'Illegal characters' in FileCopy path

When importing files using PlayoutONE's FileCopy utility, you may not be able to fetch internet files from URLs containing certain characters.

The "Illegal characters in path" error is not unique to PlayoutONE and is produced by Microsoft's .NET framework, which many applications require to run.

🚫 Which characters are not allowed?

The full list of "illegal characters" varies depending on your system as well as the process being carried out at the time.

These include Unicode control characters and null characters as well as these common keys:

Forward slashes or backslashes (/ or \) are also not allowed within file names but are allowed in paths.

❓Importing internet files with parameters

Online services often apply special parameters to web pages or files where extra detail is required on how requested URLs should be processed.

For example, Dropbox URLs usually take the person who accessed them to a preview page, where they have to press a 'Download' button to make a copy of the file.

However, by appending the URL with "?dl=1", Dropbox will skip the preview page and immediately begin downloading the requested file.

As these links are not absolute file paths, many systems would not be able to process them.

However, by creating a web redirect (either on your station website or a third-party service like Bitly), you can allow FileCopy to import web files which require parameters to access.

Simply take the download URL of the file you wish to import (including any ? parameters in the path and the text that follows it) and create a shorter URL that redirects to it, without question marks.

Enter the shortened URL into FileCopy, and you can create a job to automatically import the file as often as you need to.