Thursday, June 19, 2008

YouTube videos to get longer and longer

YouTube has had longer videos in their content for more than a year now. There are usually two ways of doing this. Somehow uploading a video that lasts for an hour and a half all in one go, which would take you a while, or uploading it in segments. I have watched a number of documentaries that way, and although I sat through the whole thing, it wasn't the most pleasant way of watching anything.

Apparently, YouTube are going to make some sort of big announcement at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival this week, according to CNN Money. The same source indicates that they are fishing for up and coming directors for some sort of deal, and are stressing how certain directors of videos on their website have gone on to strike deals with studios.

However, YouTube is neither the first video website to upload full length videos, nor the first site to host the video of someone that later became famous. Stage 6 was very popular for a short period of time for full length videos, with documentaries and interviews from the 70's to the 00's, and its content, to begin with, was incredible. However, more users joined in and uploaded their videos, Stage 6 turned more and more into a big repetitive mess and it became harder and harder to find videos.

The most important consequence of millions of people uploading full length content and the main reason that Stage 6 closed, is the cost of storing all these millions of clips and dealing with whether or not they are allowed online.

Good luck to YouTube and more power to them for trying this, but I hope they have called DivX up and asked what went wrong with Stage 6 before starting.

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