I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here
at Blueberry.
And I'm Todd Cochran, CEO and founder of
Blueberry.
Today, we're gonna talk about video podcasting.
Not the YouTube
style, but the RSS
delivered video
that has been around since the beginning of
podcasting.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike
Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team,
bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips
and tricks to help you start, grow, and
thrive through podcasting,
all with the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting.
Welcome. Let's dive in.
Yes. You can do video podcasts.
And and here at Blueberry, since day one,
we have supported video podcasting. And, again, that's
via the RSS feed. There are other forms
so so called nowadays. So
but, we we definitely have supported it from
day one, and it's been a thing since
day one. But a lot of people are
talking about it now.
And when it comes to podcasting in general,
you know, a video podcast is really not
that much harder to publish
in an RSS feed than audio is. The
only really difference is is you uploaded m
p four,
the best format for video podcasts, and the
rest is the same.
But, of course, on the production side, it's
it's a bit more complex and doing a
video
podcast via RSS
is truly more cancel proof. It's got the
same cancel proof attributes as audio does. And,
basically, you're you can't be taken down for
anything that you say or your platform
or your channel isn't demonetized or delisted or
whatever may happen.
But it also allows you to distribute to
more
than one platform.
So I think today, what we wanna do
is talk a little bit about some of
the technical stuff and content preparation.
We don't wanna get too deep into this
because
there's, you know, really a couple of ways
to skin a cat here when it comes
to doing,
video podcast. Personally, you know, I do a
live show
and that live show turns into
a
video podcast. Some people do something that's prerecorded
and then edited.
So, again, it'll depend on
your methodology
of recording. But in the end,
you you are gonna need a little more
equipment
to do a good video podcast. I will
say this before we really get into this
technicality.
Audiences will forgive you for bad video, but
they will not forgive you for bad audio.
So long as you have the audio chain
really kinda nailed,
the video can be lagging a little bit
in quality. But the way things are today,
we wanna come up with the best product
possible. You know, I worked for a TV
station
at one point, and,
they had only four states of audio.
Either it's on or it's not
or it's humming
or it's not. And they didn't really care
that much. So, you know, if you notice
on your local news, a lot of times
the audio is a little bit flaky. So
don't do that.
You know, make sure your audio is decent.
Yeah. So from a technical setup, you know,
really,
you should have a good camera. And in
the camera can be a webcam,
but make sure it's a good webcam.
There's a few out there. Of course, if
you have a Mac, you probably kind of
pretty good camera built in, but, you know,
field of view may be a little bit
different.
But, of course,
you know, on doing video, good camera, a
microphone,
and you're gonna need some lighting. You really,
really are because
the the shadows are not,
becoming. You need some you need some light
to fill in the shadows and,
it's very, very important.
Of course,
on the editing
side, there's a couple of options for it.
I use Adobe Suite,
but there is a whole host of video
editing,
applications
out there.
Yeah. Make sure it's, you know, high quality.
You know, you want,
you want the output, you know, once you've
edited, if you're gonna edit it all. Sometimes
people just cut the ends
and let it fly. And or if you're
doing live, the you know, you can just
download that
that file from whatever live platform
in most cases. And, you know, there's not
a lot of editing involved. But if you're
gonna use a a video editor,
you wanna make sure that it,
that it will put out the right
format.
I think the key truly is as well
is that
when you're recording, having that original copy,
locally
is really, really key. Because if you rely
on the
the
streamed video to download that, it may be
quirky. So having that original
copy stored locally,
which much of the streaming software allow you
to do to record locally, I think is
important to have that,
that master file to start with and and
work from there. And, of course,
hosting platform wise, choosing a hosting platform such
as Blueberry that supports video files and can
generate
an RSS feed with a video file.
Now the only challenge really here is video
files are much larger
than audio files. And to give you a
comparison,
you know, if I do an hour,
at the encoding rate that I do, I
end up with about a 70 meg file
for audio. Whereas if I'm doing video
and I encode that video down to,
maybe twelve eighty, not do nineteen twenty by
ten eighty p, maybe twelve eighty by seven
twenty,
I end up with about a 900
megabit file. So,
video files are much longer. Yeah. They're much
larger. You know, that's just the nature of
the beast. You know, you're sending a lot
more information.
You know? So that's that's why audio podcasting
is a little more portable than video. Yeah.
It's easier. Yeah. Yeah.
So and, you know, part of the thing
also when you're doing videos, make sure you,
you know, prepare your your, content. And, you
know, unless you're doing an off the cuff
live thing with with guests or whatever. But,
you know,
prepare an outline or some sort of
script. I mean, I would you know, I
wouldn't do, you know, strict scripts because it
always sounds like somebody's reading, you know, unless
you're really good at it.
