Archive mode
Archive mode lets you upload a video to Long Play for safe-keeping without transcoding or publishing it. The original file goes straight to secure storage - no encoding queue, no public page, no streams.
It's useful when you want to:
- Preserve a master copy of a finished film before you're ready to publish
- Store original camera footage with a tamper-evident fingerprint
- Keep a backup on Long Play while you decide what to do with it later
Archive mode is available on the Creator plan and up.
How to archive a video
On the upload page, tick "Archive only - do not transcode or publish" before selecting your file. The upload proceeds as normal, but instead of entering the encoding queue the file is stored as-is.
Your dashboard shows the video with an Archive badge. It won't appear on your public channel.
Watching your archived original
From the video's edit page, click Watch original. This opens a private, time-limited playback link directly from your stored file. The link is generated on demand and expires after one hour - it's never publicly accessible.
Transcoding and publishing later
When you're ready, click Transcode & publish on the edit page. This sends the original through the normal encoding pipeline and, once encoding is complete, makes the video available on your channel as usual.
Preservation certificate
Every archived upload receives a preservation certificate - a permanent record of the file's identity at the moment it was uploaded.
SHA-256 fingerprint
A cryptographic hash of your original file is computed during upload. This fingerprint is unique to the exact bytes of your file - any change, however small, produces a completely different hash.
Blockchain timestamp
The fingerprint is submitted to the OpenTimestamps calendar, which anchors it to the Bitcoin blockchain. Once confirmed (usually within a few hours), you have independent, third-party proof of when the file existed - not dependent on Long Play's own records.
C2PA metadata detection
If your file contains C2PA provenance metadata - embedded by cameras from Sony, Leica, and others, or by tools like Adobe Content Authenticity - Long Play detects and records this at upload time.
Verifying a file independently
Anyone can verify a file against the Long Play archive at longplayplatform.com/archive/verify.
Enter the SHA-256 fingerprint of any file and the page will confirm whether it matches an archived original on Long Play, along with the title and blockchain timestamp.
To compute a fingerprint yourself:
# macOS / Linux
sha256sum <filename>
# macOS alternative
shasum -a 256 <filename>This lets you - or anyone you share the hash with - confirm independently that a specific file is preserved here, without needing to log in or trust Long Play's interface alone.