Want your videos up fast? Use Quicktime

For just over a year, I've been adding videos to YouTube. My goal was to once-- just once-- get my stuff onto the "Most Recent Videos" page. It seems do-able. I add it, it gets processed and it goes up as one of the most recent pages. Easy huh? Nope. I was cheap and I had a glitch on my computer that barred me from using Adobe Premiere, so all of my videos were created as Windows Media Videos (WMV) via MS MovieMaker. I have come to sad realization that MS Moviemaker is the Paintbrush of the video world. When I uploaded my videos, I tried some experiments and all of my videos took 40-50 minutes to appear available. The "Most Recent" list is stuff made from the first 20 minutes or less, so my stuff never made it.
Eventually, I cleared my glitch with Windows XP that was jamming up Premiere. It was an audio problem-- a dud driver. So, I sprung for a copy of Premiere Elements. It allows you to export movies in one of many formats-- including MWV and MOV formats. I had a short green-screen experiment I wanted to post, so I decided to output it as MOV and WMV. Then prep both and post them both at the same time in different windows.
This is an eight second long video. The MOV file was larger than the WMV file-- 853kb vs. 420kb-- so, bandwidth-wise, the odds of the WMV file getting up first seemed likely.
I hit Submit and Submit. A few seconds later, both were up.
- The MOV file got a screenshot preview window 30 seconds
- The WMV file gave me a screenshot preview in 35 minutes
- The MOV file was generally available within four minutes
- The WMV file took over 55 minutes import and make available on the Youtube site.

So, the lesson: if you want to upload it to Youtube, upload it in Quicktime format.


Quicktime MOV file - 853kb


Windows Media MWV file - 420kb

UPDATE: I am not sure if YouTube wants you to know this. When I uploaded these comparative tests, they continued to appear "Live" but they are not viewable. Go figure.