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ZDNET Highlights
- Many premium Google Vids features are now open to everyone.
- You can edit photos, add voiceovers, and remove filler words.
- The features should make things easier for beginning editors.
Google is unlocking some AI features in its popular video editing platform and letting anyone with a Gmail address test them. Previously, these features were only available to paid users.
In a recent postGoogle points out that a trio of AI-powered Vids features are now available to anyone – AI-generated voiceovers, the ability to clean audio to remove silence and filler words, and AI image editing.
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Here’s a practical look at some of the new tools you can try.
Getting to the point with transcription trim
Transcription Trim is a feature designed to improve recorded clips by removing filler words and long pauses (Google defines anything longer than a second as a long pause). To test the feature, I recorded a video in which I read part of a recent article I wrote. I added copious amounts of filler words, pauses, and periods of silence. When the video finished uploading and I chose “Edit with transcript”, I was greeted with a pop-up informing me that I had five filler words and nine long pauses.
One click later, and all the “ums” and “uhhs” were gone. Another click, and the long pauses are gone. A video that was 1 minute and 25 seconds long was reduced to 1 minute and 3 seconds.
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The feature worked surprisingly well. This wasn’t perfect, as the cut was noticeable in a few places where I used a filler word after an actual word, but 95% of the edits were barely noticeable. (If you decide any of the cuts are too unnatural you can restore the cut words one by one.) The program removed the interruptions intuitively, and the end result was actually much more refined.
Generate professional voiceovers in seconds
If you’re not comfortable speaking yourself, the AI-Voiceover feature lets you submit a script and receive a professional-sounding voiceover. There are seven voices available to choose from, and while some of them sound like AI, most of them sound quite natural. I find this very useful if you’re trying to make an educational or promotional video and don’t want to use your voice.
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Edit photos easily
If you’re incorporating photos into your videos, Vids now offers some basic AI editing tools for you to add a little pop. You can remove the background of an image, describe what you want in a prompt, or turn a photo into a video.
I tried doing some basic edits on some recent vacation photos — like “remove shadows” and “make the water more blue” — but I also tried some more bizarre requests, like “add a shark to the water.” The generative results were solid, but still a little strange; All edit requests looked great.
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The photo-to-video option was also quite impressive. I took a picture of my daughter standing next to Donald Duck and asked the AI to give her a hug. My wife was passing by when I told her the results, and it was so reassuring that she stopped to ask when this conversation happened.
By opening up these features to more users, Google is making it easier for both beginners and experienced creators to create high-quality videos. Given that it is still quite new, Google Vids is not one of the major players in video editing yet. However, it could definitely see growth, especially if it can attract early users.
