14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is said to increase the video length limit from the current 10 minutes to a whooping 15 minutes. There’s no confirmation from Google, but it would be a pretty significant move for the biggest video site in the world. While most videos on the site are significantly smaller that the 10-minute limit, it may come in handy in a lot of cases.
The rumor comes from Boing Boing which cites sources from inside YouTube. Apparently, the site is now working on making the switch, but there’s no time frame for when this will be achieved. There aren’t that many details, but what more could be said, the limit will be increased by 50 percent.
YouTube is also planning an event and contest to celebrate the increase, apparently something about “15 minutes of fame,” which would make sense. Users will be asked to submit videos, presumably over the 10-minute mark in length, and the winning entries will be featured on the homepage.
YouTube has always had the 10-minute limit, ever since it launched five years ago. Most YouTube videos are short, of course, and most people didn’t need more than that and still don’t. There are technical reasons as well, longer videos take up more storage space and eat up more bandwidth.
But the main reason behind the limit had to do with copyright infringement. YouTube didn’t want to become a host for every movie and TV episode out there and capped the length of the videos to discourage the uploading of full-length videos. Of course, people split the episodes in 10 minute slices and still got them on the site, but it was a deterrent nonetheless.
YouTube partners don’t have any limitations when it comes to video length, but for the average user, the move could prove very interesting. There are plenty of sites out there that allow longer videos and even those that don’t have any limit at all. But none of them are the size of YouTube.
UPDATE: YouTube has confirmed the move in a blog post.