Last year, I started using a ContourHD video camera to record my bike rides. I have a bunch of them archived on my computer now, but until recently I had only uploaded one cycling video to YouTube. The main reason that I hadn’t been using YouTube was that my videos were limited to 10, and then 15 minutes in length, while my bike rides are typically longer than that. So, rather than simply dragging and dropping a file, I’d have to do some editing to make the ride eligible for YouTube.
Just recently, I noticed that my account had been enabled for uploads longer than 15 minutes in duration. I’ve decided to test it out, and celebrate, by uploading the realtime version of last year’s Valentine’s Day bike ride. Now, instead of having to cram all 22 miles into 10 minutes, you can watch it as I experienced it, in 1 hour and 57 minutes:
Now that I can share more, I might have to upgrade my old 720p camera to something a little cooler, which takes care of a feature request I noted last year. I intend to upload a bunch more of these longer-form videos that I’ve been recording over the past year or so. I record when I ski, when I bike, and now even when I drive. They’ll be boring to most people; I don’t expect any of this to go viral, but I’ll share them just in case anyone would want to view them for the same reasons I would. It’s just a way of answering the question, “What was a ‘normal’ day like in 2011/etc.?”
If you’re a video creator and you haven’t considered hosting your video on YouTube recently, give it another look. Video processing is blazingly fast, the player supports up to 4K resolution (and I believe you can upload in even higher quality), and your viewers can benefit from auto-timed or even auto-transcribed captions.
I work for Google, which owns YouTube, but this is my personal blog.