Click on Attachment Options and attach to all the events, groups, and profiles you would like your video to be attached to.  
    - Assuming there are more than one, you'll need to lock these in, so that when you come back to upload your next video, these attachments will still be selected and you can skip this step for the next video upload, and every upload after that as long as you're working within this tab.  To do this, you'll need to leave one of the required fields (Title, Category, or Description) blank when you click "Upload Video." For example, once you have everything filled in and you're ready to upload the video, leave the Select Category where it is and click "Upload Video."  

    The page will refresh and give you a red error message at the top of your screen.  That's a good thing!  Now, when you return to this page by clicking "Back" in your browser (more on this later) all of your Attachments will still be selected.  Select your required category now and continue. 

    - Note: when using this method, make sure you only select attachments that all of your videos will apply to.  For example, when we are uploading videos from the Oregon State High School Cross Country Championships, we'll attach to the event page "Oregon OSAA X-C State Championships," our high school page, "RunnerSpace.com/HighSchool," and our state page, "RunnerSpace.com/OR."  We know all of our race videos from this meet will apply to all three of these attachments and we won't have to change or forget to change attachments for the next video upload.  For more on Attaching / Tagging / Hashtag Basics, click here.
  3. When your video is finished uploading click the "Back" button in your browser twice to get back to your original "Upload Video" form.  
    - Now, you can make changes to your form to accommodate the next video you are about to upload.  This is quite helpful when uploading races that are sequential, as in the 100m Heats example above, but works well for any video you'll be uploading from this event.  
    - Just create a new title (from: "Boys 5 km Championship Race - OSAA State XC 2013" to: "Girls 5 km Championship Race - OSAA State XC 2013")
    - Make any necessary changes in the description (we often just place a hyperlink to the event site in the description so we don't have to make any changes, and at most we paste in results for the race we're about to upload and we'll change those to match each race specifically. 
    - Now upload your next video, and repeat! 

One other tip that can help you stay organized is to be on top of your file management on your computer.  Your camera will probably just assign a number to each file (which is helpful in keeping them in order),
 
but we often film entire track meets and end up using several memory cards as we swap them out with the camera throughout the day as we'll be recording on one and uploading from the other.  We like to name all of our files on our computers before we actually upload them via RunnerSpace.
 
That way, there is no confusion with getting file numbers wrong, but rather an extra level of clarity as when we go to upload the Boys 5000m race, we're looking for a file titled Boys5000 (or something similar!).  

That's it!  You're ready to become a RunnerSpace approved video uploading machine!  Uploading and archiving a meet's videos to RunnerSpace can be a rewarding prospect as you, your team and their friends and family can enjoy watching and sharing your videos for years to come.  As technology improves and internet speeds get faster, these projects will take less and less time, but the most efficient video uploaders can already upload an entire day's worth of track events from the largest relay meets and invitationals to RunnerSpace by the end of the competition day!  Happy uploading!

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