How to make slow TV for YouTube: train rides, ferries and real-time journeys

1. What slow TV is, and where it comes from

The format was born at NRK, Norway's public broadcaster. NRK's own account is that the idea came up over lunch at NRK Hordaland in 2009, the year the Bergen Line (Bergensbanen) between Oslo and Bergen turned 100. The result, Bergensbanen minute by minute, was the whole train journey from the front of the train: "Pre-recorded, 7 hrs 16 min." NRK says "Approximately 1.2 million Norwegians tuned in to the show."

Two details from that first broadcast are useful for anyone copying it. The ride was recorded earlier in the year and shown in full. And according to Wikipedia's account of the programme, "Archival clips from the Bergen Railway's 100-year history were shown when the train passed through tunnels", so the dark minutes carried something worth watching.

In June 2011 NRK went further: Hurtigruten minute by minute followed the coastal ship MS Nordnorge on what NRK's tech blog called a "134 hour boat trip from Bergen to Kirkenes live and non stop". NRK sums up what its slow TV titles have in common: a journey or a theme night "is filmed as a whole and then aired unedited on TV." Later titles covered a canal boat, salmon fishing, a fireplace and knitting, and "slow TV" was named Norway's new word of the year in 2013.

2. Slow TV formats that work on YouTube

The cab ride is the classic and the hardest to get. Window rides, ferries and canal trips are easier to film and still feel like slow TV if the camera faces the direction of travel and the take is uncut. Whatever you pick, make the series vary: different lines, seasons, weather and times of day. That variety is what YouTube's monetization rules (section 5) look for.

3. Film hours of footage in one take

A slow TV recording is one long take, so the three things that end it early are a shaky mount, a flat battery and a full card.

• Mount: a suction mount on the inside of a window, or a clamp on a rail, keeps the camera still. Clean the glass and kill reflections with a rubber lens hood pressed to the window. A tripod on a train or a busy platform is often not allowed (see section 4).
• Stabilisation: turn on the camera's own stabilisation. A fixed mount on a moving train shakes less than a hand does, and the picture should stay level.
• Power: run the camera from a USB power bank or a socket rather than its own battery, and check before the trip that it records while charging.
• Storage: a card big enough for the whole trip at your bitrate, from the table below, with room to spare. Many cameras split a long recording into several files; join them afterwards with ffmpeg's concat, as in our OBS loop guide.
• Frame rate: pick it once and keep it. YouTube's upload advice is that "Content should be encoded and uploaded in the same frame rate it was recorded."
• Audio: the rails, the engine and the water are part of slow TV, but a microphone in a carriage also hears conversations. Use a windscreen on the mic outdoors, and turn down or cut parts where people talk.

Record at your camera's high setting if the card allows it, then encode a smaller copy for YouTube. A full Bergen Line length in 4K at 45 Mbps fits YouTube's upload limit of "256 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less"; the camera original at 100 Mbps would not.

4. Footage rights: trains, ferries and people in frame

Each operator sets its own rules, so read the policy of the railway or ferry company you travel with before the trip. Two published examples show the usual shape.

• Amtrak (US): ticketed passengers "may take photos or video record on a train when it does not interfere with passengers or crew" and following crew directions. Filming for "engagements for commercial gain or profit" needs explicit authorisation from Amtrak.
• Network Rail (Britain): "You can take photographs at stations provided you do not sell them on to a company or stock image agency." "Tripods should be avoided where possible." For commercial filming that features a train, you must "get permission from the relevant train operating company (TOC) before you apply to film".

A monetized YouTube channel is earning money, so treat slow TV for a channel as commercial filming and ask the operator. Ask in writing, say where the camera goes, and keep the reply. For a driver's cab view there is no way around it: the cab is not a passenger area. Ferry companies and canal authorities often have media or press contacts for the same question.

People in frame. YouTube's privacy guidelines cover "images, audio, video footage, or text that uniquely identify you". Its own test is useful: "A first name without additional context, or a fleeting image, would not likely qualify as uniquely identifiable." A forward-facing camera that passes people on platforms is usually fleeting; a window camera next to the same passengers for three hours is not. Point the camera out of the window, film in quiet hours, and blur faces you cannot avoid. YouTube Studio has a tool to "blur the faces of individuals who appear in the video".

