Charles Lau dot Com

I faced a few problems working with YouTube for the whole night when I was reviewing FatManUnleashed. Someway somehow, his video is always getting over 100mb which exceeds the limit of YouTube for my video upload needs. I tried to use Windows Movie Maker to convert the avi file into wmv for the first time with a setting to make the video much better. In the end, I got the video uploaded and it was processing for more than 12 hours! Made me wait for at least three hours to get the posting up and ready… I decided to use the default setting and it worked within an hour…

Things to note when working with file:

1. Keep your file at 100MB file size limit.
2. Keep your video below 10 min 57 sec.
3. Use movie editors - like Windows MovieMaker or Apple iMovie - to compress your video size if you do have your video below 10min 57 sec.
4. If you have uploaded your file and it is processing for more than 8 hours, please do not wait anymore… (I have waited myself, it doesn’t work!). Either try re-uploading again, or reprocess your video into another suitable format.
5. The processing time usually varies greatly depending on the video format, file size and upload traffic.
6. Acceptable file formats are: .wmv, .mov, .mpg, or .avi (Please don’t try to compress the file and upload the zip file, hoping they might be smart enough to uncompress there… I have tried myself too!)
7. Recommended Video Compression: MPEG4 format at 320×240 resolution with MP3 audio.

There is an interesting Guideline about copyright at YouTube Copyright Tips:

• It doesn’t matter how long or short the clip is, or exactly how it got to YouTube. If you taped it off cable, videotaped your TV screen, or downloaded it from some other website, it is still copyrighted, and requires the copyright owner’s permission to distribute.
• It doesn’t matter whether or not you give credit to the owner/author/songwriter—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn’t matter that you are not selling the video for money—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn’t matter whether or not the video contains a copyright notice—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn’t matter whether other similar videos appear on our site—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn’t matter if you created a video made of short clips of copyrighted content—even though you edited it together, the content is still copyrighted.

Many people thought they are not infringing copyright if they have stated who produced the contents… Well, the very fact that these contents are not meant to be shown on other places, that’s the issue that the producer is concerned.