But, just make sure you try to keep
it somewhat organized. And then, of course,
consistency, you know, making a regular schedule, especially
if you're gonna record live,
you know, being there at the time you
normally are there once a week or however
often you're doing it,
can definitely build that
live audience. But, as far as distributing it
as as a podcast, you know, do it,
you know, on a particular day,
of the week. I know, you know, your
shows, Todd, you know, you have a pretty
strict schedule by the day.
You know, when you put out your episodes,
what is it, Mondays and Thursdays or something
like that? Yeah. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday for the
three shows I do. Yeah. Right. Right. And,
you know, people know that, that's gonna happen.
And, you know, when they're live,
you know, you know, maybe you're not as
strict with the live schedule, but,
you know, but you're you're on that day
or on the day that, you record. I
was gonna just talk about the content preparation
as far as that that preparation.
Mhmm. If you're doing video, you will become
a better podcaster
because it's much, much harder to edit
video than it is to edit audio.
So I find myself having
prepared to be prepare I prepare more
doing video than I do audio.
And it's case in point. I've just been
doing audio for the last couple of weeks,
and I don't have to prepare as much,
to do the show than I do when
I do videos. So my production time is
about half,
just because the preparation is more because you
got one shot at it and I particularly
don't like editings. Yeah. In videos, you can
tell and edit, well, you know, these jump
cuts. You see you watch YouTube a lot.
You'll see, you know, that a lot of
the YouTubers out there will, have jump cuts.
So if they're sitting there giving a monologue
and then, you know, you you keep seeing
these edit points,
some of them are really good at it
and you can hardly tell, but,
that's that's one thing
makes you a better podcaster. And if you
have more than one camera, it helps in
the editing process too, but that requires a
much, much bigger hardware commitment.
And, of course, there's this target audience. Know
your target audience and tailor the content to
their interest.
Again, sometimes video requires its own strategy versus
audio. And most importantly, when you're recording, don't
forget that people are listening as well as
watching. So you have to be very,
very cognizant
that,
you know, that you're explaining things very, very,
consistently, I guess. And the recording of video,
you know, it's just like audio. You have
to record in a, you know, you know,
very quiet,
space, but then you also have to think
about, you know, it being well lit and,
background noise, visual distractions. You know, you don't
want the the kids running around in the
background while you're trying to, you know, do
a video.
So, you know, just be
a little more cognizant about your your space
where you're gonna be recording.
Yeah. When I had little ones, I had
to lock the office door because invariably, they
would come in and, you know, tap me
on the shoulder and wanna talk while I
was live. So,
you know, they all During COVID when everything,
you know, went to the home, you know,
there'd be some news broadcast and then somebody's
kid walking
on the on the the reporter or whatever.
But, you know, that stuff happens, and sometimes
it's fun to leave it in there. But,
you know, just be careful with your environment.
You want it to to to be as
quiet and distraction free as possible.
Again, a dog barks when you're live. It's
hard to cut that out. It's easy to
cut out an audio. Another thing you wanna
do is test your equipment. You know, I've
this has caught me by surprise a few
times. I've clicked the button and nothing happened,
out of memory or, you know, something got
misconfigured.
So test your equipment if you're gonna be
doing video and settings before
to avoid technical issues and
more avoid the most important part is always
have a backup recording to prevent data loss.
I I record to two sources
at all times and,
even then I maybe sometimes have forgot to
hit second record device,
because it'll happen to every one of us.
We will lose an interview,
because we forgot to record or something went
sideways, something got corrupted.
So it's always good to have a backup
recording,
strategy if you can implement it. Yeah. I
use a checklist as well, you know, kinda
like for flying.
I have a checklist, and I'll make sure
the recording on, make sure the backup recording's
on, make sure I, I put the lights
on or, you know, just just a little
checklist that you could run through just to
make sure
before you start recording
that you've,
crossed all your t's and dotted all your
i's.
And, always, again, have a backup.
And postproduction,
now this, you
know,
you could do as little or as as
much as you want just like with audio,
but,
just just know that,
removing mistakes and unwanted sections and all that
stuff will be more noticeable in video.
It, can be more challenging. And if you're
gonna do an audio version of your video,
this is one thing that I screwed up
when I started doing a video show along
with an audio show,
is I would edit the audio and then
I go, oh, jeez. It doesn't really sync
with the video. So edit your video version
and then extract the audio out of that
so that they're both the same if that's
what you're going One thing that you wanna
do is, you know, if you're gonna be
doing videos, you're gonna wanna have,
branding, lower thirds.
You're gonna have some elements to make it,
look professional depending on, of course, your setting.
So, you know, that maybe require you to
use, some popular software out there
to be able to do that automatically
or add it in post.
