1. What is a pro account?

A Blip pro account is a special account that gives you more features than the basic free Blip account. These extra features are aimed at serious show creators, and give you more transcode formats, faster transcodes, and other tools to make your life easier.

2. What features are included?

Currently, pro accounts offer the following features:

HD Quality

Upload any video with a resolution of 720P or more and we'll automatically create a high quality HD conversion alongside our normal SD conversions. Your viewers will have the choice to watch your show in HD via a button that will automatically appear in your player.

Priority transcode access

When you upload a video, it will be added to a queue to be transcoded to Flash Video for web playback. Having a pro account lets you jump to the head of the queue, so the Flash version of your video will be ready more quickly.

Transcode to MP3 format

When you upload a video to Blip, it is transcoded automatically to h.264 for use in our Flash and HTML5 players. As a Pro user, you can request transcodes to audio-only MP3. To request the extra transcode, just check the mp3 checkbook during upload, or edit your previous episodes from the Dashboard to queue up the conversion.

Longer transcode times

To prevent large videos from using too many resources, we limit users of free accounts to one hour of transcoding time. Unusually large videos may fail to transcode in that time, resulting in timeout errors. As a pro account user, you get four hours of transcoding time, so you can upload larger videos. (Our 1GB size limit still applies).

Ability to re-request failed transcodes

When a transcode fails, basic account users have to ask us for help, which gives us a chance to check their video and work out why it didn't go through. As a pro account user, you're obviously a person of intelligence and discretion, so we trust you to figure out what the problem is and decide when it's worth trying again. That's why we give you a handy 'Retry' button, right there in your dashboard. Of course, you're always welcome to ask for help if you have any doubts.

Hidden videos

Sometimes you don't want the whole world to see your videos. As a Pro account user, you can mark your videos as 'hidden'. Hidden videos don't show up in Blip's indexes and searches, or in any RSS feeds. If you want to share the videos with others, you can post them to an external site. You can also password-protect your hidden videos, so that they can only be watched by people who know the password.

Timed publishing

Sometimes you may want to release a video at a fixed time. Our timed publishing feature makes that easy: upload your video whenever you like and mark it as hidden. Then set a time at which it should become visible to everyone using the timed publishing feature. If you want, you can pre-program an entire season's entertainment and then go lie on a beach somewhere.

We plan to add more pro features in future.

3. How much does it cost?

Pro accounts cost $8 per month. If you buy a 1-year subscription, you get two extra months for free, so you get 14 months of pro service for $96.

You can pay for your pro account through PayPal.

4. Can I pay with my credit card?

We accept credit card payments through the PayPal payment service. We may add support for other payment methods in future.

5. Can I upload commercial content to a pro account?

Pro accounts are governed by the same terms of service as our basic accounts. Our terms of service prohibit certain types of content, including content that promotes products or services, pornography, copyrighted content and illegal content of all kinds.

6. How do I cancel my pro account?

If you decide that you don't need the pro account features any more, you can cancel the account at any time. The account will revert to an ordinary Blip account.

If you have a monthly subscription, you can cancel your account by going to Paypal and finding the entry for your subscription in your transaction history. Just cancel the subscription there and your account will terminate automatically at the start of the next billing cycle.

If you pre-paid for a year and you want to cancel your account before the year is up, please contact support for assistance.