'video essay' is such a cringe attempt at re-branding. You're too lazy to fucking read and won't consume any content unless it's effortless and entertaining.
I watches a four and half hour video on string theory I can tell you it was not effortless. it was entertaining but holy fuck I had to stop a few times to even wrap my head around some concepts
I call a class of video video essays, and I think the term has value. Those videos have the form of an essay, they follow an essay structure. Lindsay Ellis makes video essays
That's different to a video lecture, which is a much more common type. A video lecture tries to teach you something. Lindybeige, and Astrographics and many others do lectures
Then there are a dozen other genres. I think it's the lectures that get long.