YouTube uploads take ages

[Fliss]

Does it always take ages for a video to upload to YouTube, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

I've just started trying to upload a video or two - my first one was just a short clip with a mandolin and took around 40 minutes to upload, but I'm trying to upload a recording of one of my songs, and it's giving me an estimated time of 160 minutes to upload.

We don't have any sophisticated way of recording a video, we just used a compact digital camera, in its video mode. The camera records in Quicktime, and a 4 minute 39 second video file is 284MB, so it is a large file size, but I don't know of any way to make it smaller.

I'd appreciate any guidance!

Fliss

[shawlie]

66 Strummer has a link to a program that can change the video size/format (it's under "Show and Tell" - he can probably tell you more how to use it, too).

It takes ages for me to upload things, too - something around 500mb might take an hour (and we have pretty fast internet). It's annoying, so I always do it before we start cooking, or take the dog out, etc.

[Joe F]

Here's the link to the free program that will greatly reduce your video size without a big compromise in quality:

http://www.any-video-converter.com/p...or_video_free/

[Fliss]

Thanks guys, I'll try that video converter.

Fliss

[rhancox]

You're uploading some pretty big files, which, as others have noted, is unnecessary and can be remedied.

Myself, since I'm recording some audio and want to mate it up with my video, I'm using MovieMaker to produce the file that will be uploaded to YouTube. That creates a .wmv file which will be smaller.

Examples:

Portions of an 85mb .mpeg video, with an assortment of .jpg photos (~5mb ea) and a 126mb .wav (audio) file all turned into a 36mb .wmv file of just under 4 mins long.

A 132mb .avi video and a 124mb .wav turned into a 52mb .wmv, of about 4 mins long.

I don't recall how long these, or others, took to upload to YouTube, but I know they weren't 1-2 hrs. My recollection is they took maybe 10-15 mins, at the most. If you upload during "primetime" it can take a while but I'm not going to stay/get up at 4:00am just so my uploads will be shorter.

Even if all you have is your raw video, MovieMaker (which is also free with Windows) will reduce it down without much impact on quality, that I've detected.

[mhs]

Fliss,

The free program that 66 came up with, that Joe linked to in this thread is fine for youtube, and for speeding up the uploads.

I have a Zi8 HD camcorder, that comes up with ridiculously huge files when you consider that the target is usually YouTube which is just going to add it's 7 magic herbs and spices and mess it up during processing anyway.

If you take a 720p recording of 200-400G and run it through Any Video Converter using the same output parameters as input (don't use more than 1000 bps), you get the 720p which looks about the same on YouTube, but is now, for example, 27Mb instead of 400Mb in my case.

I stuck a before and after pair up there somewhere. I'll find the link if you want to compare them.

To me there is no significant difference.

Before (400Mb): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CCBhdc8Zyg
After (27Mb): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyymH...eature=related

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Fliss

Does it always take ages for a video to upload to YouTube, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

I've just started trying to upload a video or two - my first one was just a short clip with a mandolin and took around 40 minutes to upload, but I'm trying to upload a recording of one of my songs, and it's giving me an estimated time of 160 minutes to upload.

We don't have any sophisticated way of recording a video, we just used a compact digital camera, in its video mode. The camera records in Quicktime, and a 4 minute 39 second video file is 284MB, so it is a large file size, but I don't know of any way to make it smaller.

I'd appreciate any guidance!

Fliss

Any reason you're concerned about upload time? Are you on dialup? Is it interfering with other uses of the computer?

Most broadband connections offer faster download than upload, so transferring a big file from your computer takes a while.

Fran

[rhancox]

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

Any reason you're concerned about upload time? Are you on dialup? Is it interfering with other uses of the computer?

Most broadband connections offer faster download than upload, so transferring a big file from your computer takes a while.

Fran

YouTube can take a while for a variety of reasons. I've had uploads just simply hangup and not complete. I attribute that, and most slow uploads, to overall site traffic. It really wouldn't matter if you had a T3 at your house, transfer speeds are only as fast as the weakest link.

[Fliss]

Thanks guys. The long upload time isn't a huge issue if that's the only way to do it, I just didn't know whether it normally takes that long or not. And it does limit when I would do it, as I'd need to plan to allow that amount of time.

Rob, I haven't tried Movie Maker yet but I'm not sure if it will work with Quicktime - however I've tried the one that Joe linked to, and I confess I didn't understand all the instructions, after some experminenting to try and find a format that works I've managed to convert my files to MP4 format which seems to work! This got the file size down to around 26MB which took around 16 minutes to upload - much better! However, the sound quality isn't too great. Here's the one I've just uploaded if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPonP6CIdg

Fliss

[Bananafist]

I've got broadband, but uploading 5 minutes of video+music takes about an hour, and uploading 4 tunes, total run time about 18 minutes took almost 16 hours,ie half the day and all night. It has put me off a bit, and I do suffer with techno-fear, being a bit old and stupid. If it was all valve driven, like my amps, I could cope better!
My stuff is under Chichester Acoustic Music Club on Youtube. The video and sound quality seems quite good to me - possibly a reason for the slow upload?

I had a look at the suggested programme to convert to be quicker to load, but it brought on an attack of t-f again!

Peter aka Bananafist

[Fran Guidry]

I guess my point was that it all happens in the background so I don't really care how long it takes.

Fran

[Pokiehat]

Nah I upload quite a few high def videos (380mb+) to youtube all the time and they all finish in under an hour. Whats your bandwidth upstream and downstream?