An often overlooked feature in YouTube is the ability to upload via email. Using mail.in.com’s scheduled mail feature, you can send emails with the video file attached to send on a specific date and time. Shortly after send, YouTube will post the video publicly.
Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1. Acquire your YouTube mobile address.
Login to your YouTube account, click on your username at top right, and click Account.
On the left sidebar, click Mobile Setup.
You will see something similar to this:
The address you’ve given will be random and cryptic. Unfortunately you can’t change the address other than clicking the "Want a different address? Click here" link which will make another random cryptic address. Regardless of that, copy and paste the email address you’re given to a text editor as you’ll need it in a moment.
Step 2. Sign up for a mail.in.com email account and add the YouTube mobile address into the Contacts list.
Once logged into mail.in.com with your account, click Contacts on the left sidebar and add a Quick Contact. Copy and paste the mobile address from YouTube like so:
You’ll need to add in a first and last name. Enter whatever name you wish in those fields, then click the Add button.
Step 3. Select the YouTube Address contact, compose a new mail, attach the video file you want to show up on YouTube, set as a "Future Mail", and send.
Click Contacts.
Place a checkmark in the YouTube address contact and click Compose:
Enter a subject line (this will be the title of your video when it appears on YouTube), and attach your video file:
Click the green Send as Future mail button and schedule the time you want the mail to be sent out:
Then send!
Your mail will be sent off to YouTube at the date and time you specified and appear on the site shortly thereafter. You will also receive a confirmation email from YouTube each time you do this.
Limitations
Although this is a great way of scheduling videos to appear on the YouTube site, this is not without its drawbacks.
Anything you enter in the body of the message will not show up in the video description – or at least not when using the mail.in.com service. The only thing YouTube pays attention to is the subject line and nothing else. Videos sent this way always have "sent from my mobile phone" in the description.
The maximum allowed email attachment size is 10MB. If your video file goes over that, you’ll have to re-encode it with higher compression to stay under that 10MB mark.
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