Amsterdam/Berlin - November 16th, 2015

Video encoding service Transloadit launches resumable upload protocol 'tus 1.0', to be adopted by Vimeo

Conceived to address the issue of interrupted uploads on mobile devices and desktop, tus 1.0 is the latest Open Source release by Dutch-German company Transloadit.

Too often, files are lost during upload because of unstable network connections. tus 1.0 aims to solve this problem once and for all. It is designed as an additional layer over HTTP that ensures file uploads are picked up exactly where they left off when a connection is restored, without any additional input required from the user.

Kevin van Zonneveld, one of Transloadit's founders explains: "Mobile users want the freedom to share increasingly large videos and images, but mobile networks remain too fragile and the existing solutions are a mess. At the moment, each new project builds its own protocol for file uploading. While some of these implement the much needed auto-resume functionality, they generally keep their solution behind closed doors. This has resulted in a fragmented world of incompatible APIs and software components. There is very little in the way of standardization."

Transloadit believes that with the increase in large video files being consumed on mobile devices, the need for a definitive resumable protocol is more essential than ever. For three years, the team has been working closely with the community on this Open Source project via GitHub.

"Sure, we could have kept this to ourselves, but would the protocol have become as good? I really doubt it. We would have yet another incompatible one-week project, when all we really need is one Open Source protocol that is done right," says van Zonneveld.

tus 1.0 ships with many advanced features that offer greater reliability, such as error detection and retries. Another considerable advantage of software that "speaks" tus, is the provided support for dividing a file into equal parts and uploading them in parallel, thereby making the upload much faster.

"With this open protocol, we're basically handing out an instruction manual to developers on how to exactly implement more reliable and performant file uploading. This document will be used to build Open Source libraries in all major programming languages such as Go, Python, Java, Node.js, and PHP. These free libraries can then be used to add better uploading capabilities to any app or service. It's really as easy as copy and paste," says Marius Kleidl, the current project leader of tus.

Video sharing platform Vimeo will be the first major site to make use of tus 1.0. Vimeo Director of Engineering Naren Venkataraman worked closely with the team at Transloadit and offered his advise on tus' first release.

"At Vimeo we think that tus has found the right angle to attack the problem of unreliable file uploads. We're looking forward to tus' enhanced reliability and performance. We plan to add support for tus and encourage API developers to switch to it", said Naren. Vimeo plans to roll out tus early 2016.

Besides Vimeo, tus has received valuable contributions from employees at Google and Yahoo, as well as from the authors of HTTP/1.1, Node.js, and ZeroMQ.

Transloadit is currently talking with several possible partners for the project and will roll out support for all major programming languages with help of the community.

About Transloadit

Established in 2009, Transloadit offers a cloud service for encoding and transferring files over the Internet. Transloadit is based in Berlin and Amsterdam and finds its roots in the Open Source community. To date, Transloadit has worked with high-profile companies including Viacom, Mercedes-Benz, Khan Academy, Coursera, Red Bull Music Academy and many more. Transloadit has been bootstrapped from the start and is privately owned by two of its founders: Kevin van Zonneveld and Tim Koschützki.

For more information, contact:

Kevin van Zonneveld (mailto:kvz@transloadit.com)