Downloading & publishing
When a movie is ready, you have four options for what to do with it. They all live on the studio’s top header.
Download
Section titled “Download”Click ⬇ Download in the header. The current active version opens in a new tab as an MP4 file you can save.
- Watermark — Starter-tier downloads include a small Popcorn watermark in the corner. Creator and above export clean.
- Quality — the file matches whatever quality tier you rendered at.
Publish to popcorn.co
Section titled “Publish to popcorn.co”Click 📤 Publish in the header → 🍿 Publish to Popcorn.
This creates a public page on popcorn.co where anyone can watch your movie. Good for:
- Sharing links in chat or social posts.
- Building a public profile of your work.
- Embedding the movie elsewhere.
You can unpublish at any time from the same dropdown — that flips it back to private.
Publish to YouTube
Section titled “Publish to YouTube”If your movie is part of a Channel and that channel has a connected YouTube account, you’ll see ▶️ Publish to YouTube in the dropdown.
Click it and Popcorn will:
- Use the channel’s YouTube title and description settings (dynamic or manual).
- Apply the channel’s default privacy (Public, Unlisted, or Private).
- Upload the active version of the movie to your YouTube account.
- Hand you back the YouTube URL.
YouTube publishing is gated to Creator tier and above (channels are a Creator+ feature).
Publish to a channel
Section titled “Publish to a channel”Click 📤 Publish → 📺 Publish to Channel. Pick a channel from your list — the movie is added as the next episode of that channel.
Useful for:
- Producing an ad-hoc movie that fits a recurring channel format.
- Manually adding episodes alongside autopilot-generated ones.
Copy link / open in new tab
Section titled “Copy link / open in new tab”The publish dropdown also has:
- 🔗 Copy link — copies the direct video URL to your clipboard.
- 🌐 Open in new tab — opens the video in a browser tab.
Both work whether you’ve published the movie or not — the link is always the active version’s video file.
Which version gets published?
Section titled “Which version gets published?”Whichever version is currently active in the version strip. If you’re on v3 and click Publish, v3 is what goes out. Switch versions in the strip first if you want to publish a different cut.