Longest YouTube video ever is long, boring
Once upon a time YouTube capped video uploads to 100MB or 10 minutes, whichever came first. The goal is to save some server space and prevent video piracy. But while all video submissions still need to be under 100MB, certain trusted YouTube members now can upload longer videos. So Charles Trippy decided to see how far he could push the limits -- and posted the longest YouTube video ever.
How long are we talking? About 9 hours. Yes, we know the YouTube player above probably shows just about 4 and a half hours, but that's because the player really isn't designed to handle videos this long. Try watching the whole thing from start to finish and you'll get a full 9 hours. At least that's what Trippy says, and to be honest, we're just going to trust him on this one, because we don't have any urge to watch the whole thing. Even if he's lying, 4 and a half hours is still pretty incredible.
That said, Trippy didn't do anything the rest of us couldn't. He recorded 9 hours of his evening on a webcam and then compressed the heck out of the video to squeeze the whole thing down to 100MB. The result is an extraordinarily low quality video in every sense of the word. Not only is the image quality crappy, but the video itself isn't particularly interesting. Imagine watching a Justin.TV or UStream video for 9 hours straight, without any sort of real-time interaction with the participants. But now that Trippy's shown it's possible, we fully expect to see someone do upload a dramatic reading of James Joyce's Ulysses any day now.
[via NewTeeVee]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kojo87 said 8:47PM on 1-08-2008
wow. this is dumb. do you really think anyone out there watched the whole thing from start to finish?
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Bill said 8:48PM on 1-08-2008
Wow. That was the worst 1.5 hours of my life... seriously don't try watching the whole damn thing even if you've got nothing else better to do.
Rocketboy said 2:04PM on 1-09-2008
In the first few seconds, there's a disclaimer that the video will be dumb. Any time wasted watching a dumb video is your own fault.
Ramzi said 9:15PM on 1-08-2008
The only reason I'd even consider watching this, is to see how he's going to handle the situation when nature calls over the course of his 9 hour escapade. Take the camera in with him to shock us all, or just leave it outside? Hopefully the latter...
Not that I'm actually going to watch this thing to find out.
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RP said 12:14AM on 1-09-2008
At 2 minutes in, he walks away to go make a sandwich. He doesn't take the camera with him.
At 32 minutes, he's in his car with the camera.
The youtube player jumps by 2:47 each pixel, so it's hard to see exactly what's happening with much detail -- I'm not that patient.
Back to life...
scrap104 said 10:07AM on 1-09-2008
I stopped after 30 seconds. It does open the door for posting useful videos past the 10 minute mark.
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Nadav said 4:42PM on 1-09-2008
you can upload 1gb of video using the software. thats probably what he used
http://youtube.com/multifile_installer
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