Upload

Your recording happens on your device and travels to the server in small pieces while you talk. This page follows that path: what happens in the background, what to do if you need to leave early, how an upload can still finish later, and what a gap in a track is about.

While you talk¶

The recorder keeps cutting your audio and camera into small pieces. Each piece goes into a private store in your browser first and gets uploaded from there, one after the other and always in order. If a piece doesn't get through, podsink simply tries again for as long as the tab is open, and the pieces behind it wait. podsink never skips a piece that can still be uploaded, because every lost piece would be a hole in your recording. Only a piece the browser couldn't store at all, or one the server turns down as too large, gets left behind so the rest can get through, and that's exactly what becomes a gap.

That's also why a bad connection doesn't hurt the recording. Your device keeps writing at full quality whatever the line is doing. The line only decides how far behind the upload runs.

The last seconds after a stop¶

When a take stops, the last pieces are still on their way. So the upload keeps going until everything really is on the server, and only then is your track closed and put together. Please keep the tab open until that's done. The host can see who's still uploading, and the end dialog names anyone whose pieces haven't arrived yet.

Leaving while the recording runs¶

As a guest you can leave a running take any time with Leave in the control bar. Your own recording stops there while the others keep going, and podsink takes you to a page that uploads the rest for you. Once the green check shows up there, you can close the tab or the browser.

The host doesn't have a Leave button. When they stop, the take ends for everyone, and when they end the session, the room closes.

Finishing an upload later¶

Sometimes a recording doesn't finish uploading, say because a laptop was closed, a browser crashed or a tab was closed too early. podsink then lets you know the next time you open it on that device. A small note appears at the bottom of the screen and takes you to a page listing every session that still has pieces on this device. For each session you can see what's waiting, what's uploading and what's done, and there's an Upload button per session plus one for all of them. Please keep the tab open while the upload runs.

You won't see that note while you're in a session. A background upload there would take bandwidth the live call needs, so it waits until you've left.

The pieces live in one browser on one device¶

Everything is stored in the browser you recorded with, on that exact device. Another browser or another computer won't have the pieces, and clearing the site's data deletes them.

Two things follow from that. First, rejoining is no problem as long as it's the same browser. podsink then keeps uploading whatever is still there, and your recording continues on a new track so nothing overlaps. Second, once a session has ended, nothing more can be uploaded to it. The upload page tells you so for that session, shows how long the pieces will stay on the device, and lets you remove them. Pieces that can't be delivered any more stay for a few more days before podsink cleans them up.

A gap in a track¶

How you'd notice a gap is covered in Troubleshooting. Gaps are rare, and they happen when the browser couldn't store a piece or the server turned a piece down as too large. A crashed or closed tab doesn't make a gap, though, because its pieces stay on the device and can still be uploaded as long as the session hasn't ended. For audio, podsink fills exactly that spot with silence, so everything after it stays in place on the timeline. The session's card in your sessions list also shows that a track has a gap, because otherwise a few silent seconds would just look like nobody was talking.

Video is different, because a hole in the middle of a video file makes the rest of it useless to editors. So podsink closes the video track at the gap and carries on with a fresh one, only a limited number of times per take, for the camera and for the screen share alike. After that it stops that video and offers you a retry button instead of piling up more files. That way every file you end up with is clean from start to finish.

A full device is the one exception. Then nothing can be written at all, and the video file keeps its hole until there's room again. Audio keeps running the whole time and never restarts.

When the device has no room left¶

If the browser can't store a new piece because the device is full, podsink lets you know, and your track gets a gap from that point on. Once the waiting pieces have uploaded and freed their space, saving works again. You don't have to delete anything for that, because whatever is still on the device is still needed.