A team that makes programming tutorials once added it up. Publishing ten videos on a short-video platform, from picking material to tapping publish, takes under half an hour. The same ten on Bilibili take forty minutes each.
Inside those forty minutes you wait for the upload, you wait for transcoding, and you wait for review. You also fill in category, tags, cover, and description. Hands-on time is under five minutes. The other thirty-five minutes are waiting.
What one submission passes through
Upload. Short video is usually tens of megabytes. A longer video runs from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes. On the same network, upload time can differ by two orders of magnitude.
Transcoding. The platform converts the video into its own format. You do not control this. The time depends on the length of the video and on the queue at that moment.
Review. Machine review is usually a few minutes. Anything that goes to a person can take hours, up to a day. This step is the least predictable.
Filling in details. Category, tags, cover, description, and multi-part. Bilibili is stricter about category and tags than short-video platforms. A wrong choice affects recommendations.
Then it is published.
Of the five stages, the first two are time and bandwidth. The third is an uncertain result. The stage you can actually standardize is filling in the details.
What can go to the computer
| Stage | Can it be automatic | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Preparing and distributing files | Yes | Push the video to each device’s photo library, and handle the phones separately |
| Filling in details | Yes | Title, description, tags, and category can be prepared in bulk and passed in per submission |
| Logging the submission and tracking status | Yes | Record the submission time and title, and come back later to check the status |
| Collecting view data | Yes | Gather the numbers on a regular cycle so you can review them |
| Waiting while it uploads | No | The time depends on file size and the network |
| Platform transcoding | No | Entirely on the platform side |
| The review result | No | You control neither the pass/fail nor the timing |
The last three rows sit upstream. How long the upload takes, when transcoding reaches your file, and whether review passes: a tool cannot step into those.
Multi-part is a structure specific to Bilibili. Several video segments hang under one submission, and viewers watch them in sequence on one page. Tutorials, course series, and collections fit multi-part. A batch submission then has an extra set of parameters: segment order, the title of each segment, which segment is the cover, and how the description is written.
If the content is already multi-part, for example a course with twenty lessons, that parameter set is worth making into a template, configured once and reused. Forcing an ordinary single video into multi-part adds steps and makes a mess more likely.
Doing multi-part on a phone means each step waits until the previous segment has finished loading. If the wait is too short, errors show up.
Whether to run several accounts
Bilibili content rests on the creator’s own name. Viewers follow the person. Ten accounts with nothing distinctive about them can be worth less than one account with a loyal audience.
Bilibili is stricter than short-video platforms about reposts and about what counts as original. Spreading the same batch of content across several accounts raises the chance it gets recognized as such.
If you do it, split by subject. One account for technical tutorials, one for product reviews, one for industry commentary. Three accounts with a clear position are harder for viewers to mix up, and harder to treat as a matrix. Run each one as a real account. Spreading volume and hoping one lands is a short-video habit. On Bilibili it works poorly.
How to set it up
- Turn the phones into devices that can do the work. Install the workstation and the phone-side program from the install selection page, then add the phones, give them aliases, and group them. Different accounts map to different devices. If the alias is recognizable, you do not have to confirm which phone just ran.
- Get the files onto the phones. Use file distribution to push the videos into the photo library. Large files should go in batches. Pushing everything at once can fill the network. On iPhone, turn on photo library permission first, or the file arrives and still cannot be saved to the library.
- Describe the submission flow in Chinese. On the conversation page, write it out: open Bilibili, enter the submission screen, pick the video from the library, fill in the title and description, pick the category and tags, tap submit. On the first run, leave the submit tap for a person to confirm.
- Once it runs cleanly, save it as a workflow. Leave title, description, tags, and category as parameters. One template covers a batch of submissions.
- After the run, check the result in execution history. Collect submission status and view data on a regular cycle so you can review them.
If the flow hits an icon button with no text, add an image template that says what the button looks like.
The upload has to wait, transcoding depends on the queue, and the review result changes. Making those three steps fully automatic does not help. When one submission stalls, it is also hard to tell whether it failed or is still waiting for review.
The steadier combination is this: a person does the upload, and the time and title are written down at the same time. Logging, status tracking, and data collection go to the computer. When something goes wrong, it is easier to find where.
That tutorial team later split the work this way. A person taps upload. A script records the submission time and title. Category, tags, status tracking, and view-data collection go to the computer. The waits are still waits. Nobody has to sit and watch them.
If you only submit for one or two accounts of your own, the web upload page is easier to use. If you have several accounts and want them on the same flow as your other platforms, follow the steps above and start with one video. The install notes are on the install selection page.
Frequently asked questions
- What separates Bilibili from short video platforms the most?
- File size and flow length. Short video is usually tens of megabytes. Longer video runs from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes, so upload time goes from under a minute to several minutes or tens of minutes, with transcoding and review in between. The bottleneck moves from number of taps to bandwidth and waiting.
- So which steps can actually be automated?
- Automatable: file preparation and distribution, bulk entry of cover and title, submission logging and status tracking, and data collection. Harder to automate: the upload wait itself, platform transcoding and the review outcome. You do not control the timing on those three.
- What is multi-part and why does it need separate handling?
- Multi-part is a Bilibili specific structure where one submission carries several video segments that viewers watch in sequence on a single page. The complication is that segment order, each segment title and which segment acts as the cover all need setting individually, so you are managing a parameter set rather than one file.
- Is running multiple accounts on Bilibili worth it?
- I would be more cautious here than elsewhere. The Bilibili ecosystem runs on individual creator identity. Viewers follow a person, not an account, so ten anonymous accounts may be worth less than one with a loyal audience. If you do it, split by content direction rather than duplicating the same material.
- How long does an upload take, and can they run in parallel?
- It depends on file size and bandwidth. A few hundred megabytes takes several minutes on ordinary broadband. Several gigabytes takes tens of minutes. Parallel uploads compete for bandwidth so total time is not necessarily shorter. Push in batches by device priority instead.
- How long is the review?
- Unpredictable. Machine review is often a few minutes, and anything routed to human review can take hours to a day. That is why batch submissions cannot be managed as publish then immediately verify. You need a mechanism that comes back and checks later.
- How do video files get onto several phones?
- Choose by file size. Small files push in bulk, even across dozens of devices. Large files go in batches, or sit at a reachable address that each device downloads from. On iPhone, grant photo library permission first, or the file arrives but never saves to the library.
- Why not make the whole thing fully automatic?
- Because three upstream things are outside your control: upload duration, platform transcoding and the review outcome. Full automation cannot help with any of them, and when it breaks the troubleshooting cost is high. Manual upload plus scripted status logging is the steadier combination.
Give the automatic parts to the computer
Hand upload and logging to the computer, keep judgement for yourself
Software is completely free and runs on your own computer.