3 days ago I ranted on how frustrated I was when YouTube automatically remove the video that I have spent more than an hour uploading just because they wasn’t capable of detecting the video length first before uploading the whole video. I searched in Google about this issue and found that there were many frustrated users experiencing the same problem as well but without a real solution. 15 minutes is actually good enough for showing a short video tutorial but it is definitely not enough for uploading talks or speeches.

Thanks to Ricky Splinter, Rinsoy Nellissery and Gábor Szurgent for sharing with me via comment that the 15 minutes limit can be actually removed by simply giving them my phone number for verification. Some of you may think that giving out your phone number is intrusive to your privacy but it is actually the best method today to verify that you are a real human and not a robot that is coded to do some automatic stuff. Just like in our forums, the phone verification is active to avoid the same user registering a few accounts and joining the giveaways to increases their chance in winning.


After logging in to YouTube, if I’ve opened my eyes bigger I would have notice the information that shows “Videos can be… High Definition, Up to 15 minutes in length (Increase your limit), A wide variety of formats. The most important part is the Increase your limit link which brings you to a page to verify your account by providing them your mobile phone number.

If for some reason you can’t find that link, you can use the direct link below.
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_upload_verify

Once you’ve selected your country and entered your mobile phone number, clicking the Submit button and you will receive a text message that says “Your Google verification code is XXXXXX“. Note down the 6 digit and enter it at Step 2 of 2 and click the Verify button.

When you want to upload a video, you should see a blue information bar that says “Congratulations! Your account is now enabled for uploads longer than 15 minutes. Click the Upload button below to select a video.”

Your YouTube account now doesn’t have viewing limit nor video length limit plus it is free and fast! I wished I would have found this out earlier so that I wouldn’t have spent $59.95 on Vimeo Plus.