14 DAY TRIAL // Picasa has just extended its video support to include higher quality videos and even HD ones. Users will now be able to upload 480p and even 720p videos. This should make it easier for those who want to keep their family photos and videos in one place, though Picasa is still far from being a competitive video hosting and sharing service.
"We’ve been hearing from a number of you who want to upload high quality videos to your Picasa Web Albums, so your photos and videos are organized in one convenient place," Detlev Schwabe, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"We’re happy to now support uploading high-definition (HD) videos, up to 720p, from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums. Whereas before you could upload, store, and share videos shot in 240 or 360p, now you can do the same for your 480p and 720p (HD) videos too," he announced.
Picasa has had video support of a while now. The photo sharing service now includes a version of the YouTube video player which comes with support for HD video. The new YouTube player is being integrated into other Google products as well, Blogger for example.
Since HD cameras are increasingly affordable, it's nice to see Picasa support at least 720p. But there are quite a few caveats. A big one is that HD video takes up a lot of space.
With only 1 GB of free storage, you can't upload more than a few videos before hitting the space limit. Additional storage on Google is relatively cheap, but there are better, free alternatives out there.
One is Google's own YouTube, which has no storage limit and enables users to upload videos as big as 2 GB with a resolution of up to 4K.
Another limitation is that you can only upload videos from the Picasa desktop client and not from the website. Still, if you want your photos and videos close together and aren't worried about storage space, support for the bigger formats should be welcomed.