
About six months ago, Google announced and released a revamped video editor for its Google Photos app on Android and iOS that gave it new life and the same visual style as the previously re-created photo editor. Both are beautiful changes to the app that really take the ease of use and design to the next level. Unfortunately, that video editor had not been mentioned for release on Chrome OS at the time, even though Chromebook owners would be installing the same Photos app from the Play Store. Today, that’s all changed – by updating the Google Photos app, you should now be presented with the new video editor!
Upon selecting a video from your library and tapping the ‘Edit’ button, you can choose ‘Adjust’ and you should see the same modification tools as the image below. Each tool is presented as an icon in a circle or bubble shape and you can touch and drag your finger left and right to drag the panel. Once you’ve selected one of the following options, you can then move your finger left or right on the notched slider in order to increase or decrease a value.
- Brightness
- Contrast
- White point
- Highlights
- Shadows
- Black point
- Saturation
- Warmth
- Tint
- Skin tone
- Blue tone
- Vignette
The revamped editor also features options for video stabilization, cropping, exporting HDR shots, applying filters, and even marking up the live playback with a colored pen or highlighter! Oddly enough, the markup tool only applies a visual marking over the video as a whole, not solely on a chosen frame. It acts more as a custom watermark drawing than a true video editing marker, but it’s still impressive that Google added it in here!
Regardless of how you choose to use this, it’s a fantastic tool to have available. This way, you won’t need to use an external editor for any visual touch-ups. I’m just a bit disappointed though, because when I think of ‘video editor’, I assume that you will be able to slice strips of video, move them around and stitch them back together again – you know, like a ‘video editor’. Hopefully, Google adds this one day, and its exclusion is very odd if you ask me. Another thing that’s missing is the ability to use this ‘video editor’ via the Google Photos web application. I believe that the company can apply the same touch and swipe controls and visual style to the PWA as they have to the Google Play app.
Lastly, I would love to see a native video editor – perhaps this one, with the addition of splicing tools – make its way directly into the Chrome OS native media app which can be accessed via opening a photo or video in the Files app. If the company found a way to bake this directly in, I’m sure that it would make loads of people happy. Being that Chromebooks aren’t really meant to be used as workstations (though they can!) I don’t know that Google would add this directly into the operating system as video render times would be atrocious. Instead, I can see it being restricted to the app and PWA and rendering your videos on Google’s server – kind of like how Clipchamp and WeVideo do.
Progressive web apps are a natural extension of the operating system’s capabilities, so integrating some of these features directly into Chrome OS may not even be necessary over the next few years. Aside from the visual styling of Google’s apps and services matching the OS very cleanly, they should be more capable of working offline over time. Let’s chat about the new video editor design in the comments – do you think that Google will bring this to the web? Is there a future where it’s accessible locally on your Chromebook as a system web app?
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