CIO

Upload and view videos in Google Docs

The cloud-based office suite just got video support.

Google Docs is becoming a more robust cloud-based productivity suite, and the addition of uploading, storing and viewing videos is a boon for sharing corporate presentations and the like. It's also a slick way to skirt your company's firewall on streaming video sites such as YouTube.

Google started allowing users to upload any type of file to Google Docs in January 2010, but until recently you couldn't watch the videos you stored in-browser. Now a built-in player supports video files up to 1 GB with a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. Flash is required to stream the following supported files:

·       WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)

·       .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files - (h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)

·       .AVI (many cameras use this format - typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)

·       .MPEGPS (MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)

·       .WMV

·       .FLV (Adobe - FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio)

Uploading to Google Docs may not have too many advantages over doing the same via YouTube. However--and far be it for me to suggest doing something unwholesome--I have yet to read anywhere that Google runs its smut filter past uploaded content, so take that for what it's worth.