The other day, Youtube notified me that I can now upload videos longer than 15 minutes. I have been uploading quite a bit of(quite boring) stuff lately and out of nowhere, they told me my account had been changed so I could upload longer videos.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s great, but it got me wondering. How do they decide who gets to upload longer videos?
Anyone know?
It depends on if anything you have uploaded has been challenged by a copyright holder. I have multiple accounts, most filled with stuff I have shot myself. I use different accounts - one for business, one for family. The people looking for the stuff I’ve shot of School of Rock performances might not wish to see when I upload a memorial service or a wedding. And yes, I have an account or two of ancient TV clips - stuff that is not available for purchase in any way, shape or form. But some of that stuff has gotten flagged for copyright violation.
The accounts that have never been flagged can upload greater than 15 minutes and up to 2 gigabytes. I’ve used that to upload full concerts (concerts that I have shot, with the permission of the artist). By the way, the Handbrake encoder is very useful - you can set a target file size. So I open a full concert, set the target for 1,950 MB and get the best possible image quality.
With the java plugin, you can supposedly upload even larger files.
This seems rather strange, as I’ve never encountered a longer video save from old media providers and from one person I know who got the upgrade to “Creator” (or something like that). back when it was being handed out if you asked for it. This seems odd.
I haven’t gotten the notification, but I’ve uploaded only two videos.
I’m not sure that is true. One of these evenings, I’ll have to try to upload a 3 gig file.
Here’s a 16 minutes video of my beautiful niece and the chucklehead she married.
I don’t know, but it can’t be a hard 15 minute cap because I uploaded a video last week that was 15 minutes and 27 seconds and it wasn’t rejected, nor were the last 27 seconds cut off. I’ve only uploaded 4 videos, by the way.
Yeah, the limit has always had a 30 second or so grace period.
This made me check. Between my various accounts, have 283 videos up - the vast majority material I have shot.
Hey, I wasn’t doubting you. I just think it must be something new that hasn’t propagated, or that there is other criteria–or that it might even be something they are testing randomly.
But they won’t let you post it. The plugin is just a tool to upload.
I don’t think you can request longer upload permissions; it has to come from YouTube. At least that’s what I’ve been able to get from their forums. The officials are very close-mouthed about the policy.
And after you load it, they will tell you it’s too big. They check it after, not before. And I find their upload to be quite slow compared to FTP and/or other sites.
I’ve uploaded over 100, and I just tried one of 15 minutes, 40 seconds. No dice.
One way you can get the invitation to upgrade is if you have a large number of hits, but there may be other ways. I got the invite when one of mine reached 23,000. They said they would review my account and upgrade it if it was found suitable.
It wasn’t. They claimed the one video with the 23K hits “wasn’t suitable for families.” Since it was a recording of elementary shool kids singing patriotic songs to Veteran’s Day pictures, go figure. Apparently YouTube has some hidden agenda.