But, having video is important to, to do
that. Right. And then, of course, you know,
just like, with audio, you wanna have transcripts,
especially on video because you're you're more likely
on a video podcast
to get, hearing impaired people
or people that are listening in loud environments
and, just having the transcripts available with closed
captioning, which a lot of apps will do.
Apple and,
in most of the podcast apps on index
will do that if you provide the transcript.
So definitely,
think about that.
Distribution, again,
if you want a true video podcast,
you can do it via Blueberry's RSS feed
or or in PowerPress.
So, you know, again, it's no different than
an audio file. It's just a video file
and you link the video file versus link
in the audio file.
That's really the
the the ease of this. And then, of
course, submitting your feed to various podcast
platforms. Apple Podcast supports video. Podcast index does
as well.
Video is not used on as many platforms
as audio is,
but we'll have we'll have a list of
those in
the show notes.
And of course, there's a secondary distribution you
can upload to YouTube, Facebook, x and other
social media,
platforms as well. And that's a beauty about
it as well. You can cross post the
video
into other,
other
platforms.
And make sure you always optimize the episode
titles, descriptions, and tags for better
discoverability to get that SEO bounce. You know,
marketing a a video podcast
is roughly the same as marketing anything else,
but, you know, make sure you you post
it, or, you know, post a link to
it anyway on social media, email, newsletters,
collaborations,
with other podcasters to promote it or YouTubers
or whatever.
And make sure you engage with your audience.
You know, watch your comments, especially on social
media and and all that. And, you know,
keep it,
surveys and feedback are good. But, you know,
just
if someone comments about it, you know, acknowledge
them and that, that'll definitely make a superfan
out of people. And, of course, then there's
the marketing part.
You know, you would do the same type
of marketing you're doing for audio as you
would for video,
social media, email newsletters, and collaborations to promote
your podcast.
And, of course, you wanna engage with your
audience as well
and monitor analytics, understand viewer behavior, and improve
future episodes.
Do a comparison
for your audio versus video.
I think that will give you an indication.
My show, it's kinda it's kinda split like
seventy thirty. 70%
listen, 30%
watch.
So you kinda develop that over time if
you've added a video component to an audio
podcast.
Of course, there's the same legal things except
for you're adding a visual component. So make
sure you have the rights to all the
content used, you know, including music, images,
videos, whatever.
You know, make sure it's okay for you
to use that in your video podcast.
Of course. You know, you're gonna need a
little more storage for video files. Hey. You
have to have some backups.
As always, keep your software and equipment updated
and, be open to feedback and willing to
make changes to improve
your podcast.
Adding a video component can be very exciting,
but also I always add a word of
caution.
There is a significant
time
commitment to add
the video component,
probably for
myself personally, which I've been doing video for
many years,
it probably adds about forty five minutes to
my total production time. A lot of very
efficient.
Yeah. I'm very efficient.
But
if you think about,
having a the video podcast part of it
is relatively
simple.
But because I'm live streaming to YouTube,
then I have to go back to YouTube
and I have to do art for YouTube.
I have to do a new description. I
have to new a new title.
I've gotta optimize it for YouTube
whereas
my audio podcast, the show notes, episode title,
all that stays the same. So it's kind
of a one and done because I can
do both the audio and video in a
single post. So there's not that much additional
time
besides the time to upload the media file,
which depending on your Internet speed could take
a little bit longer.
So I think that's the consideration.
If you're just gonna do purely a video
podcast with RSS,
probably the additional production time isn't too long.
But the majority of folks that are considering
adding video
is gonna wanna have that video on Rumble,
on Twitch, on
Twitter, on or x whatever we're calling it
now on YouTube, you're gonna wanna have those
multiple distribution points. So in order to do
that, that's multiple posts that you have to
make,
in in that distribution to get it out
there.
Video is a little more manual
than audio. That's the that's the key. You
know, you you've if you wanna be on
YouTube with video, you have to upload it
to YouTube. But, you can distribute it via
RSS as well and and, you know, just
use those other places as secondary,
distribution points. Yep.
Well, that covers it. Again, we've supported video
from day one. Video has been a thing
in podcasting since day one.
A lot of people think it's new, but,
it's not. It's just being talked about a
lot more lately. Yes. I agree. So if
you want more information on video podcasting, I'm
happy to talk to you. I'm Todd at
Blueberry. Of course, that information is at the
end of the show as well.
I've been doing it for a long time
and,
really know the the plus and minuses of
this.
And I guess my biggest, you know, my
biggest
piece of advice to you is if you're
going to invest into NVIDIA,
you have to consider to have a video
strategy
on top of having an audio podcast strategy.
It just they're two different two different animals.
Alright. We'll catch you guys next week.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime,
head to podcastinsider.com
for more information.
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