The Potential of Video Podcasting – PCI 401

I'm Mike Dell Vp of customer relations here at Blueberry. And I'm Todd Cochran Ceo and Founder Blueberry.

Today, we're gonna talk about video podcasting, Not the Youtube style, but the Rs 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 in insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcast all with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

Yes, you can do video podcasts. And in here at Blueberry since day 1, we have supported video podcasting. And Again, that's via the Rs feed. There are other forms so so called nowadays. So but we we definitely have supported it from day 1 and it's been a thing since day 1, but a lot of people are talking about it Now.

And. When it comes to podcasting general, you know, a video podcast is really not that much harder to publish and in Rs assessment feed, then audio is. The only really differences as you uploaded MP4, the format for video podcast. And the rest of the same. But, of course, on the production side, it's it's a bit more complex and doing a video podcast via, Rs is truly more cancel proof. It's got the same cancel proof it 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 d demonetized or d listed or whatever may happen. But it also allows you to distribute to more than 1 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 pre recorded and then edited. So again, it depend on your methodology of recording. But in the end, you are gonna need a little more equipment to do a good video podcast. I will say this before we really get into this technicalities. 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 the best product possible. You know, I work for a Tv station at 1 point and They had only 4 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, feel of view you 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 a very very important. Of course, on the editing. Side. There's a couple of options for. I use the 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 to, you want the output, you know, once you've edited if you're gonna edit it all, Sometimes we will just cut the ends and let it fly and or if you're doing live, that, 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 if you're gonna use a a video editor, you wanna make sure that it that it's... We'll put out the right to 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 of video to download that and maybe quirky. So having that original copy stored locally, which much of the streaming software will 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. Of course, a hosting platform wise choosing a hosting platform such as Blue that sports video files and can generate an rs assessed feed with a video file. Not the only challenge really here is video files are much larger then 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 12 80, not do 19 20 by 10 80 p, maybe 12 80 by 07:20. I end up with a about a 900 megabit file. So, video files are long. 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.

It's it's easier. Yeah. Yeah. So... And, you know, part of the thing, also when you're doing videos is make sure you you know, prepare your your content, and you know, unless you're doing it off the cuff live thing with with guests or whatever. But you know, prepare outline or some sort of script. I, 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 don't, do it, you know, on a particular day of the week. You 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? Know, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday for the 3 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, 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 preparation.

Mh. If you're doing video, you will become a better podcast because it's much much harder to edit video than it is to edit audio. So I find myself having prepared to be... 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 video so my production time is about half. Just because the prep vibration is more because he got 1 shot at it, and I

particularly don't like editing. Yeah. In videos, you can tell an edit, you know, these jump

cuts. You you watch Youtube lot, You'll see, you know, that a lot of the Youtubers out there will have jump cuts. So if they're sitting they're giving a monologue, and then, you know... You keep see these edit points, some of them are really good at it, and you can hardly tell, but that's that's 1 thing makes you a better podcast. And if you have more than 1 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 the 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, very

consistently, I guess. And the recording of video, you know, it's just like audio, you have to record in it, 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. But 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 know clearing 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 reporter or whatever, but, you know, it 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 bark been your alive 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 mis reconfigured. 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 prevent data loss. I I record the 2 sources at all times. And even then I maybe sometimes Forgot to hit second record device, because it'll happen to every 1 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, it you can implement it. Yeah. I use a checklist as well, you know, kinda like for flying. I have a checklist and it'll make sure the recording on. Make sure the backup recording. 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 dot it all your eyes. And always, again, have a backup. And post production. Now, this... You know, you 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 1 thing that I screwed up when I started doing the video show along with an audio show is I would edit the audio and then I, oh, geez, 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. 1 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 a of course you're setting. So, you know, that may 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. We'll do that if you provide the transcript. So definitely think about that.

Distribution, again, if you want a true video

podcast, do you can do it via Blueberries Rs feed or or or in power press? 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. That's a beauty about it as well. You can cross post the video into other, other platforms, and make sure you always optimize episode titles, descriptions and tags for better discover ability 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 podcast, 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 to and all that and you know, keep it, you, surveys and feedback are good. But, you know, just if someone comments about it, you know, acknowledge them, that that'll definitely make a super fan

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 from promote your pie cast. And, of course, you wanna engage with the audience as well and monitor analytics understand viewer behavior and improve feature episodes, do a comparison for audio versus video. I think that will give you an indication my show,

It's kenny. It's kinda split, like, 70 30. 70 percent listen 30 percent 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. Hang on have to some backups, as always keep your software and equipment updated. And be open to feedback and wanting 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 45 minutes to my total production time, a lot... Is 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 district, 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 1 and done because I can do both the audio and video and a single post, the 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 Rs.

Private 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 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 Vr ss as well, and and, you know, just use those other places as secondary distribution points Yep. All of that covers it, again, we've supported video from day 1. Video has been a thing in podcasting since day 1. A lot of people think it's new, but... It's not. It's being talked about a lot more lately. Yes. I agree. So if you want more information on video podcasting and

happy to talk to you. I'm Todd. At Blueberry Course at 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 in video, you have to consider to have a video strategy on top of having an audio podcast strategy. It's just... They're are 2 different 2 different animals I will touch you guys next week.

Thanks for joining us. Come back next week, and in the meantime, head to podcast insider dot com for more information. To subscribe, share and read our show notes, Check out the latest suite of services and learn how blueberry can help you leverage your podcast visit blueberry dot com. That's blueberry without the ease because it can't afford the ease.