Duration of Videos

[Tthizzle88]

Controversial??? Discussed, debated, theorized about, and bemoaned, yes ... but I've never seen a single heated argument about it anywhere and I've been heavily researching all things YouTube lately.



I think you're looking for cavities in the wrong end of the horse.

Length doesn't matter. To paraphrase Roger Ebert...

"No great YouTube video can be too long, no bad YouTube video can be too short."

Seriously, forget about how long your videos are. Instead focus on how good they are. Edit them down to just the good parts. Never add in filler just to lengthen them and, naturally, NEVER delete anything good from your videos. Do not worry about one of your videos being longer or shorter than your average video. Again, just focus on quality. If you can give quality, people will give you their time. I've seen very popular vlog videos that last longer than two and half hours because they're just that good.

Now if your show uses a format (like how my YouTube game show will), what you can do is work on distilling your format down to just the essential good parts.

1) Do a quick tease. Don't do a burlesque show version of a tease. As long as it would take you to blow a kiss, your tease should be that long.

2) Keep your intro to at most 2 to 3 seconds. Or better yet, just slap on a watermark in the lower right corner of your videos ... which you should do whether or not you do an intro.

3) Don't give any video time to your end credits but silently subtitle them near the end of your video. And if you just absolutely positively have to have an end piece (such as "Please please please please please subscribe to me!!!!"), use your video editor to at least speed it up as fast as it can be clearly understood.

And if you're a gaming YouTube show, NO ONE wants to watch you run to anywhere. Jump cut to or, better yet, fast forward to where the action is. Fast forward is better for those who want to know how you got to where the good action is in the game. No, you yapping away while you are real-time running somewhere doesn't make up for you forcing your viewers to watch you run somewhere. That and never stop talking. You might think you're doing some super cool combo move that your viewers will wet their pants watching you do, but you're only kidding yourself ... or feeding your ego. Your viewers are watching you play a computer game to: 1) learn how to play that game better themselves, 2) be entertained by your witty banter, or 3) ideally both.

Yeah definitely not controversial. It was just a lack of vocabulary at the moment. I think like you said overall that's what matters most. At the end of the day it's about posting/uploading what you love and if it happens to be an hour livestream then that's what you do. As long as its entertaining. I think if the subscribers see you happy they'll be happy if they see the vid.

 

[Tthizzle88]

Oh, well you were speaking in general before, not gaming channels. Though, even then, it's still up to the uploader and what he feels his audience would respond too. Again, a five-ten minute video would be perfectly fine for Let's Plays, and things like that. However, if you are doing something silly like a montage or something, you can make it short than five minutes.

Yeah that's definitely fair enough. The average amount of length for a typical montage isn't that long, but I guess if a montage was so good and full of clips that it called for a long (10+ min.) video than so be it.[DOUBLEPOST=1394971470,1394971219][/DOUBLEPOST]

Daily vloggers with videos from 3-10 minutes long seem to do very well in getting every minute of their video watched.
People on the internet these days have an abundance of things to watch, and if they get bored, even for 10 seconds, they'll click off and look for something else.
Keeping your videos as short as possible, whilst still delivering your content in a manner that's entertaining and doesn't seem rushed, is a fine art.

From my personal watching perspective...unless it's a full production piece, like a documentary, I never watch anything on YouTube that's longer than 15 minutes. Aint nobody got time for that.

This is what I'm getting at when I'm considering short vids. I already make 1-10 min vids on average. I guess my subs personally like some of my playlists vids longer. For example, I'm doing a Lets Play over Fight Night the video game. I use to edit it down were just the highlights were shown with a little bit of the regular footage before and after the highlight, then fade to the next highlight clip. With this I was getting maybe 3-5 mins. Some of my subscribers requested that I make the vids longer and even show the footage that wasn't necessarily a highlight. So this kind of shocked me that they wanted longer duration instead of the opposite.[DOUBLEPOST=1394972381][/DOUBLEPOST]

Hey Friends, Most important Points for video duration :

1) An Avg internet user spends not more than 5 minutes watching videos online / day
2) 90% of videos with more than 100k views are under 5 Minutes Duration
3) 90% of Viral videos are under 5 Minutes
4) Click through rate is higher for videos under 5 Minutes
Eg. Consider Movie trailers on youtube.

