YouTube Gold

Just out of interest, how long does YouTube take to process a 25 minute programme? I've uploaded an episode of Spatz to my channel and it's been processing since this afternoon.

If you convert the file into FLV and upload it, you'll save a hell of a lot of time. Not only are the files smaller and quicker to upload, but a lot of the time it takes to upload a video is down to YouTube converting the file to FLV.

I use MP4 and rarely have issues. When I used AVI, I'd occasionally get a long period of processing.

I tried converting the file to FLV in VLC player and YouTube told me that the file only contained audio and failed to process it.

I can't imagine that's true now. The Flash player is only used as a back up and FLV files are certainly not being served to devices like iPhones that don't support it.


YouTube's recommended format is H.264 - and make sure to select a 'web optimised' option when exporting.

I convert everything I upload to FLV beforehand and it's considerably quicker. Unless it's just the significantly smaller file size that's saving time.

Yeah, H.264 is the way to go now. FLV may have been quicker 8 years ago.

I've done what's been suggested here. In VLC Player I selected for YouTube SD and selected the H.264 Codec and saved as an MP4.

File size went down from 665MB to 201MB. Currently processing. Let's see what the outcome is tomorrow.

The MP4 file uploaded in shorter time last night but we're still processing as I type.

I've uploaded videos of that length (in SD) before and it's usually processed fine for me, in about 10-15 minutes, so I'm not sure what's wrong with yours.

Perhaps i'm not doing something right when ripping from VLC player? It shouldn't be that difficult to rip from DVD in VLC Player should it?

I've uploaded a 100MB 720p HD H.264 MP4 file on YouTube which has taken two minutes to process.