How to upload a large image file to a cloud asset management service (Cloudinary)?

Question

I am trying to upload a large image file to cloudinary using IFormFile, and I get the following errors:

System.Threading.Tasks.TaskCanceledException: The operation was canceled.
 ---> System.Net.Http.HttpRequestException: Error while copying content to a stream.
 ---> System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request..
 ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException (995): The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

The code uses a filestream to upload the images:

public VideoUploadResult UploadClip(IFormFile videoFile)
{
    var uploadResult = new CloudinaryDotNet.Actions.VideoUploadResult();
    if (videoFile.Length > 0)
    {
        // create a new file stream to upload the video to cloudinary
        using (var filestream = videoFile.OpenReadStream())
        {
        var uploadParams = new VideoUploadParams
        {
            File = new FileDescription(videoFile.FileName, filestream),
            Transformation = new Transformation().StartOffset("0").EndOffset("60").Crop("fill")

        };
        uploadResult = _cloudinary.Upload(uploadParams);

        }
    }

    // checks if error occurs when uploading video
    if (uploadResult.Error != null)
    {
        throw new Exception(uploadResult.Error.Message);
    }

    return new VideoUploadResult
    {
        PublicId = uploadResult.PublicId,
        Url = uploadResult.SecureUrl.AbsoluteUri
    };
}

The videouploadresult is just a simple class that has the publicid and the url properties of the file when it's uploaded to Cloudinary. Is there any other way to upload large files through the API? Or is there something wrong with the code?

It works for files below 30MB and I have also allowed my kestrel sevrer to be able to upload files up to 200MB, and I still get errors. I think the error stems from trying to open a read stream for a large file, and I've read in places that using IFormFile for large files is bad. But I'm yet to see any alternatives.

Answer 1

For uploading large files you need to use Cloudinary Chunked asset upload. This however does not work with a buffer in the File parameter: you need to download your file beforehand and only provide its path:

 var uploadParams = new VideoUploadParams
    {
        File = new FileDescription(filePath),
        ...

    };
 uploadResult = await _cloudinary.UploadLargeAsync(uploadParams);

The downside is that you have to cleanup your directory after upload is finished.