Google Launches Meet 1080p Video Calls and Enhanced Toolbar and Runway Launches Video-To-Video Generative AI

Hello! 🙋We have the following updates for you today! 📣

• Google Meet Launches 1080p video calls
• Google Enhanced Toolbar
• AI startup Runway launches video-to-video generative AI

Google Meet Launches 1080p Video Calls

According to the most recent Google update, Google Meet will now enable 1080p video calls. It is currently only available to paying subscribers.

Because Google Meet previously only supported resolutions of 720p or lower, it’s great to see high-resolution video calls finally. Zoom and Microsoft Teams, among other videoconferencing programs, already allow 1080p calls.

According to Google, 1080p video calling is available to selected paid users, such as standard and enterprise editions, in addition to Educational and Frontline plans.

 It is also available to those with a Google One plan with at least 2TB of storage. Users with personal Google Accounts are not able to access it.

The feature is not enabled by default; the user has to turn it ON by clicking the three dots in the top right corner of your video stream and selecting Turn on HD video.

Google Launched Enhanced Toolbar

In the latest announcement, Google announced a new feature called Enhanced tool finder that will help users quickly find commonly used tools without the need to juggle through various menus and toolbars.

This new feature will be rolled out across Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides starting May 25, 2023.

It is essentially a smart tool that will automatically record user actions while creating a new document, spreadsheet, or presentation and suggest common actions such as Page setup, Dropdown, Meeting notes, Inserting rows/columns, merging cells, and freezing rows/columns in Sheets, Spell check, Edit theme in Slides, and so on.

Before this tool, the user had to navigate across various menus in Google Workspace apps to locate the required feature, but now it is quite easy to locate and use it immediately.

The tool will be useful for various formatting features, collaboration, or smart canvas, which will save your time and streamline your workflow by allowing you to discover the specific features and use them right away.

AI Startup Runway Launches Video-To-Video Generative AI

Runway released its first generative AI video-to-video mobile app for iOS devices. Using picture or word prompts, its Gen-1 video-to-video generative AI enables you to transform the 15-second movies on your phone into stunning fresh creations.

Users of the application will be able to record a video from their phones and instantly produce an AI video. Any video in their library can be modified using text prompts, pictures, or style presets.

Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image diffusion model that can create photo-realistic images from any word input, was also introduced by Runway.

The application offers many presets, such as “Cloudscape,” or allows users to change their video’s appearance to resemble a claymation, charcoal sketch, watercolor painting, paper origami, and more.

According to reports, Gen-2 will soon be ready and enable lengthier videos and other AI features like the image-to-image generator. The app currently supports the Gen-1 model.

Runway has developed various AI-powered video-editing software such as frame interpolation, background removal, blur effects, a feature that cleans or removes audio, and motion tracking, among many others.

The company raised $50M in a series c funding round in Dec 2022.

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