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Uploading media

Get images, videos and 3D models out of your file system and into the open project's library.

Where uploads go

Uploaded files belong to the project that is open at the time, and they land in whichever folder is selected in the Asset Browser sidebar. With All Assets selected they land at the top level.

Select the destination folder before you drop the files — moving them afterwards is easy (Organizing media), but picking the right folder first saves a step.

Two ways to upload

The Upload button

On the Assets tab, click Upload at the top right of the file area. Pick one or more files and confirm. The picker only offers file types Moonshine accepts.

Drag and drop

The sidebar has a dashed drop zone reading Drop files here / or click to browse. Drag files from your desktop onto it, or click it to open the same picker.

Can't see the drop zone?

The sidebar shows either the drop zone or the details of the selected asset — not both. Click empty space in the file area, or press Esc, to clear the selection and bring the drop zone back.

You can drop a whole batch at once. Uploads run in parallel, and you can keep dropping more while the first ones are still going — the drop zone counts what is in flight and invites you to add to it.

Supported formats

Kind Extensions
Models .obj, .gltf, .glb, .fbx
Images .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .webp
Video .mp4, .mov, .webm

Anything else is ignored — a dropped file with an unsupported extension simply never appears in the library. Nothing is reported on screen, so if a file does not show up, check the extension first.

Container and codec are different things. .mov in particular carries anything from H.264 to ProRes, HAP or DNxHR; all of them upload, but they preview differently (see below).

More detail on what each format is good for: File formats.

What happens during an upload

  1. The file is inspected in your browser to work out its dimensions, duration or vertex count, and to generate a thumbnail.
  2. A tile for it appears in the library straight away, with a percentage overlay and a progress bar over the thumbnail.
  3. The file itself is streamed to the machine running the show in 8 MB chunks, four at a time.
  4. When the last chunk lands the overlay clears, and the asset is available to everyone else connected.

The metadata captured depends on the type:

Kind Recorded
Image Width, height, file size
Video Width, height, duration, codec, file size
Model Vertex count (.obj only), file size

All of it is visible in the sidebar once the asset is selected, and the list view shows the headline numbers as columns.

Thumbnails and previews

Images and browser-playable video get their thumbnail generated locally, so it appears the instant the tile does. Models are rendered to a thumbnail the same way, and can be orbited in the preview pane.

Video in a codec your browser cannot decode — HAP, HAP Q, ProRes, DNxHR and friends — is a special case. It uploads and plays back on the projectors perfectly well, but your browser cannot show it inline. For those files:

  • The thumbnail is generated on the machine running the show and arrives shortly after the upload finishes.
  • The sidebar preview shows that thumbnail with a small badge naming the codec, instead of a video player.

This is a preview limitation in the browser only. It says nothing about whether the file will play on output.

Large files

  • The per-file ceiling is 5 GB. A larger file is rejected before any bytes are sent.
  • Big uploads are limited by the network between your device and the show machine. Uploading a 40 GB folder of ProRes over hotel Wi-Fi will take what it takes — plug in, or upload from the show machine's own browser.
  • An upload that fails partway removes its tile again, so a half-transferred file never turns into a broken asset. Drop the file again to retry.

Load in before the room

Uploading is the slow part of prep and does not need projectors, a dark room, or anything aimed anywhere. Create the project and push the media up the day before; alignment can then start against real content.

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