With upwards of 500 hours of video uploaded every minute , there is the question of exhaustion - Will YouTube ever run out of Video IDs? A unique sequence of 11 random characters identifies a video. This compact and readable format has a deadly weapon, however. It harnesses the power of higher-order number systems . YouTube uses the base 64 number system(0-9, a-z, A-Z, - and _). So, Youtube can store 64^11 videos, enough for every human to upload a video every minute for 18,000 years . While we technicall y can exhaust IDs, the solution is simple - just add another character !