Why not an hour or more?
I did a GQ search using the term “youtube” and found this from 2008 How big is youtube? in which Shagnasty said (of google storage space):
Is it just a money issue - they don’t want to buy any more servers or server space? Is there a legal reason? Is it it a marketing strategy? Is it an artistic decision - long videos are boring?
They allow me at least up to 1.5 hours. More, maybe – haven’t tried it.
I know some people have channels that allow more. Maybe you’ve got one of those. Generally though half hour tv shows get split into three 10 minute segments or so. And most videos on there don’t seem to exceed 10-15 minutes. I’ve never uploaded one though so I’m only going on what it seems like from the viewers perspective.
I have no idea what this is, but it’s the first thing that came up when I did a search for ‘full episode.’ It’s 48 minutes long. There’s several longer things in the related videos down the right side.
It’s to prevent copyright violations so that people can’t just upload whole episodes and movies. People have to demonstrate that they are creating their own content and then they get longer video length possibilities. The effort it takes to do that makes people less likely to run the risk of their account being deleted for copyright violations.
ok a legal thing then. That’s what I thought but doesn’t really make sense since the whole tv episode goes up anyway just in three parts. But I suppose you don’t tend to see whole movies on there.
Joey P. - that was one of those special channels that are allowed to upload long videos.
ETA - Actually not a legal thing, a money thing because all they would have to do is hire to people to keep a watch out same as they do now. They’d just have to hire more people maybe. If they could show a court that they take things down as soon as they appear or as soon as they are notified then that would probably satisfy a court.
There are whole movies up there. I watched Little Shop of Horrors on youtube.
There is a full, 93 minute film on YouTube, Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
It is licensed under the Creative Commons so effectively is free from the copyright restrictions the hamper most uploads.
i was able to download 1 hour and 45 minutes of “birth of a nation” which was more than 3 hours long. i stopped when i got bored. twas a nice silent movie though.
I think what you’re seeing is that youtube used to have a restriction that was lifted within the last year. The restriction used to be approximately 10-15 minutes (you say a lot of 9:59 videos), depending partially on file size I believe. Recently they lifted it, though people in violation of certain rules can get the privilege revoked.
Some time ago, the only way to get a long video posted was to break it into several parts, which is why I didn’t post those. But anyone who did is stuck with them. They aren’t going to be magically combined into one long show. So that’s why you still see them.
I can now post shows of over an hour with no problem. Not only have things relaxed, but maybe the fact that I have over 140 clips posted puts me in a more trusted category.
However, YouTube still uses aggressive and sophisticated scanning techniques to look for copyright violations, and I don’t mean just copying of movies. They are attempting to detect and flag music arrangements, that is, covers, not just exact copies of hits.
There’s a Part 2 with another 3.5 hours.
Wow, I didn’t know it was that aggressive. My sister made a slideshow with some music as the background and was surprised when it got yanked like 45 minutes after she put it up. I suggested that she play the CD on her CD player and record it on her computer (or phone or whatever) and maybe make some background noise. move the recording device around in the room, talk over it a little etc. and use the recording as the music for the slideshow thinking that would get past the filters. But if they can pick up covers, I assume they would pick that up just as quickly.
I wonder how many false positives it comes up with?
The answer is to help stop copyright violation, as some have already noted.
Here’s info from the Wikipedia entry on YouTube, which has citations: