New Feature in Google Photos

I was watching a video I shot this morning and I noticed as the playhead moved along there were white dots above it. As it moved under a dot , the dot would pop up a little . When I tapped them a box popped up that said export top shots. Apparently the white dots indicate what it’s chosen as the best stills from the video. I’ve never noticed this before. I don’t know if it’s only available to people who pay for Google one storage. Has anyone else seen this?

Caption : screenshot from video in Google photos showing Top shot indicators.

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Hi @Rednewt74 Alfred

I see the jumping white dots also on my end. I’m also a paying member of One.

Here is a screenshot from where we can export selected frames.

Cheers

Morten

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@MortenCopenhagen ,

Looks like you figured it out.

Are you familiar with the “top shot” feature/setting in the Google camera app? When you take a still photo it takes two or three and picks out the one that thinks is best. The white dots on the video track represent the frames that they think are the best, and if you tap them you have the option of downloading them as still images. Haven’t played with it enough to know if it’s really going to be useful.

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@Rednewt74 @MortenCopenhagen As far as I’m aware, the Top Shot feature (for the camera app) is not new but I couldn’t tell you when I first noticed it; it would be years ago I think. I don’t have it enabled mainly because I think it takes up more storage space since it captures more than just a single image/still.

As for the ‘top shots’ from within a video, I don’t really know when that was introduced but I’ve seen it before as well. By the way, it doesn’t trigger with Cinematic Pan shots, just the regular ones. I rarely find the need to export a still from a video when using Google Photos.

Edit: I did a quick Google search and I think Top Shot was introduced with Google Pixel 3 in 2018.

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@AdrianLunsong ,

Nice to hear from you. I don’t use top shot for photos because I find it jarring to open a picture and have it change a couple of times before the “top” shot is shown.

I do export images from video regularly. Sometimes to get an image for a photo montage; or if I’m trying to get a shot and cars or people keep moving through the frame, I switch to video and shoot until I know the frame was clean and then export the shot I was looking for.

I hadn’t noticed that the “top shot” dots aren’t there on a cinematic pan video, but you can still export a frame if need be.