Q: I can’t upload videos longer than 15 minutes

When I go to Share > YouTube I get an error that it can't publish because the file is longer than 15 minutes.

 

There are YouTube accounts that allow videos longer than 15 minutes, including mine.  It would be great if I could get QuickTime to let me choose Share > YouTube without getting this error.

Not a YouTube user. However...

1) Have you determined if the problem is with QT or your YouTube account? (I.e., have you tried to manually upload the same file bypassing QT to see if you get the same error message directly from YouTube?)

2) Have you complied with all requirements stated on the "Upload videos longer than 15 minutes" YouTube webpage?

3) Did you provide the correct account information? (Many problems posted here in the past appear to have been traced to incorrect YouTube account information.)

4) Have you checked to see if all share modules have the same problem? (Software updates may have included new "security" measures that are causing problems.)

5) Is the problem associated with a specific system user account? (Some problems can be associated with PLIST file corruption and would then be local to a specific user account rather than global to the system.)

1) I can upload a video to my YouTube account that is longer that 15 minutes if I go through their webpage.

This would seem to indicate nothing is wrong with the content itself.

2) Yes. Some accounts are allowed to upload videos longer than 15 minutes, including mine.

Are you referring to YouTube User Accounts here or to User Accounts on your computer system. (I.e., are you saying that you can share a file using one account on your computer system but not do so if you log in as a different user on your computer. If this is what you are saying then it would tend to indicate a local user account problem—frequently a PLIST issue.)

3) QuickTime will not go past the first initial error.  It does not ask me to log into anything.

Am confused here. If aren't asked for YouTube Name and YouTube Password, then how is the sharing function supposed to check your account to verify that your account is cleared to upload files longer than 15 minutes. (I.e., something doesn't seem right here.)

4) I've only checked QuickTime, it's the only app where I view this Video.

Other apps like iMovie also have the option to share content to YouTube. Sometimes it helps if you can determine if the problem is associated with a particular app and not a corruption of the embedded system wide share module itself.

5) Where would I check a PLIST?

Global PLIST files are stored in the "~/Library/Preferences" folder and local PLIST files are stored in the local user account "Library/Preferences" folder. PLIST files are normally generated the first time an app is opened if not already present and updated automatically when changes are made but can become corrupted over time. Deleting the PLIST file and reopening the app normally fixes a corrupted PLIST problem since this forces the generation of a new PLIST file but may require the user to re-set preferences depending on the particular app and whether or not it has an associated user accessible preferences menu option.

So QuickTime has the following options for sharing in Yosemite: Mail, Messages, Airdrop, Vimeo. Facebook, Flickr.  You can choose any of these.  I haven't given Apple any credentials to any of the external services (not that I would know where to do that, plus I don't have a Facebook account).

Here are the "Share" options I get under Yosemite:

As far as why QuickTime is checking my account, it isn't. Like I mentioned earlier, when I choose YouTube from the sharing option, it immediately returns an error that videos longer than 15 minutes can't be uploaded to YouTube.

Your system must log in with YouTube before it can upload a file. Here is what I see when I select the "YouTube" Share Menu option under Yosemite:

If you told your system previously to "remember" your YouTube log-in info, then it shouldn't ask again. If you have never stored the log-in info, then I would normally expect a different error message here. That is what seems "fishy" here.

I'm also not seeing a PLIST file for Quicktime.  Or is there a specific file I should delete?

As you can see, there should be a number of QT Player associated PLIST files:

Is that a video longer than 15 minutes you're uploading?

Sorry, have no way to actually test the YouTube "share" workflow as I don't have an account with them. Have you uploaded a less than 15 minute file to the site? Am now wondering if the "keychain" will remember both the log-in data you enter, as well as, store the YouTube verification authorizing you to upload longer files once used to "successfully" upload a short duration file. If you haven't tried this, then how about doing so and posting the results for others. My post was primarily initiated as a logical approach to troubleshooting the issue you described.

So I can upload a video that is smaller than 15 minutes without a problem.

 

However, trying again to upload a video longer than 15 minutes will not work.

Sounds like some sort of a communication problem where the share routine is issuing an excessive duration error without really checking to see if your account is authorized to accept long duration files. You may wish to report this to Apple as a possible bug via "Product Feedback" report—just not sure if this should be reported as QT feedback or Yosemite OS feedback.

Try uploading it through YouTube.com. I have the same problem but it almost worked for me. The minutes remaining kept going up to 2000 minutes remaining.

PROBLEM FIXED!!

I noticed that this is a fairly old thread but I thought I would leave a helpful tip on how to resolve this. I have been having the same issue just recently.  My YouTube account was in good standing and I had been uploading videos around 30 minutes prior with no problems before. I will also mention that If you have gotten any copyright strikes from YouTube recently they can and will start to limit your available upload time back to 15 min. I did not have this issue.

I noticed that when I got the error that the video was longer than 15 min there was also an option to trim the video. My video was over 17 min long and of course  I couldn't delete the last two minutes or my video would be pointless. So just out of curiosity I went ahead and trimmed about .5 sec off of the end of my video which wasn't a problem. After that I hit share with YouTube and it immediately started uploading.

Luckily I have an outro to my videos so trimming .5 secs wasn't a problem. If you are having this issue then I would recommend you to leave at least 1 second of room on the end of my your videos to allow for this little trick in the future.

I will also mention that I did use Logic Pro X in order to edit my video before attempting to upload it to YouTube and I have had some weird issue uploading videos after editing them in Logic Pro X in the past. Not sure if it's connected but worth the mention.

Aint no thang but a chicken wang. Peace!