Uploading Large Folders Of Footage

[Rich Adrion]

Hi
What is the best option for transferring footage to clients online other than FTP? I send at least once a week a folder of footage at least 40GB or more to a client (Sony EX1 footage,Tascam,GoPro).

My ISP (Cablevision) seems to traffic shape or throttle the FTP often during the upload. I have a 50/25 connection and the upload often drops to 2Mbit/s from 25Mbit/s for 20 mins or more.

I just gave the Bittorent Sync app a try and it works smoothly but the speed never gets past 10Mbit/s. I think it is because it does not do concurrent connections at this point so it does not make use of the full bandwidth available. A major update of the program is supposed to be released this Summer that may address the speed issues.

When I transfer using FTP I have it set for 5 concurrent connections which saturates myb bandwidth...

Dropbox is fast but I am sending too much data to use that and I would rather have a direct connection rather than a cloud option.

I also signed up for the Amazon Zocalo preview and the upload speed was VERY slow.

[Andrew Smith]

You could always change to Verison FiOS who have just changed their connections to enable the upload speed to match the download speed. Uploads are now faster.

But, really, stick the files on physical media and just overnight it in the post/courier. You can transfer terabytes overnight if you really need to.

Andrew

[Shaun Roemich]

For what it's worth, I use DropBox having purchased 100GB with a 50GB bonus for SOMETHING I did at some point. I have the DropBox folder set as my export target for Compressor (I'm on Mac running Final Cut Studio 3) so when I start my exports, I get to walk away as they automatically upload as export finishes to my client folders.

Very slick for what I do.

[Rich Adrion]

Unfortunately FIOS is not an option at my apartment complex. My feeling about mailing out drives is this, it is that most people I deal with in video production have a fast broadband connection ( at least 50Mbit/s download) my friend now has a 150/150 with FIOS. It seems silly to incur the shipping cost and risk to damage to the drive as well as having to wait for the person to mail the drive back to you when it can be uploaded in a few hours if you have a fast and steady connection. At 30 Mbit/s it should only take a few hours to upload 40GB as long as the connection is consistent.

My connection is 50/25 --more often than not I see that my upload speed is actually 30 Mbit/s but like I said when I use FTP It seems that I am getting slammed by the ISP, just looking for a good fast alternative to FTP

[Rich Adrion]

If the pricing changes for Dropbox (100GB) I might sign up. Amazon is giving you 200GB for $5 a month but they need to do something about the upload speed..I rather just skip the middle man and just find a fast direct solution other than FTP

[Dave Baker]

It may be worth trying an upload with only 4 connections to see if they throttle that, if they don't it could be quicker overall.

Just a thought.

Dave

[Rich Adrion]

My understanding is that a single large file upload will get throttled and that providing multiple connections helps avoid that...I could be wrong but that is how I interpreted what I had read in a few articles related to FTP transfers and how ISPs deal with them

[Andrew Smith]

Rather than ship a hard drive, you can burn that data to a dual layer BluRay (50G capacity) and simply send the disc through the mail/courier. Cheap as chips to do.

With ftp, why not try changing the port number that you use? Chances are that the ISP is throttling based on the network port being used for the data stream. Changing to an alternate port might just side step this.

Andrew

[Rich Adrion]

You would be surprised at how many people in event video production have never burned a Blu-Ray disk so they don't own a Blu-Ray compatible drive. I know guys who have not even burned a standard DL disk...They just compress the hell out of the footage to make it fit on the disk.

In regards to the FTP port--Port 21 is the default port for FTP and I have mine set to much higher port setting , it does not help unfortunately .

I may need to go this route
Bypass Your ISP's Throttling of Netflix or Other Videos with a VPN

[Andrew Smith]

I think an VPN tunnel would be the next option to try out.

Shame that so many people (with their pretty computers) turn out to be so clueless when it comes to understanding what they are doing.

Andrew

[Jim Michael]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

I think an VPN tunnel would be the next option to try out.

Shame that so many people (with their pretty computers) turn out to be so clueless when it comes to understanding what they are doing.

Andrew

Yes I try to use scp in preference to ftp for file transfers as it appears to be much more stable and I rarely drip a connection. Also, I don't remember the vendor I met at NAB a couple of years ago that had some type of file transfer technology supposedly optimized for speed - not sure how that would work if your data has high randomness/low compressibiliy, will look around and see if I still have the literature.

Found it - http://www.filecatalyst.com/

[Rich Adrion]

Yes I saw File Catalyst but that service is really for large production houses. The cost for the server service is at least $5,000 a year

[Andrew Smith]

Much cheaper to purchase an external BluRay drive and just give it to the client.

Andrew

[Ervin Farkas]

Take a look at BitTorrent Sync.

BitTorrent Sync - Get Started on Desktop