To begin your video adventure at Google Video point your Web browser to video.google.com. Visiting this page launches the Google Video search page, as shown in Figure 5.1. Notice along the top of the page, just beneath the search box, there are links to the various video categories. They include:

Figure 5.1. Search for all types of videos from the Google Video page.

Links to the top 100 rated videos are displayed in the Top 100 category along with a user rating and the number of people who rated the video. Google bases the rating on how many people watched a video the previous day. On the Top 100 page, you can also click the link at the top to see the top Movers & Shakers. Clicking this link allows you to see the list of videos that are popular today and most likely to end up in the next day’s Top 100.

Click on the Comedy category to see humorous videos, including several animated comedy previews where the longer, complete videos are for sale. You may need to click through several pages to find the video you are looking for. You can narrow your search using different methods explained in the next section.

The Music videos category contains primarily previews to longer music videos that you can purchase for viewing through Google videos. The Sports category contains many videos of amazing feats along with video highlights of your favorite sports. The Movies category is a little different from the rest, providing trailers to movies currently in the theater. You can also search for local show times. The Animation category allows you to see previews to animated movies, but you can also search on free videos to see stock footage and amateur creations. TV shows category displays previews for TV shows and segments where complete versions are largely available for purchase.

The Google Picks category provides links to the best videos according to the folks at Google. There are normally some excellent choices available for your free viewing pleasure.

In addition to the categories listed earlier, the selections on Google Video are also organized into featured video sections found on the Google Video home page. You can see the top featured videos in a number of different areas. Some of the featured areas are the same as the categories. Videos can also be selected from the most popular, those that are featured, and featured on AOL. This is simply one more way Google helps you find what you’re looking for and improve your browsing experience.

The feature lists include the following types of videos:

Each group of featured videos is available using an RSS feed. This allows you to use a news feed reader to keep up to date on current videos. You might also want to try Google Reader, Google’s Web-based news reader.

So far, this chapter has discussed the organization of videos on the Google Video site and how to find what you’re looking for. Now it’s time to find out what you can do once you find a video you want to watch. Once you select the video you want to see, click on the image associated with the video. A new page launches and the video begins loading in your Web browser. At first, you see a black area on the screen where the video eventually begins playing, and the message “buffering...” appears as the video loads. The time it takes for the video to load depends on your computer, your Internet connection, and the length of the video.

Buffering saves time

For longer videos or slower Internet connections, you don’t have to wait for the entire video to load before you can start playing it on your computer. The video begins playing when enough of it downloads to begin playing, hopefully uninterrupted, as the rest of the video continues to download. This is a process called buffering. You can watch the progress of the video download in comparison to the speed at which the video is playing by watching the status bar of the video player software. You can see in Figure 5.2 that the partially filled bar shows buffering progress while the arrow slider tracks the video play progress.

Figure 5.2. Track buffering and video play at the same time.

Let others know

Once you see a video, you may want to let others know about it. When you view videos in Google’s Top 100 you can send e-mail and blog posts to let others know how to view the video and what you thought of it.

Send a blog post

You can send a post to one of a number of different blog sites about the video. You can post to MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal, or TypePad by selecting the site you want to post to, as shown in Figure 5.3. You can send a link to the video by clicking the Embed HTML link. The HTML necessary to access this video is automatically embedded in the text box below. You can copy and paste that HTML link into your own Web page to present that video from your own Web page.

Figure 5.3. Select which blog site you want to log in to, and add your username and password.

E-mail this video

You can choose to send an e-mail notification with a link to the video to others. They receive an e-mail message telling them that their friend has sent them the following Google video. You can type your own customized message to accompany the notification. You aren’t sending the entire video in e-mail, only a link to it, so don’t worry that you are sending a huge file.

When you want more control over your video viewing experience, use the Google Video Player. Many people use Windows Media Player; Google Video Player works in much the same way but is created specifically for reading the proprietary Google Video file format. When you want to view the Google videos using other than the Web interface you must use the Google Video Player, other multimedia players will not read the Google format.

