Play Google drive video on VLC

Stream Directly From OneDrive, Google Drive and Pretty Much Any Internet Download Location With This Trick

You probably already know that VLC is a super-versatile video/ media player that is available for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS and almost every other platform and its variation. You know that when it comes to audio and video media files, it can play just about everything you throw at it. It is also likely you know videos from streaming services such as YouTube can be played directly in VLC. If you don’t already know how to do this, check out this blog post on VLChelp.com. There should also be a number of videos on YouTube that practically show you how to do this.

Why Would You Want To Play Streaming Video On VLC?

For one thing, the videos sound much better on VLC. While they sound better than in the browser by default, VLC also has a built in audio boost, a 10-band equaliser with several presets built in and spatial controls, which you can tweak to get the sound just right. If you don’t know how to do that, try this LifeWire.Com post. As VLChelp explains, VLC player also lets you tweak the video’s color (hue, saturation, grain, geometry and much more if that interests you), speed up or slow it down, add subtitles, create playlists and much, much more. You know what the best part is? Those annoying ads don’t load at all when you play YouTube video in VLC. There are any number of blog posts and YouTube videos on the subject.

Playing Video From Cloud Drives, Online Storage And Other Internet Download Servers

What is trickier is playing videos that you’ve uploaded to OneDrive, Google Drive or some other cloud drive. These services often support playback of a variety of media formats. OneDrive supports MP4, MOV, WMV and certain M4V files. Google supports a larger number of video formats including most of the above plus FLV, AVI, MPG, WebM and MTS. However, the browser-based web players are tricky compatibility-wise and will often not play extensions with codecs they don’t understand. They also won’t support external subtitle or give you the sound quality or video controls that VLC has.

This is already possible and very seamless on VLC for Android. If you open a video file from say, OneDrive, you get the option to open it in VLC. All you have to do is choose VLC as the player and the video begins to stream through VLC.

Note: This was possible on desktops till a while ago too through a browser component called the VLC Active X plugin. The video didn’t always open in VLC per se, but in a new instance inside the browser window. But security issues have caused pretty much all the broswer developers to outmode the Active X plugin in their updates.

How To Play Video in VLC From OneDrive and Pretty Much Any Online Location?

Steps 1: Open OneDrive in a Chrome window and locate the video you want to play. This trick works very well in Chrome, but I suppose any browser will do the job.

Step 2: Select that video file alone and select the “Download” option in the contextual menu on the OneDrive top navigation strip. The video file will now begin to download.

Step 3: Go to Chrome’s Downloads tab and pause the download. Then copy the download link from the Right-Click/ Context Menu.

Step 4: Now open VLC and in the file menu, choose “Open Network Stream.” Paste the download link into the URL box and hit play. In a few seconds, the video will begin to play just as if the file were on your computer.

That’s it. Your video should now begin playing in all its 1080p glory.

Note: I’ve used a Mac but the trick works on PCs too.

Congratulations! You have now learnt a very geeky VLC trick.

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