Video shorter than 15 minutes is counting towards Picasa Web storage limit

Question

I am using Picasa Web and one of the features is that you can have videos that run no more than 15 minutes not be counted in your storage limit:

If you've signed up for Google+[...] videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage.

Source: http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1224181

I have uploaded a 46 second 1080p video and this is counting as 132mb within my account. If it makes any difference, I have stored the video in a private album.

Why does my short video count against my free limit?

Answer 1

My best guess is that the format of the video wasn't supported, see reference supported video formats

I've asked at the google product forum and they give the same answer, that up to 15 min. of full HD movie, it doesn't add up to the storage limit.

I've downloaded a full HD test movie in m2ts format (15 MB, 13 seconds) and uploaded it 5 times into my picasa account (with google+, 5 GB storage):

Before upload:

After upload:

As you can see, the storage hasn't increased. Given the fact that your question is more then 1 year old, I would say: do you still face those problems?