YouTube announced today changes to its service that will make it a better option for people using to host video podcasts, video blogs and other Internet videos. They’ve upped the files size limit for videos to 1GB and released software that lets Windows bulk-upload videos.

Here’s the text of their announcement:

Have a hard drive full of new videos? With the YouTube Uploader, we’ve now made it easier to get them all live on the site. This small piece of software lets you upload multiple videos to YouTube at the same time; each video can be up to 10 minutes in length and up to 1GB in size. That’s right, no more compressing to 100MB – we want your big files!

Right now the YouTube Uploader is only available for Windows PCs but we’re cooking up a Mac version too. To get started, just go to the installer webpage and download the software. Then you’ll be able to access the Multifile Upload page and start your, well, uploading. These videos will be available in My Videos after they have finished processing. (Note: it may take 30 minutes or more for extremely large files to appear on your page.) We link to the Multifile Upload page from today’s single file upload page so you can always find your way back.

Happy Uploading!
The YouTube Team

The announcement is a welcome change from YouTube. As its competition gets more sophisticated, and HD Internet video becomes more common, the low-quality of most YouTube videos is becoming a liability.

via RRW