If you didn’t know, know this! These days you can do Gmail attachments of up to 50MB per attachment, but that old news now. The latest feature to be introduced by Google on this popular email service is video attachments that stream. Previously, you had to download the video first to your device to play it.
The new streaming feature is useful especially if storage space on your device is a concern, but given it is currently available on the Gmail for Web; meaning access on PC. I don’t see storage space being much of a concern on a PC as compared to when you are on a tablet or a smartphone. Rather it seems like a prototype feature Google is doing a dry run on PCs, before being deployed across all platform.
On a tablet or smartphone, storage space is often a concern given the limited onboard space the devices come. However, there is another way to look at it! Perhaps you are not sure if you really need to view the video attached, so it would be beneficial to stream it first then decide if it is worth downloading to your device.
The video attachment streaming option shows up as a small thumbnail in Gmail with an image of one of the frames of the video. When you double-click on the thumbnail, a YouTube-kind of player will pop up and start streaming the video at the optimal condition. You also get some control option on the video where you can manipulate the playback, adjust the speed, and sound levels.
In a blog post Google notes: “Previously, in order to view a video attachment in Gmail, you would have to download it to your computer and open it with a media player. Starting today, when opening an email with video attachments, you will see a thumbnail of the video and have the ability to stream it, right from inside Gmail.”
The videos attachment size will be limited to 50MB footage and not of an insanely high quality. If you want to send higher resolution videos, use Google Drive (it already supports streaming) to share with your recipient.
