Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Friday, June 26, 2009 at 4:15 PM PT

YouTube Doubles Upload Size Limit

YouTube has doubled the size of standard uploads for regular-Joe account holders to 2 GB from 1 GB. The company told us this afternoon the move was in order to accommodate users’ HD uploads. But despite the size increase, non-partner videos are still limited to 10 minutes in length.

Alongside the move, YouTube is also making it easier to share and embed HD videos, something that was possible in the past but only through appending video URLs with some inscrutable code (&fmt=22) that was publicized by a few blogs. Now, it’s slightly simpler: add &hd=1 to any YouTube URL to play in HD (if possible). There’s also a “play in HD” option when you’re configuring an embed code to copy and paste elsewhere.

Barry Schwartz had actually found that his account upload limit was raised to 20 GB today, but a YouTube spokesperson said that the new max is 2 GB. Lucky guy, Schwartz must have gotten in on some user testing for cool kids.

It’s clear that HD videos are becoming a significant portion of the new YouTube library, only six months since the site enabled them. YouTube raised the video upload limit to 1 GB from 100 MB in only September 2008.

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Topic: Online Video

Comments (7)

You’re kidding me, right? This means absolutely NOTHING to the average Joe. My HD videos that are 9:59 long are never over 1 GB anyway. This is just YT posturing to try to get good publicity. As long as the time limit remains at 10 minutes, it’s a worthless change.

Why do they have a time limit anyway? If I can fit a 20 minute video inside the 1 GB limit, it doesn’t take up any extra space on their servers than if I split it into two 10 minute videos. Wait, actually splitting it sometimes adds MB’s to the video…so it actually could save them server space if they allowed no time but just a GB limit.

Devon Young — 6:28 PM on June 26, 2009 Reply
Partners can upload 20GB files. Easier if you need to upload a feature length video.

Chris Prine — 10:00 AM on June 27, 2009 Reply
would be very curious to know how much a change like this impacts YouTube/Google’s financials. Wonder what their projections are in terms of increased bandwidth and server costs, etc.

Monty Sarhan — 10:43 AM on June 27, 2009 Reply
Youtube is flexing there muscle here, this increased GB makes no diffrence to the video landscape but just puts it out-there that all the talk about how much bandwith is related to there operation profits means nothing to them,

Just postilation, not a good sign for investors, film makers or modesty, may be they are a corporation after-all, lets hope real players eaking out a business model of credibility are not to hampered by the Youtube video market created anomoly.

One small step for Youtube, 10 steps backwards for the video market space.

Go Google MONOPOLY.

Roger Matthias — 12:30 PM on June 27, 2009 Reply
Is this why I can’t upload a video? I’ve had trouble since Friday the 26th!

My video was just over 5 minutes and it uploaded only 1.5 minutes….with no sound. I tried to upload it several times with the same result using two different browsers.

I finally re-recorded it – it ended up just under 5 minutes – and had all the same problems even though the progress bar showed the entire video being uploaded.

Just today I recorded a quick test video of 1 minute 45 seconds, it uploaded 1.5 minutes again, but at least this one has sound.

Anyone know what’s up with this?

Michelle — 12:54 PM on June 28, 2009 Reply
I think their original intention for the time limit was not to allow the uploading of copyright infringing material like movies or TV Series episodes. I think they should re-evaluate their strategy though, cuz there’s a bunch of music videos there anyways and other stuff.

Erick — 1:30 PM on July 28, 2009 Reply
If you can’t say what you need to in 10 minutes …I probably don’t care to hear about it .
how about this ?,.everybody quit bitchen or go to a different upload site if you acn’t quit whining about the internet

Andy — 6:13 PM on July 28, 2009 Reply

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