Nothing is safe from the comments feature.
From simple blogs to news portals, to social media. All of them have the commenting features to enable people to put their thoughts in their own words. This particular feature has also been made available on the file hosting service Dropbox.
Cloud services are great to upload and share files with others. However, most of them aren’t ideal for actually reviewing and collaborating on the work.
Commenting on specific parts of an audio or video file, for example, generally requires making those comments with timestamps elsewhere.
And when users do collaborate and make adjustments based on comments, the entire document or email can get messy real quick.
This makes it difficult to stay organized, and cumbersome to ensure every comment has been addressed.
This is where Dropbox's time-based commenting feature comes in.
The feature is an expansion of Dropbox's existing file feedback system, which supports audio and video files. The move should benefit those users who regularly work with those type of contents, as this would help make collaboration with large video and audio files a smoother experience.
Time-based comments for Video and Audio highlights:
- Targeted feedback: Add time stamps to comments so others can jump to the exact second.
- Enhanced playback: Adjust speed and scrub through 1080p video previews with thumbnails and audio previews with waveforms.
- Broad format support: Preview and comment on over 30 video and audio file types, including QuickTime, MPEG-4, MXF, MP3, and WAV.
- Multi-gigabyte file sharing: Send files big and small without having to compress them.
- Fast approvals: @ mention team members, clients, and vendors to notify them of the comments.
According to Dropbox, this time-based commenting feature aims to simplify video and audio reviewing process.
The feature is also in line with the company's efforts to integrate more workflows and productivity into its platform, so users won't have to leave Dropbox to complete common tasks.
Using time-based commenting, team collaboration when editing audio and video files should be a lot easier by keeping comments out of email threads when a video or audio file is shared.
Instead, editing commentary is placed alongside the files themselves at a specific place on the file's timeline.
What this means, users can jump straight into their shared multi-gigabyte file, and let others collaborate on it without having to deal with attachment size limits.
This feature is available via Dropbox on the web, as well as on Dropbox iOS and Android.
Another great aspect in the functionality is that it supports all Dropbox account types. What this means, anyone with a Dropbox account can benefit from this time-based comments to files shared by Dropbox Professional, Business Advanced, Enterprise, and Education users.