April 12, 2010

Google Docs Shows More Information About Audio Files

Even though Google Docs lets you upload any file up to 1024 MB, the service still has a lot to improve when it comes to previewing your files. Try to upload a video and you'll notice that Google Docs doesn't transcode the video and you can't watch it online.

The good news is that Google is working to fix this problem. MP3 files already show song titles and album art, but you still can't play them.


Trey D., who sent this tip, found some other interesting details:
When I upload music files (.mp3) to my Google Doc's account, regardless of the filename, the Song Title (per ID3 tag) is what comes up on the list of uploaded documents.

For example, I have uploaded a song 'Beach Boys-Good Vibrations.mp3'. The title that comes up on Google Docs, once the file has been uploaded is "Good Vibrations".

This is a change from earlier behavior that listed the filename (rather than the track name) and is a bit of a nuisance when I am searching for artist names (there is no trace of the artist name remaining).

Despite it being a little annoyance, I am hoping that Google is developing a music storage service a la Grooveshark.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, it's a real pain for people whose filenaming conventions match the Disc/Track order. I'm uploading .FLAC files and they're being renamed to the Track Title tag. They need to either turn it off altogether, or add a "Sort By [CHOOSE METADATA FIELD]" option in the document list view. It already takes forever to upload stuff into GDocs, I'm not going to waste even more time restoring my carefully-crafted filenames. The whole thing is frustrating as hell.

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  2. Seems to work for m4a (aac files made by iTunes) as well.

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  3. Google needs to support at least a basic audio player (like the one used for MP3 attachments in Gmail) and a basic video player (like the one used on YouTube) so that users can stream audio and video from Docs to their computer. I hope Google (or anyone else for that matter) produces a solution to this problem soon!

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