Free desktop app · Windows + Linux
DCAST Mini Uploader
The background video uploader for videographers. Drop a folder; new videos get uploaded to your dcast account with the quality and visibility you set — automatically, in resumable chunks, with the file size you actually shoot.
Windows installer (~125 MB, NSIS). The current build is unsigned — Windows SmartScreen will prompt; click More info → Run anyway. A code-signed build is coming. Linux AppImage (~169 MB) is also available.
Built for the way videographers actually work
Watch any folder, any drive
Point the app at the folder where your camera offloads or your editor exports. Anything that lands there gets queued, uploaded, and tagged with your defaults — automatically.
Per-folder presets
Different folders, different rules. Camera dump → source quality + private. Highlights → 1080p + public. Set it once, forget it.
Resumable uploads
TUS protocol with 8 MB chunks. Drop the connection at 7 GB and it picks up where it left off, not from zero. Works overnight, on flaky hotel Wi-Fi, on long flights.
OS keystore auth
Your login token is sealed with Windows DPAPI — bound to your Windows user account. Never written to disk in plaintext, never visible to other processes.
Streaming reads
A 4 GB MOV does not load into RAM. The app streams bytes straight from the file to the upload pipe at 8 MB at a time. Same logic that lets it survive 100+ GB camera dumps.
Live status, no nagging
Tray icon shows what is queued, what is uploading, what is done. No popups. No daily-limit emails. No upsell modal — actually free.
Three steps to never manually upload again
Sign up in the app
First launch: enter email + password. The app creates your dcast account in the same step the website would, no separate flow. If you've already got a dcast.tv account, just log in.
Add a watch folder
Click + Add Folder, pick the directory, choose default quality + visibility. The app starts watching immediately. Add as many folders as you want — each with its own settings.
Drop files, walk away
Anything you drop into a watched folder is filtered by extension, deduped by content hash, and uploaded in the background. Tray icon shows progress. Everything ends up in your dcast.tv library, ready to share.
Useful even if you never use the platform
Sign up with email + password — that's the whole prerequisite. No tier, no card, no trial. Watch a folder; the app uploads anything that drops in. The minute you want to share a clip, it's already on your dcast.tv library — public link, embed code, all of it. The tool itself is the value. The platform underneath is the bonus.
What runs locally
- File watcher (chokidar) — one per enabled folder.
- Dedupe via SHA-1 of (path + size + mtime), capped at 5,000 entries per folder.
- Streaming TUS upload — fs.createReadStream piped into 8 MB chunks.
- OS keystore via Electron
safeStorage(Win DPAPI / macOS Keychain / Linux libsecret). - UI: React 18 + Tailwind, packaged with Electron 30.
What does not run locally
- No analytics, telemetry, or third-party trackers.
- No local LLM. No background scraper.
- No file scanning beyond the folders you explicitly add.
- Auth and upload all hit the same dcast.tv endpoints the website uses.
DCAST Mini Uploader — questions videographers actually ask
The app is the simplest possible answer to a common problem: a videographer comes back from a shoot, dumps the camera card to a folder on disk, and now has to manually drag dozens of files into a browser to share them with a client or save them to a portfolio. The Mini Uploader removes the manual step. You configure the folder once; everything that lands in it from now on ends up in your dcast.tv library with the quality and visibility settings you chose.
Under the hood the app does only what is necessary: a file watcher, a de-duplication step (so re-importing the SD card does not re-upload), a resumable upload pipe, and a small status panel. The login and upload code paths are exactly the ones the dcast.tv website uses — there is no “desktop” auth shim, no separate token store outside your own machine, no per-app server-side state. The same DCAST account, the same videos, just without the drag-and-drop.
For videographers and content teams who shoot weekly events, the resulting workflow is closer to upload happens while you sleep than to upload is a chore. There are no daily caps, no nag screens, no advertising. The app is genuinely free and stays free.
- Q:Is the app really free? What is the catch?
- A:It is free. The catch is that the app uploads to dcast.tv, and dcast.tv has plan tiers for cloud-side processing and storage. Your free dcast account works perfectly for hosting and sharing videos through the app at modest volume. If you push terabytes through it, you eventually upgrade. The app itself never charges, never shows ads, never times out.
- Q:Do I need a paid dcast plan to use the app?
- A:No. A free dcast account is enough. The app and the website talk to the same backend with the same login — anything you can do on dcast.tv as a free user, you can do through the app.
- Q:Does it work without the dcast platform — just to convert raw camera files?
- A:A pure local-export mode (output mp4/mkv to a local folder, no upload) is on the roadmap. Today the app is upload-first. If you have a use-case for camera-format converter without the cloud step, tell us — that is the next phase.
- Q:What file types and sizes does it accept?
- A:By default: mp4, mov, mkv, mts, m4v. Configurable per folder. No hard upper file-size limit on the app side — the resumable TUS pipe handles 4 GB+ files routinely. Effective limit is your dcast plan storage quota, which the app respects gracefully.
- Q:What happens if my computer goes to sleep mid-upload?
- A:TUS upload is resumable: when the machine wakes, the upload continues from the last acknowledged byte. The same is true for short network outages. Long disconnections (24 h+) may invalidate the upload reservation — the app will retry from where the byte cursor was.
- Q:Why does Windows show a SmartScreen warning when I run the installer?
- A:The current alpha build is unsigned — Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" because no Authenticode certificate is attached yet. Click "More info" → "Run anyway". A signed build is on the roadmap. Until then, verify the SHA-256 hash on the download page matches the file you got.
- Q:Where does my password go? Where is my token stored?
- A:Your password is sent only to the dcast login endpoint over TLS — same path the website uses. The app never stores the password. The session token returned by login is stored using Windows' DPAPI (encrypted with a key tied to your Windows account); it is in app data, never in plain text, and not portable to other computers or other Windows users.
- Q:Can I use the same account on the website and in the app simultaneously?
- A:Yes. Sessions are independent. Uploads from the app land in the same library you see on dcast.tv; you can manage, share, and delete from either side.
- Q:What about Mac and Linux?
- A:The codebase is cross-platform Electron — Mac and Linux builds are technically the same code path. Builds for those platforms are not published yet; ask if you want them earlier than the public roadmap.