Charles Trippy Stretches YouTube to Nine Hours
Charles Trippy has broken a record, and by an incredibly wide margin. Raising the Four-Eyed Monster bar some 750 percent, he’s posted a video running more than nine hours long to his YouTube account. Yes, it’s an unapologetic stunt and will drive vastly more pageviews than it will actual full-viewings of the clip (sheeeit, I ain’t watching the whole thing).
But it marks an important milestone, as YouTube initially capped uploads to 100 megabytes — or 10 minutes — in an effort to reduce copyright infringement. The 100mb limit still counts, but the fact that they’ve expanded the longer-form program to people like “YouTube Partner” Trippy means the copyright infringement detection mechanisms, regardless if automated or meatware, have matured.
Ever since the invention of film, people have tried to push the implicit time limits of forms and the medium. Griffith was called crazy for stretching an audience’s attention span to two whole reels. An Eric von Stroheim film, Greed was edited down by Goldwyn to two hours from nine — and the studio destroyed the remaining footage. Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Matthew Barney have all made artistic statements with films and videos that have stretched far past the point of human endurance.
Now, Trippy is a nice enough guy — I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly at Pixelodeon. And while a reputation as publisher of Viral Video Fever may not lend him to high-art caché, that shouldn’t detract from the fact that he’s managed to open the floodgates of convention-busting forms. There is a place for ambient motion pictures (especially if you enjoy hallucinogens, or repeated passive viewings), and YouTube stands to lose no more bandwidth coin over a continuous nine-hour stream than they do with 180 three-minute clips, presumably. Also presumably, somebody will edit the damn thing down in both time-lapse and highlights form — god bless them.
So bravo, Mr. Trippy. I, for one, will remember you when I go to some new media douchebag party and see Empire streamed over a network and projected against the neighboring building’s wall.
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I’m not sure if they still have it up, but at one point DivX had a 40 hour video of a cricket match on their Stage6 website. Surprisingly, people actually downloaded the entire thing.
Davis Freeberg on January 8th, 2008 at 2:16 pm - Permalink
[...] that anyone who watches the entire thing “needs a life”). But, as Jackson West at NewTeeVee suggests, the video might also suggest that YouTube’s copyright detection program may have [...]
The Chutry Experiment » Warhol, YouTube Style on January 8th, 2008 at 2:19 pm - Permalink
Yeah, that sounds like typical cricket fan behavior. One of the points here, though, is that in streaming from YouTube I don’t have to actually download all that footage.
Jackson West on January 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm - Permalink
a) Trippy has just uploaded the “shortest video on YouTube” too. Presumably leaving only “all points in between” left uncovered.
b) No stoty about Charles Trippy is ever complete without a mention of his awesome emo hair.
MarkDayComedy on January 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm - Permalink
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Charles Trippym fez o mais longo vídeo do YouTube « Britescade on January 9th, 2008 at 5:12 am - Permalink
Any length video from your camera, webcam or file automatically make it 100Mb:
http://www.compressmyvideos.com
HWA on January 16th, 2008 at 6:18 pm - Permalink
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Em Tubeou « Kiminda’s Nilnews on January 23rd, 2008 at 6:37 pm - Permalink
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Blog Britescade » Blog Archive » Charles Trippym fez o mais longo vídeo do YouTube on May 31st, 2008 at 9:24 pm - Permalink
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Feature-length Movies on YouTube? « NewTeeVee on June 18th, 2008 at 1:17 pm - Permalink