A Few Rants on Google Video

In the last several weeks, I have begun using Google Video more than I had in the past. I was attracted by its unlimited video length, download feature for iPod, and the ability to easily post the video to both Blogger and MySpace.

Last night, I went to upload a video to Google (my first in several months), and the experience has been one I'd like to forget.

I'll begin with the most basic bug in the Google Video interface-the ID/password login. After entering the correct combination several times, I still got a message saying "Invalid Login Information". However, submitting this same information again, it suddenly worked. This problem also presents itself anytime I try to post videos to Blogger and MySpace. Google should be ashamed of this bug as it makes me concerned about the whole security of their site. I hope my information is secure and that their security isn't as intermittent as it would appear based on this bug.

Second, let's look at the bigger issue of uploading. Google boasts about its ability to host videos of an unlimited length-but come to find out, they are still limited to the 100 MB file size if you're using their standard online uploader. My video (an .mpg), the first in a series of online video episodes that I want to post on Google, came in at a hefty 419 MB. It turns out Google now offers another one of their "specialty" products to overcome this barrier-a Google Video Desktop Uploader, for those files larger 100 MB. I downloaded the Windows PC version of it, logged in (after many failed attempts thanks to the bug I mentioned earlier), and proceeded to select my video file to begin uploading. Strangely, I noticed after it would get to a certain point, the upload would essentially "start over" and begin looping back again and again. After several hours of trying to get this complete, I went to Google Groups and checked out the Google Help group, where it turns out that this new verson of the uploader (1.0.6j) has been plagued with bugs-everyone experiencing the same problem as I have been, and not a solution in sight. In a last ditch effort, I downloaded the Linux version of the uploader, and after several failed attempts, wrote the whole thing off as a failure. I understand these are Beta products, but that should not be a code word for "Not Working".

Finally, I went back in to Studio 8 (the NLE program I used to edit the video) and re-rendered it as a .wmv file, which reduced the file size to around 8 MB and also drastically reduced the video quality in the process. I was able to upload this using the online uploader, after one failed attempt (it never did say why it failed, then later I noticed the video had been uploaded twice, suggesting that it hadn't really failed the first time).

Now the video is available, albeit in a drastically different image quality than what I'd hoped. It's ashame, too, because this is one of the best videos I have shot in regard to a good color balance and lighting, but you'd never know that from the murky, muddy mess that's up on Google Video right now.

As much as I support both Google and YouTube, I must say I find the visual image quality abysmal and at best it's a second-rate way to have to watch films. When filmmakers are forced to compress their video files even more just to be able to upload their work at all, the already-substandard image quality becomes nearly unwatchable.

I'm in the process of uploading it to this blog, but (you guessed it) it seems to be encountering some bugs, so who knows when you'll see it here.

Google has a long way to go before their video products can be called functional, or at least anything more than Beta. I challenge Google to come up with a solution to these inexcusable problems. As long as they insist on buying up every single major website on the net, they should at least have the consideration to test their products properly before making them available and promising things that can never happen.