Short clips with a man thudding into a tree trunk or a woman slipping down a tread mill have been around on YouTube for so long that the company itself outlined a new policy in a memo emailed to its content partners a few days back. The decision is set to enable longer videos to be uploaded in your account, videos that exceed the usual 10 minutes length:
This feature is exclusive for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long content, the maximum file size is 1 GB.
The current YouTube format sets up a 10-minute limit for the video uploads, something that has served a few purposes, namely; keeping the bandwidth cost in check and making it difficult for copyright owners to complain for an unauthorized use of their streams. You can cut up the entire Titanic into hundreds of 10-minute chunks and distribute it to the entire globe without being bothered of any action by the copyright owners.
Google’s point at running such a mammoth video service is to run advertisements and sell them against videos uploaded by its content partners, but the problem that has been there is the short length, which limits the number of ads one can sell. So the idea behind might just be to test if more ads could sell for a longer video that is being run at YouTube.
Sounds pretty good, but for that it has to make sure that the content it publishes is of high quality and this is definitely the reason why it is active at collecting good material. It has been reported by Fortune that the execs at YouTube are bent at recruiting Indie filmmakers at the Los Angeles Film Festival to kick in their work at YouTube. Spokesperson, Julie Supan told the magazine:
As we test full-length content, we are starting to see that the audience is potentially there.
Uploads, for the time being limited to 1 GB, which is enough for a compressed movie. The news is great as YouTube has clearly shown keen interest in expanding its branches out from the Web-based roots to various devices like Apple TV and iPhone. The idea is exciting, though it wont be offering Hollywood flicks at the go but seeing new, low-budget productions would definitely make up for a good time kill over the web.
[Original report: Michael Learmonth, Silicon Valley Insider]
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