Last but not least my point for any content creator :
If you create 30 Videos / Month follow 70 - 30 Ratio i.e.
1) 20 Videos are of 5 minute duration
2) 10 Videos No duration restriction
3) For every 10 videos you release 7 should be 5 Minutes 3 videos of any duration.
All the best, All the above is with my experience on a live video streaming website for past 5 Years.

Thanks for the helpful tips tips on this one. I appreciate the time to include your input. It is well appreciated. I'll definitely take this in mind.

 

[Rubayyy]

For gaming channels, I usually suggest maximum of 10 minutes. Especially for smaller channels who don't have a wide audience who will continuously watch all their videos. I noticed gamers who look at Let's Plays of smaller channels tend to close the video if they see it's 20-30 minutes long. If the video captured is that long, I say chop it into 2-3 parts.

I don't have exact studies of this but it's a pattern I notice.

 

[katysbeautychannel]

Maybe take a leaf out of Toby Turner's book and show all of your game play, just chopped up into 10 minute "episodes"?

 

[Tthizzle88]

Maybe take a leaf out of Toby Turner's book and show all of your game play, just chopped up into 10 minute "episodes"?

What do you necessarily mean by this. I'm kind of lost on this one. Sorry?[DOUBLEPOST=1395020303,1395020227][/DOUBLEPOST]

For gaming channels, I usually suggest maximum of 10 minutes. Especially for smaller channels who don't have a wide audience who will continuously watch all their videos. I noticed gamers who look at Let's Plays of smaller channels tend to close the video if they see it's 20-30 minutes long. If the video captured is that long, I say chop it into 2-3 parts.

I don't have exact studies of this but it's a pattern I notice.

Yeah my lets plays are always 10 mins or less and if I ever do go over it's normally just a few mins. But that's just for my lets play all my other vids are around 5 mins and less.

 

[AngelSnes]

I think it varies on what's going on.

In relation to Game Videos, sometimes you can't just stop because otherwise it would be a really awkward spot to suddenly stop. This ends up making videos anywhere between 10-25 minutes so that you don't end up stopping at inappropriate points.

But I agree that you should do your best to keep videos in small segments!

 

[Josh Keatley]

Okay. This has been a controversial topic on Youtbe for quite some time. I'm sure it is all of our goals to finds ways to grow more stronger on Youtube. Of course major factors in this is generating views and activie subscribes. I want to discover what duration of one's Youtube videos is best for reaching this goal and getting the Youtube engagement that all believe they should get. It's weird because you see some Youtubers with 1-hour long plus videos getting a lot of views and attention, but also the same is seen in short videos. Is it just the channel popularity that affects this greatly (surely if TheSyndicateProject just posted an hour long livestream of whatever Youtuber it most likely would go viral). What are you all's thoughts and experiences in the best video lenghts?

A lot has changed with youtube's algorithm in the last couple of years. View percentage watched use to be favored and ranked higher. Now view duration helps a videos rank more. So if the same type of video gets watched on the average of 10 mins it going to out rank a video with 5 minutes of average view time. Of course views, likes, comments, favorites and shares all play big part in it.

But I would say make the video as long as it needs to be to keep people interested. I shoot for 5-10mins. But if I am saying something that takes longer than 10 mins I don't sweat it. As long as all the time is well used and it keeps people interested it can be as long as you can make it!

 

[Tthizzle88]

A lot has changed with youtube's algorithm in the last couple of years. View percentage watched use to be favored and ranked higher. Now view duration helps a videos rank more. So if the same type of video gets watched on the average of 10 mins is going to out rank a video with 5 minutes ranked. Of course views, likes, comments, favorites and shares all play big part in it.

But I would say make the video as long as it needs to be to keep people interested. I shoot for 5-10mins. But if I am saying something that takes longer than 10 mins I don't sweat it. As long as all the time is well used and it keeps people interested it can be as long as you can make it!

That's true word man. As I mentioned previously I think that's what it comes down to for the end result. How is the time being used is it being used exessively (too long) or is it not being fully taken advantage of (too short)?