You just finished your most epic YouTube video yet. The upload finally finished and then the dreaded bar appears. Processing 0%.
YouTube you are the worst! Just kidding. But it is frustrating sometimes when you just want to show people your video but it is stuck in processing. I decided to dig into the science of what processing is, and how long to expect. I even came up with a handy rule to guide you. Read on!
What is processing and why does it take so long?
300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube each minute. YouTube stores all this video in bunch of different data centers. They want to make sure they send the best quality video to each viewer, but they also don’t want it to take too long.
To accomplish that, YouTube makes a bunch of copies of your video in different resolutions and stores them across all its servers. When you watch your video on YouTube, you are not watching the original uploaded file. You are watching the file YouTube decided would load the fastest for you, while having the best quality.
This lets them serve you a video that won’t take hours to load on your phone or with a bad internet connection. You can see all the different size videos available by clicking the gear when you are using the YouTube player.
YouTube also processes those different quality of videos into lots of different chunks. This lets them give you chunks at different quality in case your internet connection changes while watching the video. Like you walk between buildings and you get less signal on your phone.
If you like learning visually, here is a fun 4 min video that explains so similar information. YouTube Processing: Explained!
by Marques Brownlee.
How long does it take?
Google says this about YouTube video processing:
Processing time varies greatly depending on the format of your original video, file size, and upload traffic. This could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. You should also expect that higher resolution formats will render more slowly. For instance, 720p and 1080p may take significantly longer to appear than 480p.
I decided to test it. I uploaded a 1 minute long, 40 mb video in 720p (1280×720). It took 1:47 to process. I could see the 240p version at about 1:10.
I then tested it again, uploading a 57 second video at 720p, 23 mb in size. That one finished processing in 1:26.
The quick “How long should processing take rule of thumb” is:
At least a minute of processing for each minute of video. And double that each time you increase the resolution. 👍
So plan on at least a minute of processing for each minute of video. As you upload bigger files and higher quality videos that time will go up.
If you have a really small video file, like something you uploaded off your phone, it might go faster than a minute per minute of video because YouTube will not make a larger file since there would be no increase in quality.
Tips and Hacks
If you have a popular YouTube channel, it is a good idea to set the video to Private until after the processing is done. This will prevent your viewers from seeing the 240p version and commenting that “this vid waz horible”.
Watch out for the ‘Fast Upload Paradox’. If your internet is very fast, sometimes it feels like processing can take ‘longer’ since there is some speculation that YouTube processes chunks of your video as they uploaded. If the video uploads very quickly, YouTube doesn’t have much time to process so it can take longer in processing. However, upload speeds are usually slower than processing speeds. Unless you have amazing internet ya lucky goose.
What if my video is stuck in processing?
The Google support page says if your video is stuck in processing for more than 8 hours, to remove the video from the site and upload again. It is stuck if the message is still ‘Uploaded (processing, please wait)’.
I don’t wait that long. For me, if a video is stuck on ‘Processing’ for more than a few hours, I leave that video processing, and go upload the same video again, privately of course. Since processing takes place on Google servers, it has nothing to do with your internet speed, uploading a second video will not slow down the other video that is processing. If the 2nd video uploads and finishes processing, just delete the 1st video that never finished processing.
Want to get more YouTube tricks and tips in your inbox.
Enter your email below for my best ideas.
This MailChimp shortcode is now deprecated. Please insert the new shortcode to display this form.
I teach a course about getting more subscribers and views on YouTube by using the tools Google gives you. Check out my YouTube course here.