
YouTube Lifts Time Limit for Videos - J3L2404
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/youtube-lifts-time-limit-for-some-videos/?src=twr
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lambda
Am I the only one who hates it when people talk about "copyrighted material"
as if only mainstream commercial TV and movies are copyrighted? Every video
uploaded to YouTube is copyrighted (OK, except for amazingly old video and
video produced by the US government). Of course people are going to upload
longer copyrighted material. What they mean to say is "copyright violating
material."

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zach
But the big question is, can uploaders stitch together all those existing
"1/9," "2/9" etc. videos so we can put that whole era behind us?

So was the original pre-June 11-minute limit a product of the MPEG LA rules
where videos "12 minutes in length" (used to) have special rules and
royalties? Or was that coincidental?

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citricsquid
"Congratulations! Your account is now enabled for uploads longer than 15
minutes. Click the Upload button below to select a video."

I guess I finally have a reason to celebrate 560,016 total upload views :-) I
wonder what I should upload first! Maybe I can do a 24 hour _silent video_ and
call it modern art.

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sp332
You could start with Andy Warhol's _Empire_. It's 8 hours of the Empire State
Building. Yeah, the Empire State Building... for 8 hours :-)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%281964_film%29>

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haberman
Wow, that must be the only movie ever made that takes longer to watch than it
did to make.

(It was filmed at 24fps for 6 hours, 36 min, but is shown at 16fps for 8 hours
5 minutes).

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justlearning
bit offtopic here: i have most of the videos from arsdigita(aduni) courses -
all in .rm format. Would anyone know of optimized conversion to youtube
compatible format?

uploading these lectures (with attribution) is something i would like to do.

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pbiggar
Good plan. I have the DVD's if higher quality is needed (or maybe that's what
you have too?)

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yurylifshits
By the way, it's a serious threat to Vimeo.

I was thinking to start a premium account at Vimeo for publishing educational
videos. Now I can go with Youtube.

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ThomPete
The question is whether you would really want to go with YT?

I mean the quality of the comments, the quality of the design (yes it's
sheit).

Vimeo seems like a much better space to seed your content.

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jonknee
Why not use both? I'd imagine the more views the better for educational
videos.

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nhangen
I've always used YT for traffic, and Vimeo for display on a website.

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yurylifshits
Exactly!!

Youtube generates a ton of serendipity watchers.

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sandipc
key word left out of HN title: "some"

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bryanlarsen
Actually, I feel the title is accurate. Some restrictions are always assumed
-- for example, you need an internet connection to upload to Youtube. This
restriction prevents many more people from uploading than the actual
restrictions mentioned in the article. For those who didn't read the article,
an account with a good history is required for uploading. Yes, not everybody
has one of those, but anybody with an internet connection can get one of
those.

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hugh3
Not so much. My first thought, after all, was "Hooray, now I can watch Top
Gear and Doctor Who episodes which aren't split into six different sections!"
I don't really want to watch 60-minute videos of someone's cat.

(Incidentally, before anyone gets on my arse about copyright violation which I
usually disapprove of, I feel justified in pirating Top Gear and Doctor Who
since they're shown for free on the (Australian) ABC or SBS. I pay Australian
taxes despite not being resident there, so I damn well should be able to watch
what I've already paid for.)

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quanticle
I don't think you'll get to do that even with the relaxed time limits. The
lifting of the time restriction means that YouTube is confident enough in its
content detection algorithms that they're no longer relying on arbitrary
length limits as a restriction on copyright violations. This means that any
unauthorized Top Gear or Dr. Who videos will probably be flagged and taken
down within hours of their posting.

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hugh3
Exactly, that's what I was saying. The only reason I'd want longer videos is
so I can watch stuff which I legally can't, so the fact that they're allowing
it now is not a great source of excitement to me.

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joshfinnie
I thought there was already a subset of users who could go over the 15 minute
limit. Is there anything new here? I can see this being cool once they no
longer have the limit; and I think that is where they are going based on this
article, but I can't really tell you.

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Mazy
Before today, certain accounts could go beyond the 15 minute limit (partner
accounts, director accounts, things like that). Starting today, regular
YouTube users who have been on the site for a while and haven't caused any
copyright problems for YouTube can also go beyond that 15 minutes. Power to
the people.

~~~
joshfinnie
Awesome, thanks for the further bit of information.

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leeskye
This is useless for 99% of the content creators out there. Only
filmmakers/movie studios/or education use would benefit from this. People
should realize that most online video content needs to be snack size (2-5
minutes MAX).

Audiences are too fickle to watch more than a few minutes of video. The
average video is watched 2 minutes and then people taper off. They would
rather consume more pieces of video (quantity) than more of a single video.

In the lean-back environment, this would be a different story.

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kellysutton
We're actually seeing the exact opposite on blip.tv. Average video length on
our site of popular content is about 13 minutes.

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kmfrk
This is fantastic. They've found a sweetspot between going no limit (Google
Video) and YouTube as it was before.

I look forward to seeing my StarCraft 2 matches in one session. :)

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jbermudes
FTA: "The new feature will be available only to a subset of users who have
never violated copyright rules"

I wonder how this works with the false-flagging and the DMCA abuse that I've
heard of. While their algorithms can detect if your video has someone else's
content, I'm not so sure it can detect if the usage is considered fair use.

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keiferski
I wonder if this has anything to do with server resources; IE is 1 30-minute
video less intensive and take up less space than 3 10-minute videos?
(Considering that most long videos are just cut into parts.)

If so, I'd imagine it would have an impact, considering the sheer size of
YouTube's userbase.

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ams6110
Not really. A 30 minute video file might be slightly smaller than three 10
minute video files but the difference would be negligible.

What's happened is that YouTube has developed a way to identify infringing
content, and profit from it.

They can find an "illegal" clip of a TV show or movie, contact the copyright
owner, and with their permission leave it on the site but serve up advertising
alongside, splitting the revenue with the legitimate owner. Everybody wins.
Allowing longer videos will let them do the same thing with full episodes or
feature movies.

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keiferski
Gotcha.

But wouldn't longer movies being in multiple pages/clips serve more
advertising? I realize that the clips may not even be uploaded if a time limit
is imposed, but I would assume that more clips = more potential ad clicks.

I suppose also that the advances in Content ID (the copyright checking system)
may only be effective on longer clips.

All in all, there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, and
maybe YouTube is just taking the least complicated route.

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commandar
Youtube supports what are essentially commercial breaks on long videos
already. The uploader can even choose to place them at logical breaks in the
video.

I was watching some in-the-ER/ridealong-with-the-cops type videos on a Youtube
channel the other night, and the video would be interrupted on occasion by
video ads in between scenes, etc.

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keiferski
I see. I should probably watch more Youtube before I start asking obvious
questions about it.

Thanks!

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anthonycerra
It's in Google's best interest to lift the time limit for all videos. Keeping
people in the YouTube app on GoogleTV is best for Google. Pro-sumer content
creators need to be able to post their full-length video on YouTube.

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mambodog
So do I count as having "violated copyright rules" because Content ID
incorrectly attributed the music in one of my videos to some artist I've never
heard of? Which, by the way, is not uncommon.

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davelittle
I'm sure you do. I am a "ContentID criminal" for the same reason. Youtube
isn't really the place I would choose for hosting my content after dealing
with that...

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techtalsky
Funny... I got the message that I could upload longer videos, but the bullet
points next to the upload button still say "Shorter than 15 minutes."

