8/10/15
8:23 am

Sharing Private Videos Using YouTube

Sharing videos via email, file transfer or using old technology like DVDs can be impractical. Uploading your videos to a service like YouTube that almost anyone can access is easy and useful. You can set these videos to be unlisted or private if you aren't interested in the general publicseeing them. YouTube videos can be viewed on computers, set-top boxes, TVs, tablets, phones. Plus, they can be high definition, giving them a big advantage over DVDs.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let's look at how you can use YouTube to share videos with friends and family by setting them to either private or unlisted.
So I get asked all the time about how to share videos with just a select few people. For instance people may want to email a video which isn't very practical because video files are large and a lot of times people can't receive large files and it is difficult to send as well. 
I get asked maybe about burning to DVD's but new Mac's don't come with DVD burners and DVD's are kind of becoming an obsolete technology anyway being standard definition so it is not a good way either.
A really good way is to share them online and the most popular video site, of course, is YouTube. So you can share your videos on YouTube. A lot of people don't want to do this because they don't want to publicly display their videos. They aren't putting them up there to get attention. They just want to show a family member.
So it is important to understand that when you share something on YouTube you don't have to make it public. You can make a private video and you can make an unlisted video. These are excellent ways to share videos with friends and family.
For instance here I am in iMovie and I've just created a video. It is an iMovie video. I've got transitions, I've got a title, and everything. I want to share this on YouTube. There is two different ways to share on YouTube. 
One is to use the Share button. I can select YouTube and if I wasn't logged into my Test YouTube account here it would say log in right here and I would click on it and log in. If you don't have a YouTube account you can get one. It is a Goggle account so if you use Gmail, if you use Goggle Plus, if you use any Goggle service like Goggle Play or anything, you have a Goggle account which means you have a YouTube account. If you don't, of course, you just sign up for one. Goggle is everywhere so most people have some sort of Goggle account.
So you sign into that and now you can share directly from iMovie. So here is the video. I haven't even exported or done anything. I've just edited it here and it is ready to go. I can title it, I can add description and all this is going to be included with the upload. So I'll leave it like that. I can add Tags if I want. For sharing something privately none of this is really that important. But you do want to make sure you name it something reasonable so the person knows they are viewing the right thing.
You can select a size but there really is no reason unless you have very low band width to go lower than what the maximum is which will be set. Category probably doesn't matter if you are just showing privately.
Now here is where you set Private, Unlisted, or Public. It will probably default to Public. Private or Unlisted are the two options you want to choose. I'll discuss what is different about each one soon. Let's just choose Private for now. I'll hit Next. Then this will give me a Terms of Service thing. I'll hit Publish and that's it. I'll get a notification when it is uploaded. Otherwise it just does it in the background. I can continue to do what I am doing. It usually takes just a few minutes for a short video like this. Maybe a little longer for a longer video.
That is the first way to upload a YouTube video. I never use that method. Instead I use the basic method of just going to YouTube on the web and I click the Upload button. Doing it through the web gives you access to every feature and every option YouTube has. It is the primary way that people get things up into YouTube. 
It is very easy to use from iMovie. You can't just do it right from the Share button here but instead I simply Share and just export it as a file and then select what I want. This will also give me a nice file that I can have on my hard drive for other things. So I do all the same stuff here, hit Next, and I will be done with the video. 
There's that YouTube video I uploaded before and I got my notification that it was shared.
So I would just export it as file and once I've export as a file then I can drag and drop that into here. Before or after I do it I can set it to Public, Unlisted, or Private. Then I get to set everything. For instance, let's go and give that a try here. I will export this and I'll just save it to my desktop. Then I'll be able to upload that to YouTube once it is done.
Now that I see it is done, I can see it here on the desktop, I can drag and drop it here and now I can set everything. I can set the title, description, the tags. I can change it to Private or Unlisted. Notice here that I get through this interface the ability to add names, circles, or email addresses.
So when you share something privately you have to specify who gets permission to look at it. They have to have an account with Goggle otherwise Goggle doesn't know who they are. So names and circles apply if they have a Goggle Plus account. They use Goggle Plus. Email address could be anything, like a Gmail address, for instance, would be perfect.  People can have Goggle accounts that aren't Gmail addresses but if it is a Gmail address then automatically it is a Goggle account.
Find out their Goggle account email address and you can add as many as you want in here and then those people have permission and nobody else can actually even get to the file. It truly is private and secure. They also will get notification that the video was shared with them.
If, instead, I choose Unlisted then there are not options like that. Because simply what happens is the video will be listed. It will be at an address. Here is actually the address where the video will be located once it is done uploading. Anybody can go and view that but nobody knows it exists. It won't show up in search engines, it won't show up anywhere. It is almost like if you had your own little account, you know in the days of AOL or My Space or Geo Cities, or any of that stuff and you just put a picture or a video up there and you just told people where it was. Technically not secured behind any type of wall where people can't get past but nobody can find it unless you send them this link.
That is the best option for 99% of the use when people as me how do I share videos because you just want to share something maybe just for a short period of time, a couple weeks, and you want to put it up somewhere you can send this link in an email or Facebook post to friends. They can view it and you can take it down later on or not. It is just very easy to do. They don't have to have a Goggle account. You don't need to know what their Goggle account is. You can actually then share it with other people or tell them to share it with the whole family. That kind of thing and everybody can just view it there.
So Unlisted for 99% of the use. Private if you really think you need for some reason to secure it and that's how you can get your video up on YouTube. 
When I go and look at the video manager now I'm going to see there's the two videos. I uploaded one from iMovie and the other one I uploaded manually through the web interface, which is the way I like to do it. Now I can do other things like I can get info and things like this. Go back in and edit. I can click on it and actually go to the YouTube page for it there and I can share this link with anybody I want.
The great thing about sharing on YouTube and the reason I like to do this is YouTube is available so many places. My television, which is two years old at this point, has a YouTube app in it and I can view this video on my television. Apple TV and other set to box like Roku, a lot of cable boxes, a lot of satellite boxes have YouTube apps and you can view it. Any iPad, any Android tablet, any computer at all can view this video.
So you can send this out and just about anybody with a device that connects to the internet can view YouTube videos and can now view this video. So a lot different than trying to share other ways which may be more difficult for them to be able to view your video.