Download the Google Video Player by clicking the link on the Google Video page or by navigating to one of these URLs and manually downloading the Google Video Player.

Windows users download from: http://video.google.com/playerdownload; Macintosh users download from: http://video.google.com/playerdownload_mac.html.

Once you install the Google Video Player you can use it to watch videos from the Google Video site. When you find a video you want to watch using the Google Video Player, click Download. This launches the Google Video Player, and the video begins playing automatically.

When you click Download, you are not actually downloading the video. You will still need to be connected to the Internet because even though you are using something other than the Web page to view them, the videos are not stored on your computer. Instead, you download a small file that tells the Google Video Player where to find and begin streaming the video. When you want to load a video you have already “downloaded,” choose File Open from the menu. A Google Video directory is created on your hard drive, and this is where the small information GVI files are stored. Select one and the video loads and plays.

Control the play of the video using the Rewind, Play, and Fast–Forward arrow buttons. When the video plays, the Play button changes to a Pause button. Clicking the Pause button changes the button back into the Play button and resumes playing the video.

Control the volume using the small volume slider next to the buttons. Typing a search request into the Search videos box on the player launches the Google Video page and starts your query.

With Google Video player you can browse through the scenes of the video. Clicking the thumbnail index button to the right of the search box, as displayed in Figure 5.4, presents you with small thumbnail still images taken from the video. It works a little like a scene index on a DVD. Each thumbnail is time indexed, and clicking on the thumbnail takes you to that part of the video, as shown in Figure 5.5.

Figure 5.4. Use the Google Video Player instead of a Web browser.

Figure 5.5. Click a thumbnail to play the video at a specific location.

Unlike other video players, you can skip to a portion of a video that is not downloaded yet, and Google begins downloading that portion of the video. The Google Video Player uses the most advanced download features, and even continues interrupted downloads automatically.

Like other video players, you can watch videos in small- or full-screen mode. Switch to full-screen mode by clicking the small screen icon. To return to normal size (no longer in full-screen mode), press Esc.

You can also choose to view your video in original, half size, and double size by selecting the associated entry in the View menu. This menu also has entries for playing the video in a loop and for showing the thumbnail time index.

Set the Google Video preferences by selecting Preferences from the File menu. In the Google Video preferences, you can choose to set:

There are many free videos you can watch on the Google Video Web site. In addition to the free videos, many are trailers or teasers meant to entice you to buy the complete video. Notice in Figure 5.6 that each of the NCIS TV show episodes has a price associated with it. The trailer for the episode lasts less than a minute, and then you are asked to pay to see the entire episode. There are many other videos that also charge. In most cases, you need to pay if you want to see music videos in their entirety, for example.

Figure 5.6. The price of the video is listed in bold in the video description.

To buy the video, first watch the trailer. This puts you on the page with the video’s details. If the video is for sale, you can click Buy High Quality and follow these steps:

A small GVP file is downloaded to your computer. This is not the video itself. Instead, it contains download instructions for the Google Video Player. Before you can view your video you need to have an Internet connection and Google Video Player installed.

Once you purchase a video, Google keeps track of it for you. When you want to see a list of the videos you have purchased, you must first sign in to your Google account. Once you log in, along the top of the page next to your Google username, you can click the Purchased Videos link (see Figure 5.7). Clicking this link displays a list of your purchased videos. From this page you can view the receipt or choose to view the video at any point in the future. Click the name of the video, which appears as a link. This takes you to the video’s information page. The page looks different now because it does not ask you to purchase the video. Instead, the page tells you that you have already purchased the video. View the video again by clicking Download.

Figure 5.7. See a list of your purchased videos so you can watch them again.

You can upload your own video to Google Video. This allows you to view your own video on Google and share it with friends, family, business associates, anyone you want.

You must first be logged into your Google account before uploading a video. Once you log in, upload your video. It must be saved in one of the following formats:

Begin uploading the video from this Google Video page at video.google.com/videouploadform.

