answersLogoWhite

0

The characters following the "v=" portion of a YouTube URL are not some form of encryption, but rather are designed to be a unique identifier for the file. The identifier can be said to be in "Base 62", because each position in the identifier can be a digit, capital letter, or small letter, totaling 62 possibilities for each character, resulting in a total of 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 (73.8 quintillion, short scale) possible unique identifiers, or about 10 billion identifiers for every man, woman, and child on the planet.

Such an identifier can be generated several ways. First, it can be sequential, starting with 00000000001. It can also be generated randomly using a function such as PHP's rand() or mt_rand(), which then must be compared against previously-assigned identifiers to prevent duplication. Another possibility is that the binary video file can be hashed into an eleven-character string.

User Avatar

Wiki User

13y ago

What else can I help you with?