Uploading Media via FTP

While Centova Cast's web-based file uploader is a convenient way to add files to your media library, the fact remains that web browsers were never originally intended to provide file upload capabilities, and the upload functionality offered in most modern browsers tends to be inefficient and cumbersome to use.

Centova Cast also supports uploading media via FTP, a highly efficient protocol which was designed from the outset for transferring large files. If you are an advanced user and have a large amount of media to upload, you will likely want to upload via FTP.

Selecting an FTP Client

To upload files via FTP, you must install a special "FTP client" application on your home computer. FTP is a very well-known and widely-supported protocol, so a large selection of different FTP client applications are available over the Internet.

You may wish to contact your hosting provider for assistance in choosing an FTP client, as they may only provide technical support for specific FTP client software. Alternately, you may find one of the various free FTP client solutions available on the Internet to be suitable, such as FileZilla, WinSCP, or the FireFTP Firefox Add-on.

Once you have selected and installed an FTP client, you can proceed with configuring it to connect to your hosting server.

Configuring your FTP Connection

The process for connecting to the server will vary depending on your choice of FTP client, but all FTP clients will require essentially the same information in order to connect to your server.

To obtain your FTP connection information in Centova Cast, click Quick Links under the General heading in the navigation panel at the left-hand side of the page. Scroll down to the FTP Client Connections heading to find your FTP hostname, username, and password.

Finally, enter this information into your FTP client and connect to the hosting server. If you require assistance in determining where to enter this information in your FTP client, please consult your FTP client's documentation.

Uploading Media

After connecting to the server with your FTP client, you should see a folder and file list similar to that displayed in the File Manager. Just as in the file manager, typically, the only folders of interest will be the media folder, which contains the media you have added to your media library, and ondemand, which contains the media you have added to your On-Demand Content widget.

To add new media to your media library, simply use your FTP client to upload new media files into the media folder on the server. (You may optionally create sub-folders inside the media folder to help organize your files; the files in the sub-folders will still be detected and included in your library.) In most FTP client software, to upload media you can simply locate the desired media files on your home computer and drag them directly into the media folder shown in the FTP client.

After the upload completes, the new tracks should automatically appear in your media library within approximately one minute.

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