Google Vids is a new feature in Carleton’s Google Workspace for Education that offers AI-powered video creation directly from your web browser. It requires no additional software and minimal video editing skills. All videos can be up to 10 minutes long. Whether you want to create your own or AI generated videos, this integration with Google Gemini provides a creative and effective way to communicate. This application may be useful for students, staff, and faculty who want to use video for a creative outlet and who also want little to no prep work to complete a video. For more information about Google Vids, follow the Google Workspace Learning Center. Some features I personally found interesting include:
- General video recording
- Adding narration and audio clips
- Adding audio clips, background music, and sound effects
- Animating objects
- Other Features
General video recording
The most common way to use this application is through the recording feature, which allows you to capture yourself, your screen, or a combination of both to insert directly into your video. Recordings created in Vids can be up to 30 minutes long. To stay on track, you can read along with a built-in teleprompter created directly within Google Vids. I find this particularly helpful for projects where you want to express yourself personally rather than relying on AI generated film clips. Especially for staff and faculty, this form of recording could be the most convenient method due to its simplicity for creating lecture videos. For students, this feature is an excellent choice for presentations where a video layout is the most effective way to showcase your work. When you’re ready to share a finished video, you can export it to your Google Drive, download it, or share it directly within Vids using the viewer role.
Adding narration and audio clips
Google Vids currently offers two types of narration: AI-generated and personal voice recording. By selecting “Record” you can easily record a “Voiceover” on the recording options dropbox. At this time, AI-generated narration is only offered in English and with a selection of voiceover voices to choose from, including narrator, educator, teacher, persuader, explainer, coach, and motivator. In Google Vids, you can generate AI scripts to use for voiceovers, video clips, and narrated screen recordings. To utilize the read-along teleprompter, you must first add a script before entering the recording studio. Once in the studio, select “Camera” or “Camera and Screen” to record your clip using the teleprompter. This feature provides an advanced experience by providing structured scripts, ensuring the clear and effective communication of your material.
Adding audio clips, background music, and sound effects
You can incorporate a wide range of audio into your project including your own sounds or music from Drive or from your computer, pre-recorded audio or voiceover clips, stock sounds or music from the Vids stock media library, or any other clips you record in Vids. To add audio, select the scene on your timeline and click on the file you wish to insert.
Currently, Vids doesn’t support automatic lowering of background sound when narration or other sounds are playing. In order to achieve this effect, you must lower the volume of the background music to 20% when layering it with other audio. You can add up to 50 audio objects in a single project.
Animating objects
One of my favorite features in Google Vids is the ability to integrate a variety of creative elements into your projects, including text boxes, shapes, lines, images, GIFs, stickers, and other video clips.Each object has a track at the bottom of the Vids window, allowing you to control how long objects appear in a scene. You can easily adjust the timing of multiple objects at once, shorten or lengthen their duration, and change when an object appears in a scene.
Additionally, you can animate objects as they enter and exit a scene. Using the Animation panel on the right, you can select from a variety of animation styles such as “rise” or “slide” which are available for entire scenes. Similarly, you can further customize these by choosing the duration and direction for a selection of animation styles. If you would like to apply different animations for entering and existing, simply click Separate Exit and Enter animations at the bottom of the side panel.
Other Features
While there are many features available to students, two features that are worth mentioning are limited to a select group of users. You must be staff or faculty in order to get access. Otherwise, you can purchase subscriptions to upgrade your personal Google account to get access to these features. On the right hand sidebar, you see Veo and Avatar, the two features not available for students.
- Veo is a tool that allows you to generate a video clip with AI. After you provide a one or two sentence description, Gemini creates a draft, generating suggested scenes populated with text, stock or Google images, files included in the prompt, a script, and a voiceover. In addition to this feature, you can add an AI-generated narrator or use a read-along teleprompter.
- Avatar is a feature that Google Vids offers to provide polished video content. You can choose from 12 different preset AI avatars, each with a built-in voice allowing you to add spoken content without recording your own audio. You can match the AI avatar with AI voiceover options in Google Vids; for example AI avatar Kevin matches the “Persuader” option.