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I am running a Let's Play series and last night while editing I was wondering what the best length of time for an episode was. My goal has been to keep the episodes around 15 minutes, but I find myself running closer to 30 minutes, which I think is probably too long.

So I wanted to put it out there to the forums and ask what you all thought was the best length of time for a Let's Play episode. And when I say a Let's Play, I'm talking specifically about normal play through. Nothing really related to anything specific like redstone, or mini game type of video.

Quote from Mr_Marvelous

I personally think 15-20 minutes would be better. I watch Etho's lab and I really don't get the chance to finish his videos whole. Why don't you just record as long as you want to, and split the videos into parts and upload them on different days? Let's Play Ep 1 (Part 1), Let's Play Ep 1 (Part 2), etc.

That was what I was thinking that I would do more of if the poll results fell in line with what I was thinking and what you are saying. But for all I knew, I could have been way off in my thinking, hence creating the poll.

Thanks for your input.

From the standpoint of being a content consumer it can vary bast on how the content is delivered but for the most part i feel like 20 mins is the sweet spot.

From the standpoint of being a content creator i think 20 to 30 mins is a good target for a couple reasons:

1) depending on how you record, single shot no cuts vs. a few hours of recording edited down. Single shot recording cuts down on post production and often times means you can do multiple episodes in a single sitting. This style of recording however relies a lot more on your ability to have good and entertaining commentary and more often then not is hard to carry for longer then 30 mins. The alternative gives you more freedom by allowing to to "tell a story" or show a lot of progress in a short span. but again, the time spent recording vs the amount of content that makes the cut becomes costly so trying to make a video longer then 30 mins can quickly turn into huge project that can take days to record and then to edit.

2) monetization option; depending on your desire to make money on your content, the 20/30 marker hits a sweet spot where people become "accepting" of mid-roll advertisements. Much like what BdoubleO and GenericB do.

20 minutes is quite nice. Anything under that is bad unless you're uploading 4+ videos a day on average, and anything over that is getting a little long and I'm too lazy to flip through an hour long video trying to find where I left off. Personally, I find Arumba07 to have the perfect upload schedule, of 8 videos a day of which each are 20 to 25 minutes long.

I feel anywhere from 10-20 minutes is sufficient. Enough to get a good chunk of play-time in, but not too long that the consumer would get bored and change to a different video.

Thanks for everyone's input, really good advice.

Quote from Frog81

20 minutes is quite nice. Anything under that is bad unless you're uploading 4+ videos a day on average, and anything over that is getting a little long and I'm too lazy to flip through an hour long video trying to find where I left off. Personally, I find Arumba07 to have the perfect upload schedule, of 8 videos a day of which each are 20 to 25 minutes long.

GEEZ, 8 videos a day!? I feel like that's waaay too much. I mean, I consider myself to be an active audience to the channels I've subscribed to, but to put aside roughly 3 hours a day for one channel? (8 * 25 = 200/60 = 3h 20min) Not only that, but say you were busy that day, and couldn't watch youtube at all. the next day, you force your subscribers to watch over 6 hours of content. most people wont do that, and will let it slip. you may not lose subscribers, but you will end up with a stagnant subscriber base. An episode a day with 20 minutes I think is plenty. (I mean, it's sad to say, but usually people subscribe to other people they want to watch as well.)

Quote from Brzlman

GEEZ, 8 videos a day!? I feel like that's waaay too much. I mean, I consider myself to be an active audience to the channels I've subscribed to, but to put aside roughly 3 hours a day for one channel? (8 * 25 = 200/60 = 3h 20min) Not only that, but say you were busy that day, and couldn't watch youtube at all. the next day, you force your subscribers to watch over 6 hours of content. most people wont do that, and will let it slip. you may not lose subscribers, but you will end up with a stagnant subscriber base. An episode a day with 20 minutes I think is plenty. (I mean, it's sad to say, but usually people subscribe to other people they want to watch as well.)

No, let me explain. It's 8 videos a day, but they're on lots of different games. Say if about 5 videos a day were for a game or series you didn't like, you still had an hour to watch if you had enough time. If the days video for someone who uploaded one a day was one you didn't like, you didn't have any of their content for a day.

Then maybe you fall behind in the series you like. Well, it might not have more episodes go up for a couple days with other stuff taking it's place so you can catch up, and be ready for the next 4 or 5 episodes to come out.

Ok, that makes a whole lot more sense. You do agree it'd be a bit unreasonable of 8 episodes of the same game in one day? lol

I'm a little surprised to see that 20 - 30 is the majority. But it does seem clear that anything beyond 30 minutes is too long.

I would Say as a general rule go for however long It is interesting.
Anywhere from 15 to 35. If you can captivate your audience then go for It. Just DONT let it get slow or boring no matter how long or how short!

For any more information just check out this: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1845612-a-guide-to-youtube-minecraft-letsplaystipsideas/