Sharing your content on the Internet has become a custom for all of us: social, instant chat and video sharing sites are part of our daily lives. The connection therefore plays a central role in the optimal use of these services and to speed up the transfer of files. Take, for example, the video take: how long does it take to upload a video to YouTube?
In recent times, also thanks to the Covid-19 emergency and the consequent lockdown, video streaming services have experienced a surge in terms of traffic and not only passive: more and more people, in fact, use these services for work, study or recreation to study, work or simply to entertain.
YouTube, with its live shows and the ability to create ad hoc channels, is one of the reference portals for many users. Uploading videos quickly, therefore, is a not a minor advantage, especially when it comes to long videos.YouTubers are taking an advantage of situation and optimize their channel to attract more viewers. They do not want lose their viewers interest, so to keep them connected they design a beautiful outro and take users to their next video. Design an attractive YouTube outro by outro maker available on various graphic design tools.
YouTube video upload time: key variables
Video upload time on YouTube is not the same for everyone. There are two main variables to consider:
- thesize of the video you want to upload;
- upload speed of your data connection.
The size of the video is affected by several factors, such as the duration of the video itself or the resolution (quality): the longer a recording and the higher the quality of the video, the “heavy” the file will be.
On your computer, you can find out the size of the file by right-clicking (or Ctrl-click on Mac) and viewing the content information. On mobile the procedure is similar, both on Android and iOS, using the file manager of your device, making a long press on the video file.
As for the speed of the connection, however, performance is variable depending on the technology used and the quality of the network itself. Taking into account land theoretical bands, these are the main upload speeds depending on the type of connection you are using:
- 1 Mbpswith an ADSL 20 Mega;
- 20 Mbpsa copper mixed fibre at 200 Mbps;
- 50 Mbpswith a fibre at 100 Mbps;
- 200 Mbpswith an FTTH fibre;
- 50 Mbpswith an LTE mobile connection;
- 50 Mbpsin 4G and 4.5G networks.
It’s easy to see, therefore, that a fibre network or a 4G/4G mobile network will be more and more efficient when uploading files than a copper network.
How long does it take to upload a video to YouTube?
Of course, you can calculate “by hand” the time of uploading a video to YouTube based on the theoretical band and taking into account Megabits per second in relation to the size of the file, but to simplify your life we report 3 useful tools, all free, available and usable online:
Download Time Calculator: You must enter the upload speed of the connection and the size of the file to upload. Clicking “Calculate” displays the time required and the average transfer speed.
Download/Upload time calculator by Meridian Outpost. The operation is similar to the previous one: simply enter the file size (Size and File Unit) and automatically, on the window on the right, the transfer times divided by connection speed are calculated.
Download/Upload time Calculator by Calculator.net. On this site you have several services for automatic calculation, including the tool to find out the load time, entering the size of the video and the upload bandwidth. Clicking “Calculate” shows the time it takes to upload.
Of course this data will tell you not only how long it takes to upload a video to YouTube, but the data is valid for any other files you want to upload online by leveraging the data connection.
By making a concrete example based on the most common fixed and mobile connections, these could be in time to load a video of about 1 GB:
- with an ADSL 20 Mega(1 Mbps upload): about 2 hours and 23 minutes;
- with a copper mixed fibre at 200 Mega(20 Mbps in upload): just over 7 minutes;
- 30 Mega (3Mbps in upload): about 48 minutes;
- 1 Gigabit (200Mbps in upload): approximately 40 seconds;
- LTE(50 mbps upload): just under 3 minutes.
YouTube video processing time
After uploading the video to YouTube, you need to wait for the streaming platform to process the file, so that you can optimize it to the fullest and make it visible on the site.
Again the wait varies depending on the characteristics of the file, but the speed of the data connection does not affect the operation, taking into account that the video has already been uploaded. An upload percentage and confirmation message will let you know when the video was uploaded successfully.
How to speed up uploading a video to YouTube
So here’s how long it takes to upload a video to YouTube. Of course you can’t act directly on the upload speed to speed up the operation, but you can follow a few steps to enhance the connection:
- Use the Ethernet cable if you are under a fixed network, when possible: Wi-Fi, in fact, may suffer dips, especially if you are far from the modem or if there are sources of disturbance;
- Avoid using heavy services when uploading, such as audio/video streaming or file downloads;
