New Google Video is Cool
We've been playing with the beta version of the latest Cool New Thing from Google. The Google Video feature is the next step in their endless quest to "organize the world's information." A few months ago we logged in just to see what it was all about.
Typical Google
The site is Google-esque as you might expect. Functional and easy to navigate. Simple searches can locate video by source, topic, creator— even dialogue from a transcript. But the most impressive part happens after you find something you want to watch. You just play it. Seriously, you just click the little arrow and it plays.
The videos are presented using Flash, so assuming your computer has Macromedia Flash installed- you're hooked up. There isn't any pick-your-favorite-player or download-our-codec-of-the-week crap.
The Googlisti have made it easy on the supply side also. Content creators can easily add their masterpiece to the growing library of online video. An upload tool is required to add your video, but it's a small app and versions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac systems. Once uploaded you provide a description which can include credits. There is also an option to provide a transcript. To standardize the content preparation Google requires that all videos be formatted as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 with MP3 audio tracks.
Watch it Work
Over the past few months we have uploaded several videos to their beta preview site. Most of the files we uploaded use the DivX compression codec. This crunched a 30 minute show down to about 175 meg. The Google video upload tool spent about 20 minutes sending one of these files over our 1.5 meg DSL line. After the upload we logged in to the web site and added our brief description and a couple of days later the first Tulsa episode of Red Dirt Roundup was online.
Watch the show: Red Dirt Roundup No. 1
Typical Google
The site is Google-esque as you might expect. Functional and easy to navigate. Simple searches can locate video by source, topic, creator— even dialogue from a transcript. But the most impressive part happens after you find something you want to watch. You just play it. Seriously, you just click the little arrow and it plays.
The videos are presented using Flash, so assuming your computer has Macromedia Flash installed- you're hooked up. There isn't any pick-your-favorite-player or download-our-codec-of-the-week crap.
The Googlisti have made it easy on the supply side also. Content creators can easily add their masterpiece to the growing library of online video. An upload tool is required to add your video, but it's a small app and versions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac systems. Once uploaded you provide a description which can include credits. There is also an option to provide a transcript. To standardize the content preparation Google requires that all videos be formatted as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 with MP3 audio tracks.
Watch it Work
Over the past few months we have uploaded several videos to their beta preview site. Most of the files we uploaded use the DivX compression codec. This crunched a 30 minute show down to about 175 meg. The Google video upload tool spent about 20 minutes sending one of these files over our 1.5 meg DSL line. After the upload we logged in to the web site and added our brief description and a couple of days later the first Tulsa episode of Red Dirt Roundup was online.
Watch the show: Red Dirt Roundup No. 1
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