Google video explained

1. About Google Video

We live in a digital world, where almost everything is uploaded online. There are 80 million web servers according to the statistics made in 2006. The growth of the World Wide Web is obvious, everything is on the web: company addresses, documents, images, books, you can buy everything from cars to boats. But it’s not just documents anymore, pages are far from affirming these days. The web is now full of video clips shared by millions of people around the world.

Google Video allows people to search for video files, download them, and play them on their computers. Although Google has not published an exact number of video files available on their site, they state that there are several thousand and increasing all the time. Video material includes just about anything: TV shows, movies, amateur videos, commercials not shown on US channels, etc. Files are free or must be purchased online from the Google Video Store. Google Video allows users around the world to upload their own content to Google’s servers and share it with everyone. The files are in GVI, AVI, GVP and MP4 formats.

Google Video Player allows you to watch videos that have been downloaded or purchased from the Google Video website, video.google.com. Google Video Player allows you to view the videos in full screen as well as browse the video using thumbnails. It also uses the OpenSSL Toolkit, QPluginLoader, and QLibrary classes.

Some say that Google Video is just an effort by the search engine giant to break into online video sharing, amassing a rich archive of moving images that can be accessed for free or paid. Market trick or not, Google Video is here to stay and this article will try to familiarize you with the technology behind it.

Google Video Player is a piece of software that transfers paid video content from Google servers to your computer. There is a version for MAC and Windows. Technically as a video player, it has some pretty cool features. It allows you to browse the scenes using thumbnails, so one can easily find each and every moment.

GV Player has a full screen mode and the FTP part is at a high level as it supports automatic download resume. This is a really nice feature, especially for people using a dial-up or other users with a low and unstable connection. Perhaps the only strange thing about this app is that it is made to play paid content, which is a bit useless considering the number of websites with video clips and all the video players, torrents and ftp clients.

The overall success of this software depends on the richness of the library. If you have a lot of interesting content, you will be successful even if the service is paid. But if the library is weak, then it doesn’t matter how smart and functional the player is, because it just won’t matter when you have no media to play.

In the context of all that, it’s important to know that Google faces stiff competition when it comes to online video content, with the likes of YouTube, MetaCage, iFilm, and several other websites with pretty decent traffic. There is a lot of money involved in this sector, so it is a great opportunity for any company. The content available on Google Video is mostly amateur, due to the ease with which users can upload their files. Video files can be uploaded on the video.google.com website or with the help of Google Video Uploader, available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

But it’s not just fans uploading content to Google Video, TV networks are also getting involved by making full shows available, and Hollywood studios are also making some movie trailers. For all that, the quality of the video is inconsistent, depending on who uploaded it. There are all kinds of video files, copy protected or not, with or without ads. Google filters any material related to sex, so Google Video is completely safe for children.

Paid content is another interesting moment regarding Google Video. Amateur movies may be free, but episodes of Survivor or other TV shows cost $1.99 each, a price set by the producer of the video in question.

2. System requirements:

• To play videos:

As mentioned, you can play the videos with your internet browser or through Google Video Player.

To play videos through your browser on Google Video, your system must meet the following requirements:

-Adobe Flash Player 7.0+

– Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher, all updates installed

– Internet Explorer 5.0+, Firefox 1.1+

– Broadband connection with more than 500 Kbps for continuous playback on Google Video.

To play videos through Google Video Player, your computer must meet the following requirements:

-Intel Pentium III 1GHz

– 256 MB of RAM

– 16 MB video memory

• To upload videos:

Google Video Uploader has the following requirements:

– Windows 98 or higher, Mac 10.3 or higher, or any operating system that has Java 1.4.1 or higher to install the loader

– Broadband connection to upload video.

3. Install Google Video Player and play it

If there’s a video you want to watch from video.google.com, click the “Download” button to the right of the video and if you don’t have GVP installed, you’ll be prompted to do so. Of course, you can download the installation executable yourself from http://www.freesecuredownloads.com/free-downloads-download.html#video, or from the official website at [http://video.google.com/playerdownload]. Once you have it on your desktop, run the GoogleVideoPlayerSetup.exe application to complete the installation. When the installation is complete, the video you have selected will be downloaded automatically.

4. Find videos on video.google.com

Google’s video library is expanding all the time. Considering the amount of video clips available, users often need advanced search technology to help them find what they are looking for. Google has responded to this need by developing the advanced video search available at http://video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch. On this page, you can specify all or just some of the words that describe you; filter results by duration, price and genre; idiom; duration; price; website domain. The advanced video search will generate results based on their relevance to the video title, popularity, and many other factors.

5. Google Video Purchase

Apple’s iTunes Store was the first to start selling videos online, and from the day they started, Internet pundits immediately understood that it would be a huge hit. TV fans around the world bought videos for around $8 million in the first three months alone. Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Google are the main competitors in the “free TV show download” market. Google calls its system “the first open video marketplace” because of the idea that everyone can upload their content, from professional TV producers to neighborhood hobbyists. It’s all available: full NBA reruns, CBS TV shows, and family videos. This makes the whole market a bit chaotic as there is a lot of contrast in terms of video quality. Therefore, some videos are copy-protected and require payment, while others are free to download and distribute. Google gets 30% of the fee you pay for a given video.

The thing about Google Videos is that some of them self-destruct 24 hours after you download them, because you buy the rights only for that short period of time. Thus we arrive at the three basic categories established:

1) TV commercials: Star Trek, I Love Lucy, all games played in the National Basketball Association are available to download 24 hours after playing, for $4 each. Sony music videos can be downloaded for $2 each.

2) “Pseudo-commercial” – third level concerts and material.

3) User Submitted Material: Home movies, like the ones you watch on YouTube.com.

Videos that must be purchased have buttons that say “Buy High Quality” and “High Quality Day Pass.” Buying High Quality is the best option, because the video does not self-destruct and you can watch it whenever you want, directly from your Desktop. The Day-Pass High are again of great quality, but cheaper, because to see them you must be connected to the Internet and you only have 24 hours to do so. You must be online to view copy-protected content, because in order to decrypt those files, Google Video Player needs to communicate with Google’s servers through an active Internet connection.

To purchase Google Videos, you must create a Google account, entering your email address, password, and payment details.

6. The GVI format

Google Video Player reads files in Google’s own GVI format. Google Video Files – GVIs are .avi files modified with an extra layer with additional information about the file type, self-destructing or not. GVI video files are encoded in DiVx along with the MP3 audio stream.

You can download a GVI2AVI converter from http://www.kultiras.net/programs.html. The program requires the .NET Framework.

Naevius.com is also a website from which you can download a GVI converter that allows you to convert GVI to AVI and vice versa. It is an extremely user-friendly, simple and clean interface.

For a fast and secure Google Video download, go to http://video.freesecuredownloads.com