YouTube Removes Time Limit on Videos

Note: Since I published this article, YouTube went back and reinstated the time limit on their videos to 10 minutes. You can read the post here.

I was having a great vacation in Ecuador and thanks to my new USB digital camera, I was capturing great moments that I wanted to share with my family and friends on a daily basis.

It seems an easy task with all the tools and services we have nowadays: YouTube, Facebook and all the other social sites.

I was up for a rude awakening.

The first issue was that my camera records all clips as separate files. I had to find a way to stitch all the clips into longer videos. After looking around for open source tools to do this, I found a great tool called Video Converter, which is a part of package from Extensoft. The handy video tool allows you to merge clips into one big video.

So I started putting together my clips, and decided to upload these videos to YouTube. I thought this would be the best way, as everyone I know is pretty familiar with the site.

Of course, YouTube doesn’t take files that are larger than 1 Gig. No sweat, the same Video Converter tool allows me to compress videos in FLV (Flash format) that are substantially smaller than the original AVI’s.

After uploading my files for a couple of  hours, I was finally able to see them. I was prepared to send the links to everyone, when I noticed YouTube had taken down my videos.

The reason? The videos were longer than the 10 minute limit per video that they have.

A limit on duration of the video?

I can certainly understand the limitation in size, due to infrastructure costs, but if the video is smaller than 1 Gig, why does YouTube care about the duration?

I ended up uploading my videos to Viddler, feeling very disappointed.

Today, as I was writing this post, I went to double check the size and time limits on the upload page on YouTube, and noticed something incredible.

The time limit is gone!

This is a smart move by YouTube, as more and more people want to share their long-form video content on the web, and I’m sure many people, like me, were going elsewhere to share their videos.

So, get those cameras rolling without a care. You won’t be limited by time no more.

Tagged as: upgrades, video, youtube