Upload to GoPro Cloud 4x Faster with Parallel Transfers
· 3 min read · Updated
After a day of riding, diving or traveling, a GoPro can hold anywhere from 20 to 200 GB of footage. You plug the camera in or connect over Wi-Fi, and the GoPro app starts uploading to GoPro Cloud, slowly.
The wait usually has little to do with your internet speed. GoPro's app sends files one at a time: it picks a file, uploads it, waits for confirmation, then starts the next one. With 100 clips from a weekend trip, each one sits in a queue while the previous clip finishes.
That sequence never uses your full upload bandwidth. Most internet connections can handle several uploads at once, and a connection with 50 Mbps upload speed could be pushing four or five files at a time, but GoPro's app uses it for just one.
Blober opens several connections to GoPro Cloud and uploads multiple files at the same time. If your connection can handle four simultaneous uploads (and most can), you finish in roughly a quarter of the time.
The gain comes from using the whole connection. GoPro's app uploads one file at a time, so bandwidth sits idle between files.
| Scenario | GoPro App | Blober |
|---|---|---|
| 50 GB weekend trip (100 clips) | ~4.5 hours | ~1.1 hours |
| 120 GB week-long shoot (300 clips) | ~11 hours | ~2.7 hours |
| 8 GB quick session (15 clips) | ~43 min | ~11 min |
Estimates for a 100 Mbps upload connection that Blober fills, with the app's one-at-a-time uploads using about a quarter of it. Actual speeds depend on your connection, file sizes, and GoPro Cloud server conditions.
GoPro's web interface limits downloads to 25 files at a time, so downloading 500 clips means repeating the process 20 times.
Blober has no batch limit. Select 10 files or 10,000 and start the transfer, and Blober works through the entire queue without stopping to ask you for the next batch.
Uploads fail when connections drop, laptops go to sleep or Wi-Fi switches networks. When a GoPro Cloud upload fails in the app, it often starts the file over from scratch.
Blober tracks progress per file. Files that fail are retried automatically, and an interrupted task resumes from the files it already finished instead of starting the whole batch again. A file that was cut off partway is sent again from its beginning, which takes a while with GoPro's 5.3K videos at 5-10 GB each.
GoPro's app expects you to upload from the camera or phone. If your footage is on an SD card, a NAS, or already in another cloud provider, you cannot use the app to get it into GoPro Cloud.
Blober uploads to GoPro Cloud from any source it supports: local drives and SD cards in a card reader, Synology, QNAP or other network drives, and other clouds such as Dropbox, Google Drive or AWS S3. That includes DJI or Insta360 footage, so action-camera media from several brands can end up in one cloud.
- You already have a GoPro Plus subscription and want to use the cloud highlight reels and editing features.
- You want automatic camera-to-cloud backup but need a faster way to bulk-upload existing footage.
- You shoot with DJI or other cameras and want all your action footage in one place with GoPro's editing tools.
Blober also works the other way: if you are moving away from GoPro Cloud, it can transfer your entire library to Backblaze B2, AWS S3, Dropbox or a local drive.
Why are GoPro app uploads so slow? The app sends one file at a time and waits for each to finish before starting the next, so most of your upload bandwidth sits idle.
How much faster is Blober than the GoPro app? If your connection can carry four uploads at once, Blober finishes in roughly a quarter of the time. Actual speeds depend on your connection, file sizes and GoPro Cloud's servers.
Can I upload to GoPro Cloud from an SD card or a NAS? Yes, with Blober. It uploads to GoPro Cloud from local drives and card readers, NAS devices, and other clouds such as Dropbox, Google Drive and AWS S3.