Google Cloud file sourcing

How to store your videos on Google Cloud Storage and deliver them via SmartVideo.

Google renamed several pieces of this flow in 2022 — “Storage Browser” is now Buckets, “Add members” is now Grant access, and “New members” is now New principals. Newer buckets also default to Public access prevention: On, which has to be turned off before public reads will work. The steps below match the current console (verified 2026-05-25).

1. From the Cloud Storage Buckets page, click Create. On the Choose how to control access to objects step, select Uniform (this is the rebranded name for Set permissions uniformly at bucket-level (Bucket Policy Only)). Leave the rest of the defaults and create the bucket.

2. From the Buckets list, click your bucket name and open the Permissions tab. If you see a banner that says Public access prevention is on, click Remove public access prevention (or open the … menu on that row) and confirm — you can’t grant allUsers access while prevention is enabled.

3. Still on the Permissions tab, click Grant access. In the New principals field type allUsers. In Assign roles, search the Select a role dropdown for Storage Object Viewer, pick it, and click Save. Confirm Allow public access when the warning dialog appears.

4. Switch to the Objects tab and either drag your video into the main pane or click Upload > Upload files.

5. Once your video is finished uploading, click the video’s name to open its details. Copy the Public URL (the field is labeled Public URL on the object overview; if you only see Authenticated URL, the bucket isn’t actually public — go back to step 2 or 3).

Note: If a public URL doesn’t appear, check the bucket’s Permissions tab and confirm allUsers has the Storage Object Viewer role and that public access prevention is off. Without both, SmartVideo will be unable to download your video.

6a. If you are using our WordPress plugin, paste the copied URL into the Video source field (the gif below shows how this is done using our plugin with the new WordPress editor).

Note: If the video file doesn’t seem to be working with the SmartVideo player, double-check the bucket’s Permissions tab — make sure allUsers still has the Storage Object Viewer role and that you copied the Public URL exactly as shown in step 5.

6b. If you are not taking advantage of our WordPress plugin, or are on another CMS platform entirely, use the URL you copied in step 5 as the source in a SmartVideo tag.

Note: If the video file doesn’t seem to be working with the SmartVideo player, double-check the bucket’s Permissions tab — make sure allUsers still has the Storage Object Viewer role and that you copied the Public URL exactly as shown in step 5.

And that’s it! 🎉

A few moments after previewing or publishing the page, SmartVideo will download, encode, and store your video on our global delivery network. We recommend keeping the file stored in your Google Cloud bucket in case the video is removed from your website by mistake.