DCAST Desktop: watched folders and resumable uploads

DCAST Desktop is an app for Windows and Linux that uploads videos to your DCAST account. It can watch folders on your computer and put every new video saved in them into your upload queue on its own, once, and a long upload continues where it stopped after the app is restarted. It works on every plan, and its uploads spend the plan's ordinary limits like any other upload.

Download and sign in

1. Download the app from the Mini Uploader page in the Tools section of dcast.tv: the installer for Windows, or for Linux the .deb installer or the AppImage. There is no macOS build.
2. The Windows installer is not signed: if Windows warns you, click More info and then Run anyway.
3. Open the app and sign in with your DCAST account.

Watch a folder

1. Click the folder icon in the header (Watch Folders) and then + Add folder, or drop a folder onto Drop a folder here.
2. On the Basics tab choose the Folder path with Browse and, if you like, give it a label. The File extensions default to .mp4, .mov, .mkv, .mts and .m4v, and the minimum size to 5 MB.
3. On the Upload tab set the Default quality, the Visibility (Private by default) and what happens After the upload: Keep the file, Archive it into a hidden .dcast-archive folder inside the watched folder, or Delete it. Click Add folder.

Which files are uploaded

• While an export is still writing to the file, the app waits, and it queues the video once the file has stopped growing. The video is queued at its final size, and a finished export is queued one time, not again for every piece the export wrote along the way.
• Project files, images, notes and hidden files in a watched folder are left alone. Videos inside subfolders are not watched: save them into the folder itself.
• If the same video lands in two watched folders, it is sent for upload one time, even when the copies have different names or file types, because the app recognises a copy by its content. The second copy stays in the list marked as skipped, with the name of the copy that went ahead. Two different videos are both uploaded, even when they share a name and a size.
• Each row of the queue shows Waiting in the queue, its progress, or a reason. When a row says the upload failed, check the connection and click the Try again icon on the row.

Uploads that continue after a restart

When you start DCAST Desktop again after closing it or restarting the computer, it first asks the server how much of your file has arrived and then sends only the rest. The second attempt continues your first upload; it does not create a second one on the server.

A video from a watched folder that was already uploaded is not uploaded a second time, and a video that was still waiting in the queue is picked up again. A file picked by hand is not picked up after a restart: add it again, or put it into a watched folder.

A short fault on the server side while the upload resumes does not send the file back to the start. Only when the server reports that the earlier upload no longer exists does the app start that file again from the beginning, as one new upload.

The record the app keeps on your computer for resuming holds the name and size of your file and the address of the upload on the server, and not your sign-in token. It is cleared once the file has arrived in full.

Leave the file where it is and keep the app running until the last part has arrived, and make sure the computer does not go to sleep before a long upload is done.

Step by step

The same steps, with common problems and their fixes, are in the help centre: Upload automatically with DCAST Desktop. To upload from a browser or your own code instead, see Upload flows.