Verify your YouTube Account and Upload videos longer than 15 minutes

Zahid Farid

3 years ago

Increase your video length limit

By default, you can upload videos that are up to 15 minutes long. Verified accounts can upload videos longer than 15 minutes.

To verify your Google Account:

On a computer, go to https://www.youtube.com/verify.
Follow the steps to verify your Google Account. You can choose to get a verification code through a text message on a mobile device or an automated voice call.

Make sure you’re using an up-to-date version of your browser to upload files greater than 20 GB.

To check if you’ve already verified your Google Account, go to Feature eligibility. If you’ve verified your account, you’ll see “Enabled” in the Features that require phone verification box.

Maximum upload size

The maximum file size you can upload is 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less. We’ve changed the limits on uploads in the past, so you may see older videos that are longer than 12 hours.

After you verify your account, you’ll need to upload your video again:

Sign in to YouTube Studio.
Select CREATE and upload your video again.

If you could previously upload long videos and no longer can, check your account for copyright claims and strikes.

If your video is larger than 256 GB, try compressing your video in a video editing software before uploading it to YouTube. Compressing will reduce your video file size while maintaining the video quality. One common way to compress a video for YouTube is to encode it using the H.264 codec.

Upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos

You can upload High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos to YouTube. HDR videos show higher contrast with more colors than standard digital video.

Viewers can watch HDR videos on compatible mobile devices and HDR TVs. They can also stream HDR videos using Chromecast Ultra to an HDR TV. Viewers will see “HDR” after each quality option in the video player (for example, 1080p HDR).

Viewers watching on non-HDR devices will see the video as a standard dynamic range (SDR) video.

Upload HDR videos

HDR videos must have HDR metadata in the codec or container to be played back properly on YouTube. The most reliable way to properly record the metadata is to export from a supported app.

If you can’t export standard HDR metadata, then you can use the YouTube HDR metadata tool to add HDR metadata to a video. This tool will only work correctly if your video was graded using an HDR transfer function.

Note: If you aren’t sure if your video was graded using an HDR transfer function, using this tool will badly distort your videos. Many videos with “HDR” in the title are not graded with an HDR transfer function. This tool will not work on those videos. Don’t use the YouTube HDR metadata tool if you aren’t familiar with color grading or didn’t grade your own video in HDR.

If you’re grading your video, grade in Rec. 2020 with PQ or HLG. Using a different configuration, including DCI P3, will produce incorrect results.

Once a video has been properly marked as HDR, uploading it follows the usual process of uploading a video. YouTube will detect the HDR metadata and process it, producing HDR transcodes for HDR devices and an SDR downconversion for other devices.

Note: HDR videos currently can’t be edited with YouTube Web editor.

HDR video requirements

Once you upload a video, YouTube supports all resolutions and will automatically convert HDR video to SDR videos when necessary.

Resolution	720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p For best results, use UHD rather than DCI widths (for example, 3840×1600 instead of 4096×1716).
Frame rate	23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94, 60
Color depth	10 bits or 12 bits
Color primaries	Rec. 2020
Color matrix	Rec. 2020 non-constant luminance
EOTF	PQ or HLG (Rec. 2100)
Video bitrate	For H.264, use the recommended upload encoding setting
Audio	Same as the recommended upload encoding setting

These containers have been tested to work:

MOV/QuickTime
MP4
MKV

These codecs are recommended, as they support 10-bit encoding with HDR metadata and deliver high quality at reasonable bitrates:

VP9 Profile 2
AV1
HEVC/H.265

These codecs also work, but require very high bitrates to achieve high quality, which may result in longer upload and processing times:

ProRes 422
ProRes 4444
DNxHR HQX
H.264 10-bit

To be processed, HDR videos must be tagged with the correct:

Transfer function (PQ or HLG)
Color primaries (Rec. 2020)
Matrix (Rec. 2020 non-constant luminance)

HDR videos using PQ signaling should also contain information about the display it was mastered on (SMPTE ST 2086 mastering metadata). It should also have details about the brightness (CEA 861-3 MaxFALL and MaxCLL). If it’s missing, we use the values for the Sony BVM-X300 mastering display.

Optionally, HDR videos may contain dynamic (HDR10+) metadata as ITU-T T.35 terminal codes or as SEI headers.

HDR authoring tools

The following are examples of tools you can use to upload HDR videos to YouTube:

DaVinci Resolve
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Final Cut Pro X