Thoughts on my first video podcast: what worked and what didn’t

What worked

Recording audio and video separately: This being our first try at this, I wanted the fallback of having multiple recording sources to rely on. And to be honest, if the video aspect ended up being a total failure, I wanted to be able to put this out as an audio episode instead. So in addition to the camcorder, I set up a GarageBand recording with my MacBook and my Samson mic. Turns out I was able to extract the camcorder’s audio and replace it with the GarageBand audio in iMovie pretty painlessly. Part of that was because I didn’t make any significant edits, but going into this I was looking to preserve the sanctity of the live nature of the episode anyway. I did speak to the audience both before and after the episode, but once the episode begins, there are no cuts or deletions at all.

Unscripted interviews with audience members: I wasn’t sure what to think about having audience members come up and talk with us about their podcasts and their takes on PodCamp, but we ended up four-for-four when it came to engaging chats with the four people who volunteered. I’m still not sure how three out of the four of them managed to be doctors, but that’s a story for another day. Needless to say I thought I was at an AMA convention. Good thing Dana is studying medicine, I suppose.

Humor: Although I wish there were more of them, there are a number of laugh-out-loud moments within the episode, most or all of them unscripted, all of which helped engage the audience and keep the tone light. You know the old saying about how a movie is funnier if you’re in a packed theater? The same thing applies with a live audience: the humor aspect is more important when you’ve got a room full of people that you can get to laugh. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you should script humor into the show ahead of time, but when the opportunity arises during taping, don’t be afraid to go for it.

What didn’t

Camcorder angle: our cameraperson did a fantastic job of filming (thanks Sue), managing to avoid the shaky-hands syndrome that usually dogs me whenever I grab a camera. But for some strange reason I had her stand at a forty-five degree angle instead of filming us head-on. Dana and I spent most of the time looking at each other at a forty-five degree angle so that we could also be looking in the direction of the audience, and when you combine all those forty-five degree angles, you end up with twenty-three minutes of the side of my face.

Camcorder audio: it’s a good thing I had the GarageBand audio, because the camcorder managed to record the sound of its own motor. I’ve got to figure out why. You can hear it pretty clearly on the out-takes that the credits roll over at the end.

Early audience engagement: my original plan was to do a traditional iProng Radio episode for the first half of the session and then use the second half to bring the audience into the action. I should have found a way to do that in reverse. As a general rule, get the audience involved as early as possible. Once we brought them into it, things got funnier, more engaging, and likely more entertaining.

Apple TV: we were supposed to have one in the episode, pass it around, put it in people’s hands, but they still weren’t shipping by the taping date. Can’t blame myself for Apple being late, but I should have had a different prop on hand as a backup.

iMovie: never thought I’d be saying this, but using iMovie was a bit of a pain in the backside yesterday. Back in the day I used to teach classes on how to use iMovie, but that was four versions ago, and a lot’s changed since then. I’ve always told my students that the only real way to learn new creativity software (or a new version of the software) is to dive in with a fake meaningless project that you’ll have no fear of wrecking because it’s not real anyway. That way you can explore every menu option, every button, every new feature with no inhibitions. You never want to learn a new version by working on a vital project, particularly when under a time constraint to get it out the door. I didn’t realize I was so out of practice when it comes to video editing, and it cost me more time than it should have. I’ll need to brush up with a nonsense project before the next video podcast.

Exterior shots: circumstances prevented us from gathering buffer footage of the city of Atlanta on Friday afternoon, and as a result there’s really no proof in our episode that we were even in Atlanta. It’s difficult to capture the sounds of a city when doing an audio podcast, but with video it’s too easy not to take advantage of. Next time we do an on-site video episode, I’ll make a bigger priority out of acquiring such footage.

Where the jury’s still out

iProng Radio feed: since there aren’t likely to be frequent enough episodes of iProng TV to merit their own feed, I went ahead and released this episode of iProng TV on the existing iProng Radio feed. The file size is only about four times larger than our typical audio podcast, so I don’t think I broke anyone’s internet access, and I can’t imagine we’ve got more than a handful of dial-up subscribers anyway. Someone at the LA Podcasters meeting suggested that I put out a warning on the feed ahead of time, which was a good idea, but I didn’t get the opportunity to do so. I’ll have to see what the subscriber feedback looks like when it comes to being unexpectedly fed a video file.

Video formats: Mirroring our current compromise of putting our audio podcasts out there as enhanced AAC files (playable only in iTunes) but also offering up a generic MP3 direct download on our website, I went ahead and released a video iPod-compatible .m4v file onto the feed but posted a generic .mov QuickTime file on the website. Anyone with QuickTime installed on their computer should be able to watch it in their browser, and anyone who doesn’t have QuickTime installed, now would be a good time for them to rectify that anyway. Sorry, I don’t waste time with irrelevant formats like .wmv. But again, we’ll see what the reaction is, both from existing subscribers and the new listeners viewers we bring in from PodCamp.

Video quality: Both the feed version and the standalone version of the episode are more than a hundred megabytes in size. My intention was for the generic QuickTime file to be a lower-quality version that would clock in at about forty megabytes (not because I wanted to force people to subscribe to get the full quality but because I was hoping to make the generic version more accessible by being smaller), but I ended up with something that didn’t feel was of high enough quality to put out there so I re-exported it with higher settings. As a result, the generic version is almost as large as the feed version.

Length: One of the reasons I watch video podcasts like GeekBrief TV is the fact that they’re in the five to seven minute range. Chris Brogan would refer to it as a snack. Because the first episode of iProng TV took on largely the same format as iProng Radio, we ended up with a twenty-three minute video podcast. Too long? I don’t know yet.

The next one and the one after that: Remote co-hosting over audio is do-able. But over video? Not so much. And every iProng Radio co-host lives in a different State. That puts to bed the idea of doing a video podcast every week. So do we wait for the next conference or trade show, or do we go for it the next time I’ve got a co-host in the same room with me? If we do wait til the next conference, do we place an emphasis on putting together a live audience even if might not be easy to find one? Do we do a full iPod and iTunes News Section again, or do we get right to the heart of why we’re at the event? Time will tell. But after this experience I can tell you that there will definitely be an Episode Two of iProng TV at some point in the future.