How can I put long-ish videos online without them being public yet accessible by computer illiterate people?

March 6, 2012 1:55 AM

What are the options for making publicly available educational movie files, so they can be accessed by computer illiterate people, yet without making them publicly available/indexed by Google? I tried YouTube but hit its "video is too long" limitation (the movies are 35 minutes and I really don't want to chop them up into 10 min chunks). The movies are created by a charity and I have full permission of the copyright holder. The movies are not available online anywhere else. (Read on for more info.)

I really don't want to put barriers in the way for anybody who wants to view the files (i.e. password prompts etc.) because, as mentioned, the people viewing may be computer illiterate. What's needed is a simple system where they can click a link and view the video, yet without Google indexing so they remain pseudo-obscured (I realise it's not an ideal setup but it's actually not that bad for the charity's needs.)

Hosting them on my own web space is problematic. I don't have access to the charity's website and it's currently in disarray, so it's not politically possible to go down that particular alley.

posted by humblepigeon to computers & internet (12 answers total)

Vimeo could be an option.
posted by pompomtom at 2:23 AM on March 6, 2012

It appears that you can upload long videos (up to 12 hours) on YouTube if you verify your account. From here, there's an option to upload your videos as private or unlisted, if memory serves.
posted by hnnrs at 2:34 AM on March 6, 2012

I had just written the same answer as hnnrs (same link and everything!). If you leave the videos as unlisted then anyone with the link can view them without any fuss - youtube is definitely the cheapest/easiest option I know of.
posted by samj at 2:45 AM on March 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've verified the account and can now upload files larger than 15 minutes. This might sound an obvious solution but I couldn't find it. There's a hell of a lot of junk information out there about YouTube, usually by teenagers complaining they can't upload episodes of Family Guy etc. Google needs to find a way of cutting through the crap so that legitimate users can find the info they need quickly.
posted by humblepigeon at 2:45 AM on March 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Rather irritatingly, any "long" video is deleted instantly, along with all its blurb. Uploading and conversion took about six hours, not to mention copy-typing the words, so I've got to start all over again. This is really irritating. I expect better from a Google property, but maybe not. Like I said, the whole service appears to be setup to counter illegality, rather than help legitimate users.
posted by humblepigeon at 4:03 AM on March 6, 2012

I'm not sure if it is helpful for storage itself, but this is an archive for educational purposes. As far as I remember, they have YouTube (and other video hosting) streams, but also videos exclusive to their page. Maybe that would be an option? It's also simple enough to show computer-oblivious relatives how to find the videos they want and there's no software required; just click and watch.
posted by MinusCelsius at 5:05 AM on March 6, 2012

Have you checked out Vimeo? I don't think you can prevent the videos from being google-indexed, but Vimeo is a little less high-profile than YouTube in a sense - much less troll-y anyway. A pro account is $50/year and is really worth it. It's not FREE but it's a good solution.
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:48 AM on March 6, 2012

Vimeo lets you add a simple plaintext password to your videos.

As far as video hosting sites go, a lot of the "pros" prefer Vimeo for its higher quality encoding, attractive site design, and simple user-interface.
posted by schmod at 5:55 AM on March 6, 2012

humblepigeon: "Rather irritatingly, any "long" video is deleted instantly, along with all its blurb."

Your video was not deleted for being "long". Did you get any notification of the actual reason?
posted by turkeyphant at 7:45 AM on March 6, 2012

"A [vimeo] pro account is $50/year and is really worth it."

A Plus account is $50/yr. Pro is $199/yr.

The Vimeo commercial/pro account ($199/yr) offers what I believe to be the best set of options for controlling how your videos are displayed for the money. It is easily the best bang-for-buck of the big video hosts. You can keep your videos out of the search engine's indexes, can have them only be embeddable on specific domains, etc. The UI/UX for all this control is... well, wonky but it does allow for a heck of a lot of customization.
posted by bz at 8:51 AM on March 6, 2012

turkeyphant: sorry but it was indeed deleted for being long. Here's exactly what I saw:

https://originaltipstricks.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/youtube-this-video-has-been-removed-because-it-is-too-long1.png

This is what I'm complaining about. There's no other info apart from this message where the video is. No link to a help file. No explanation of how long a video should be. Nothing. Like I said, YouTube is setup to defeat pirates, rather than be a useful service. They've forgotten what they're supposed to be doing.
posted by humblepigeon at 10:50 AM on March 6, 2012

They've forgotten what they're supposed to be doing.

The media companies are their customers, not you.
posted by rhizome at 11:07 AM on March 6, 2012