How about sending files straight from your camera to LiveWall?
When shooting on location, you can easily establish WiFi connectivity for your camera by using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot or a dedicated portable WiFi device. Most modern smartphones can create a secure WiFi network - simply enable the hotspot feature in your phone's settings and connect your camera to this network. Alternatively, portable WiFi routers or mobile hotspot devices provide a reliable internet connection anywhere with cellular coverage. These compact devices can support multiple cameras simultaneously and often offer longer battery life than using your phone's hotspot.
When you have a WiFi connection and a compatible camera, you can use the FTP feature in LiveWall Premium to send straight from the camera to your wall.
Compatible camera models
Most professional Canon, Sony and Nikon cameras with built-in networking support FTP upload. Here's an overview of compatible models:
Canon
The entire R-series lineup including R1, R3, R5 (including Mark II and C variant), R6 (including Mark II) and R. The professional 1DX series (Mark I through III) is also supported.
Sony
All recent Alpha cameras including the professional Alpha 1 and Alpha 9 series (up to III), the high-resolution Alpha 7R series (III through V), the standard Alpha 7 series (III and IV), and the compact Alpha 7C series (including II and CR variants).
Nikon
The professional Z series including Z9, Z8, Z7 (I and II), Zf, and Z6 (I and II). Several older DSLR models like the D5, D6, D7200, D750, D780, D810 and D850 are also compatible.
Enabling FTP in LiveWall
To enable FTP uploads, go to Settings > Miscellaneous in LiveWall Premium and enable the FTP Server integration. Once enabled, you'll see your unique FTP username and password that must be configured in your camera along with the server settings below. For security reasons, these credentials cannot be changed and are specific to your wall.
FTP is not available on LiveWall Free or LiveWall Plus.
Settings
You must configure the LiveWall FTP Server on your camera with the following settings:
- Server: ftp.livewall.no
- Port: 21
- Mode: Passive
- Path: /
The exact steps to configure FTP will vary by camera model, but you'll need to enter these settings in your camera's network or FTP configuration menu. Make sure to test the connection after entering the settings to verify everything is working correctly.
Supported file types and behavior
The FTP server accepts JPEG images (.jpg, .jpeg) and MP4 video files (*.mp4). Any other file types uploaded will be automatically deleted. The FTP server is write-only - you cannot download or list existing files. Once a file is successfully processed and added to your wall, it will be removed from the FTP server.
For each uploaded file, the system creates a status file:
- A .processed~filename file containing metadata is created when the file is successfully added to your wall
- A .error~filename file is created if there was an issue processing the file
To prevent abuse, reasonable rate limits are applied to uploads. If you exceed these limits, subsequent uploads will be rejected until the rate limit resets.
Security
FTP, as supported by most cameras, is an unencrypted protocol. This means that anyone with access to the network between you and LiveWall can theoretically (and practically!) snoop both username, password, and content. This is the reason LiveWall is using separate and temporary usernames and password for FTP, and do not allow access to content on your wall over FTP. Content is removed from the server as soon as we've queued it for your wall as an additional security measure. However weak, FTP is immensely useful for many scenarios, and is widely supported across devices.
LiveWall also supports SFTP which is a modern, fully encrypted protocol living up to LiveWall's security standards. To use it, connect to sftp.livewall.no on port 22. We have not been able to figure out which cameras (if any) support SFTP, but modern clients such as FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck and many more support SFTP. They provide an efficient way of uploading a larger set of files from your computer to share on LiveWall.
We also support downloading files via SFTP. We have not rolled out this feature yet, please contact us on the email below if you'd like access to try the private beta version.
Beta feature
This feature is currently in Beta. We've performed basic testing but have more work to do before we know this is production ready. We're very interested in users that can help us test across a variety of cameras to ensure they work smoothly with LiveWall.
Need help?
Ping us on hello@livewall.no and we'll be happy to help!