Select a title for your video. Try to select a title that best describes what a user might expect to see. Titles like “My Video” are not going to interest anyone in watching what you’re taking the time to upload. Type a description of the video, but don’t get too wordy. People scrolling through the videos have a short attention span. Try to get right to the point—for example, “A rabbit attacks my doberman.” Of course, you can be as specific as you want in the description. Take a look at some of the descriptions others use in order to get an idea of the best way to describe your video.

Select a category for the video you’re uploading. Choose from 38 genres from Action and Adventure to Western by selecting one from the Genres drop-down list. Don’t worry about getting exactly the right one; you can select up to three categories, and you can change it later.

Agree to the terms and conditions, and click Upload video to start the upload.

Do not close the Web page while your video is uploading or your upload could be canceled. When the upload is complete the Web page notifies you that the video successfully uploaded (see Figure 5.8).

Figure 5.8. Watch your video once it is successfully uploaded.

Once you upload the video to Google, you can share your video with others. Clicking the Embed this video in your website or blog link causes a text box to appear filled with HTML code. You need to copy this code into your Web page, your MySpace.com profile, or blog so others can view your video. Simply copy and paste this code into your Web page editor or into MySpace.com, as shown in Figure 5.9.

Figure 5.9. Copy and paste the HTML right into your MySpace.com blog.

Once you upload one or more videos, you can choose to manage the information (metadata), such as the video title, production company, genre, and your Web site URL, displayed on the Google Video page alongside your video. To access the video management page, click the Uploaded Videos link at the top of the Google Video page. This only appears when you log in to Google.

The management page of the Google Video Upload program lists all your uploaded videos. If you have recently uploaded a video and it does not appear in the list, try clicking the Refresh Videos link located beneath the table listing of videos.

Add a transcript

You can easily add a transcript for your video. You can upload a transcript, edit a transcript, or create one from scratch. Click the Edit Captions/Subtitles link in the Actions column of the table listing your uploaded videos, as shown in Figure 5.10.

Figure 5.10. Edit, delete videos, or add transcripts and subtitles after a video has been uploaded.

Each time you edit your video, someone at Google reviews the edits to make certain that they comply with the Google guidelines.

Creating Video Transcripts

Adding a transcript can be a time-consuming process but can help others find your video. Google searches on text and by providing the transcript Google is able to search on the text of the video transcript.

The transcript must follow the spoken words in the video according to the timing of when they are spoken in the video. Therefore, it is necessary to include the time, relative to the beginning of the video, before and after the spoken words in a text file. The time must be displayed in the following form: HH:MM:SS.mmm, where HH is hours from 00 to 24, MM is minutes from 00 to 59, SS is seconds from 00 to 59, and mmm is milliseconds from 000 to 999 and separated from the seconds by a decimal point, not a colon. Here is an example:

00:00:08.000
[James] Hi there.
00:00:08.000
[Judy] Great to see you.
9:54:54.000

Although the time must be displayed using this particular method, the format of the text you provide is completely up to you. The names in the example were set off by brackets to make the text easier to read. You can type your transcript directly in the text box provided by Google or create it in a text editor. The text editor must provide UTF-8-encoded output. Windows Notepad works just fine. When you finish adding your transcript to Google click Save Transcript.

Google Video is incredibly entertaining. It was difficult to finish writing this chapter as we stopped to watch all the videos. There is something for everyone—adults, students, and children. Google makes certain that Google Video is family-friendly.

Like all other Google resources, Google Video is designed to allow people to find exactly what they are looking for. The Google Video Web site is organized by categories and featured lists. You can also find related videos by user-created labels and by other videos a user may have uploaded. You can also pay to watch videos, like old TV episodes, any time of the day or night.

Watching the videos that others have uploaded is only half the fun; you can upload your own videos for others to watch. If you create the video or own the content, you can even charge others to view it, a nice way to make a little extra cash. Once you upload videos, you can manage them through Google’s Uploader program, which allows you to create great entertainment or educational resources.