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]