A Chromebook by definition is any laptop toting Google’s Chrome OS operating system. It starts in seconds, and offers thousands of apps. It has built-in virus protection, and backs up your stuff in the cloud. Many people like to play some video files off of external hard drive on their Chromebooks to kill the boring time on the long airplane trip. Chromebook also allows people to play video files through Google Drive when the video format is supported.
As other multimedia devices, Chromebook only supports some kinds of video and music files. So no matter you play video on Chromebook via external hard drive or watch movies through Google Drive, you need to make sure the video and audio file is supported by Chromebook. Below is the supported file list extracted from support.google.com and you can refer to the file list to judge your video files.
Chromebook Supported File Formats
Media: .3gp, .avi, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .m4a, .mp3, .mkv, .ogv, .ogm, .ogg, .oga, .webm, .wav
Images: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp
Compressed files: .zip, .rar
Other: .txt, .pdf (read-only; you won't be able to edit these files)
Chromebook Supported Video and Audio Codec
| Container | Video codec | Audio codec |
|---|---|---|
| ogv | Theora | -- |
| webm | VP8 VP9 |
Opus Vorbis |
| mp4 | H264 | -- |
| MPEG4 | -- | |
| mov | MPEG4 | -- |
| H264 | -- | |
| avi | MPEG4 | MP3 |
| DIVX | MP3 | |
| XVID | MP3 | |
| 3gp | H264 | AAC |
| MPEG4 | AMR-NB |
This supported video and audio files list applies to all these chromebooks:
Asus Chromebook Flip
Samsung Chromebook Pro
Dell Chromebook 11
Acer Chromebook 15
Acer Chromebook R11
HP Chromebook 14
Hp Chromebook 13
When you open a file in a Chromebook but get an "Unknown file type" error message, this error means that this file type isn't working on your Chromebook at this time. In this case, you can try to transcode this unsupported video files to Chromebook supported ones with a video converter.
Best Video Converter to Transcode Video to Chromebook
In our daily life, we will meet vairous video and audio formats that Chromebook can't support. To play these video files, you can convert them to Chrombook compatible.3gp, .avi, .mov, .mp4, .m4v,.mkv, webm. Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate will be your excellent assistant. This all-in-one toolkit can convert all kinds of video files to Chromebook with most compatible video and audio parameters. The installation is as easy as ABC and you can load the video files by directly dragging. The batch conversion feture will same you lots of video encoding time.
What can Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate give you?
1. Rip HD Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray to Chromebook supported digital file.
2. Copy any DVD discs, DVD ISO/IFO and DVD Folder to Chromebook.
3. Compress 4K video to 1080p for Chromebook.
4. Convert TS, M2TS, FLV, MPG, H.265/HEVC, VOB and more to Chromebook.
5. Convert FLAC, DTS, AAC audio to MP3, M4V for Chromebook.
6. Add external subtitle to video for Chromebook playing.
Steps to Convert Unsupported Video to Chromebook
Step 1: Load Chromebook unsupported video
If they are some H.265/HEVC, FLV, TS, etc video files, you can directly drag and drop the video files into the software. As for Blu-ray and DVD discs, you should insert the disc to optical drive and import the disc media files. Normally, Blu-ray and DVD videos will have multiple subtitle and audio track, you can choose to keep only one track in "Subtitle" and "Audio" box.
If you are using a Mac, you should use Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac which can convert video to Chromebook on MacOS Sierra.
Step 2: Choose Chromebook supported video
According to the above Chromebook supported video and audio list, MP4, MKV, 3GP, WebM are supported by Chromebook. Here we choose HD MP4 video for Chromebook cause this video can offer excellent compatibility and high definition. You also can click "Settings" to adjust the video and audio codec, channel, bitrate, resolution to make the output video more fit in your chromebook.
Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate also offer some editing functions like cropping, trimming, removing audio from video and more. You can press on the button like a pen on the top of the menu to open the edit window. You can adjust the video aspect ratio to make the video more fit in the display here.
Step 3: Start to convert video to Chromebook
Clicking the Convert button on main interface, you can go to Conversion window to start unsupported video to Chromebook conversion.You can find conversion information on the window, such as Time elapsed, Time left, Generated size, and Estimated size. Ticking off Shut down computer after conversion option, you can leave the program running and do other things instead of waiting around for the conversion. After the conversion, you can click Open output folder to popup output directory with the Chromebook supported files.
How to Play Video on Chromebook?
You can play saved music and videos on your Chromebook with its built-in player.
To play a saved file:
- 1. Sign in to your Chromebook.
- 2. Click the launcher
.
- 3. Select Files
.
- 4. Double-click a file to open it in the media player.
You can adjust volume and audio output source (like headphones or speakers) from the status area, where your account picture appears.
Your Chromebook will automatically put all your audio files that are in the same folder in a playlist.