Archive and stock footage. NRK did something unusual with its journeys. For Hurtigruten, NRK's tech blog said "we are giving away all the material with a Creative Commons license", the same CC BY-SA licence as Bergensbanen, for the uninterrupted camera footage it released for download; the produced TV programme was not part of it, because "some of the content going out is copyrighted". CC BY-SA lets you "remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially", but you "must give appropriate credit" and, if you build on it, "you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original." Check the exact licence on the files you download. Stock footage has its own terms; our ambient video guide compares the Pexels, Pixabay and CC0 licences.

5. YouTube rules that hit slow TV

Copyright decides whether you may use footage at all. YouTube's monetization policies decide whether a channel built on it can earn, and two of them fit slow TV closely.

• Reused content: channels that "repurpose content that's already on YouTube or another online source without adding significant original commentary, substantive modifications, or educational or entertainment value". This matters for archive and stock journeys, and "This policy applies even if you have permission from the original creator." A CC licence does not make NRK's footage your own work on YouTube; your edit, maps, captions about the route or narration do.
• Inauthentic (repetitive) content: YouTube says "channels where content feels interchangeable from video to video are not allowed to monetize", and names "Similar or repetitive content with low educational value, commentary, narratives, or minimal variation across videos". Ten videos of the same ride with new titles are that. Ten different lines, each in a different season, are not.
• The 12-hour archive limit: a live stream under 12 hours can be archived as a video automatically. "If your stream exceeds 12 hours, it may not be captured at all." A Hurtigruten-length live trip needs its own local recording.

Our guide to inauthentic content and 24/7 channels goes through the wording in detail. Slow TV has an advantage here: every real journey is different, and each one comes with a route, stations and history you can put on screen, the way NRK used its tunnels.

6. Live, uploaded or looped 24/7

There are four ways to put a journey on YouTube, and many channels use more than one.

YouTube Premieres "let you and your viewers watch and experience a new video together in real time", and afterwards the video "stays on your channel as a regular upload". For a new journey, that is the slow TV event without a live connection on a moving train.

A looped 24/7 stream is the channel's always-on window: one journey or a rotation of them, playing day and night. Do not call it live travel; say in the title or description which trip it is and when it was filmed. For whether looping a stream is allowed at all, Loopcast's YouTube page sets out the limits.

7. Prepare a long journey for a looped stream

Loopcast streams at "H.264 video at a constant 6,000 kbps with a keyframe every 2 seconds", and each upload is limited to 4 GB. At 6 Mbps plus 128 kbps audio, 4 GB holds about 87 minutes (our arithmetic), so a long ride goes up in legs. First encode the camera original to 1080p at about that rate:

ffmpeg -i ride.mp4 -vf scale=-2:1080 -c:v libx264 -preset medium \
  -b:v 6M -maxrate 6M -bufsize 12M -g 60 -pix_fmt yuv420p \
  -c:a aac -b:a 128k -movflags +faststart ride-6m.mp4

Then cut it into legs of 75 minutes without re-encoding:

ffmpeg -i ride-6m.mp4 -map 0 -c copy -f segment -segment_time 4500 \
  -reset_timestamps 1 leg_%02d.mp4

• -g 60 puts a keyframe every 2 seconds at 30 fps; use -g 50 for 25 fps footage.
• -segment_time 4500 is 75 minutes, about 3.4 GB per leg at this rate (our arithmetic), with room under 4 GB. The cuts land on keyframes, so each leg is within a couple of seconds of 75 minutes.
• A 7 h 16 min ride gives six legs: five of 75 minutes and one of 61 (our arithmetic).

What we tested: on October 28, 2026 we ran both commands on our server with ffmpeg 7.0.2 on a generated 1080p test clip with a tone, with the segment time scaled down. The encode produced H.264 at 1080p with AAC audio and the index at the start, and the cut produced legs of the expected length that played without errors. We did not upload them to Loopcast or YouTube.

Before you film and publish

1. You have the operator's permission in writing if the channel is monetized, the camera is in a cab, or you need a mount or tripod.
2. The camera faces the direction of travel, on a mount that does not move, with power and storage for the whole trip.
3. Nobody is uniquely identifiable for long, and conversations are not audible.
4. Any archive or stock footage has a licence that allows it, with credit given as the licence asks.
5. Each video is a different journey, season or time of day, with something of your own added: route maps, stations, notes.
6. A looped stream says it is a recording and which trip it shows.
7. Live trips longer than 12 hours are recorded locally.

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