Video playback in google video
Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Well, today I was treated with the pleasant surprise of google video adding fully functional video playing support to their google video service. People have gradually been uploading their videos to google and various television stations have submitted their shows with search able closed captions. Until now this was the extent of the video service, you could see when a show aired, search its script, seen when new shows were going to air and see a simple screen shot taken so far in. All this being pretty useless to someone living in the United Kingdom (although still very cool, I hope for some BBC integration soon). Now however, google video provides video. Google results that have a playable video show up with a little play icon next to them. Upon opening the page there are options to start the video from various 30 second increments, upon clicking, the video plays right there and then in the browser. Now, most in browser video players are fairly bulky, consume considerable resources, load the browser with unneeded hindrances, provide annoying applet controls and require buffering times. However, google video is based upon the popular and utterly fantastic open source "videolan player" open source setup. VLC generally plays all standard codecs with ease and has highly functional streaming options, subtitles, multiple video and audio stream capabilities and much much more (including the option to view a video in ASCII). This google video viewer loads seamlessly, has no nasty button interfaces, does not load the browser or cause over the top cpu usage and has a once click full-screen option (i.e. click the video for fullscreen). The video requires very little buffering time and is of suitable quality and resolution for fullscreen and television playback. I really do love it and I have been playing for the last hour or so.

"The clips play right in the page using the brand new Google Video Viewer, which was created by our engineer Aaron Lee using code from the open source Videolan project. It works great in both Firefox and IE, and we've designed it not to fight with any other video plugins you might have. We're releasing the Windows version first, with Mac coming soon."

"A feature we're especially pleased with is search within a video, which means you will get a result pointing to the precise spot in the video that matches your query. Try looking for sergey brin and you'll see what I mean. There are even more people getting creative with video here. So have fun watching, or shoot your own videos - and keep sending them in!"

Labels: Technical

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