Comments: 20 Responses to “Sharing Private Videos Using YouTube”

George Black

9 years ago

If someone is subscribed to my Youtube videos, will they be able to see a video that I have classified as "unlisted"? Thanks Gary.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

They should not. But easy to test if you are concerned.

RichardP

9 years ago

Gary,
can i upload a music video song direct from UTube to my iPad Air ?
Richard

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

Not sure what you mean. You upload from your iPad to YouTube. Do you mean you want to download a video from YouTube to your iPad. No, that's not easily done. Anyway, you should get permission from the video owner before downloading any video from YouTube. If they mean for you to be able to download it for other use, then they will usually provide it some other way (for instance, as MacMost does through the podcast feed).

Gina

9 years ago

Thank you Gary! This info is really going to help me with posting videos of clocks that I sell on eBay.

Jim Bean

9 years ago

If I use the unlisted or private method, is there anything to stop the recipient from sending the clip to some other person of their choice? I would imagine that there isn't but I would appreciate your comments.
Jim.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

Unlike stead, no. They can send a link. Private means that you will have to add that person to the list. No one else can add them.

Jim Bean

9 years ago

Understood.
'Unlisted'. The recipient can pass the clip on, via a link.
'Private'. The recipient has no control of the clip.
Thank you.
Jim.

John Roberts

9 years ago

Even though I still have iDVD, sharing movies/slideshows can still be complicated and time consuming. The YouTube method is so quick and straightforward. Thanks for highlighting a process I never knew existed.

Sacha

9 years ago

Thanks for the good information, I often have to share videos with friends and family.

Natalie

9 years ago

Is there a limit on the length of the video if sharing to YouTube?

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

A quick search turned up this. Short answer: 11'hours.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673?hl=en

JohnE

9 years ago

Hi Gary,
I'm creating a couple of videos for my business that I intend to send in 'private' mode to potential customers. If the person I send it to turns out to be a competitor, is there a way for me to prevent them from copying/saving a YouTube video? I guess the other option would be to take it down? Appreciate your comments. Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

There is no way to completely prevent it, with YouTube or any technology. Think of the millions that Hollywood has invested in preventing movies from being copied and how easily people can find copies on the Internet. YouTube does not inherently allow people to steal video content, but it is easy enough to find browser extensions that will do it.

Rondaddydo

9 years ago

When I try to sign in to google through iMovie, it tells me to paste a code into the application. Where do I paste it in iMovie?

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

If you are using two-factor authentication (and you should) then you either need to go into your Google account and generate an app-specific password and use that in iMovie. Or, just forget about using the iMovie upload process and use YouTube's web upload. That's what I do as you get all of YouTube's options that way. There's really no reason to use the upload inside of iMovie.

ALAN HANSEN-

9 years ago

Instead of burning to a DVD I would like to place on a USB then play on a TV, Iam using Imovie 9- how do I go about this? Thanks Al.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

Does your TV accept a USB thumb drive as an peripheral? Some do. If so, it may be possible, but you'll need to consult your TV's documentation. It will take some technical expertise and experimentation to get it working that way, though.

Ahmed

9 years ago

I want to now how i can reduce the file size.

thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

9 years ago

File size only matters in this case if you have a slow connection and are having trouble uploading. Otherwise, YouTube handles it by recompressing the video in its own format and serving up the appropriate file size depending on the viewer's connection.

Comments Closed.

Sharing Private Videos Using YouTube

Comments: 20 Responses to “Sharing Private Videos Using YouTube”

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