Google has announced a "quicker" way to edit a video stored in your Drive, using Google Vids, its AI-powered video creation platform launched last year. With this new update, now when you preview a video in Drive, you will see an "Open" button in the upper right corner of the screen. When clicked, this button will open the video directly in Vids.
The app automatically imports the file, allowing you to perform your typical video editing actions like trimming clips, adding music, or layering text onto your footage. Keep in mind that opening a video this way creates a new Vids project file, so you will need to export your final creation as a non-editable format, like an MP4, when you are done.
Now, there are a few caveats, like it being restricted to MP4, QuickTime, OGG, and WebM file types. You also face a limit on individual clips of 35 minutes in length and 4GB in size.
Also, your admin has to enable Vids for your organization, which it is by default. However, there is a weird dependency: if Google Docs is turned OFF in your domain for some reason, Vids access will also be unavailable.
Google says recent versions of Chrome and Firefox should work just fine. If you are on Edge, it is available for Windows users only (sorry, Linux and Mac users). You can try your luck with other browsers, but it is not guaranteed that every feature will function correctly.
The rollout began yesterday, so it should appear for you anytime from now and the next 15 days, though it could be more. You get access as long as you are a subscriber to most Google Workspace tiers, including Business Starter, Standard, and Plus and most Enterprise versions, as well as customers with Gemini Education or AI Pro and Ultra add-ons.
Speaking of media editing in Google Workspace, last week, Google brought two new Gemini-powered image editing features to Slides and Vids. The first allows you to use a text prompt to completely replace the background of an image. The second feature lets you expand the background of an image to fit a new aspect ratio.