AP 0334: What Tools Should I Use to Record a Video Podcast?

AskPat 334 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. What's up everybody? I don't know why I did that. Pat Flynn here. Thank you so much for joining me. This is Episode 334 of AskPat. The last episode of this particular week, and the first day of May, so thank you for those of you who have listened all throughout the year, and if you're listening to this for the first time, awesome. Happy May, everybody.

Now, before we get to today's question from Kara, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is Lynda.com, L-y-n-d-a.com, which is used by millions of people including myself and a couple of my team members actually. A couple of my team members have actually been using it for years now. There are over 3,000 courses on all types of topics from web development to photography. That's what I use it for. Visual design in business. I use it for that as well, and it also gives you some software training for things like Excel, WordPress, and Photoshop. I use that for me as well, so again as you can see, I use it for a lot of different things, and all their courses are taught by experts. These aren't just like silly little YouTube videos. These are professionally recorded . . . I don't know why I said it like that. Professionally recorded videos with step by step on how to do a lot of things that can help you take your business or your financial life or your status at your nine to five to the next level. So you can actually sign up for free for a 10 day free trial today by visiting Lynda.com/askpat. Again, go to Lynda.com/askpat. You'll get to sign up for free. You get unlimited access to every course for 10 days. Check it out. Awesome.

Now, let's get to today's question from Kara.

Kara: Hi, Pat. My name is Kara Gott Warner, and I have a podcast called The Morning Cool Down at MorningCoolDown.com, and I am considering the idea of doing video podcasts, and my question to you today is, do you recommend a certain software to do this? Currently I'm using Call Note, but I noticed that the quality was not as good, and the audio was not matching the video, so any advice that you can give on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Kara, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. Actually, I've never heard of Call Note before, and I checked it out. It seems like that's a tool that one might be able to use to record things like Skype calls and other types of conference situations. Now, that you could, I guess, use for a video podcast, but essentially a video podcast is a video version of an audio podcast just like this one, so it's something that people could subscribe to. It gets automatically uploaded to a person's device if they've subscribed. They can watch it on a particular directory like iTunes, and it kind of doesn't really matter how you record it as long as it's put into a place where you can grab an RSS feed with that video file embedded into it, and then submit that RSS feed to something like iTunes, which will then read it. So again Call Note is a tool that you could use, but there are a lot of other tools out there that you could use to actually record a video. Again, it could be any sort of video. What you do with that video to turn it into a video podcast is to put it into a place where you can grab an RSS feed, just like with an audio podcast.

Now, you can go to PodcastingTutorial.com to get some more information on how the whole RSS feed thing works. One of the videos there shows that. I don't have a tutorial on video podcast, but it works in essentially the same way, except instead of an audio file as an MP3 you have a video file. Now, there's a lot of tools you can use to capture video. You could use your iPhone or your Android. You could use your webcam on your MacBook Air, or your laptop or your desktop. You could use a DSLR camera. You could use a digital camera. You could use anything that captures video. You can have that become a video podcast.

Now, if you wanted to edit, a great tool you could use to edit, especially if you're on a Mac is called Screenflow. Screenflow is actually used to do screen recordings, recordings of what's on your computer screen, and actually you could do that as a video podcast as well. I've done a few video podcasts for SPI TV that are simply episodes of me recording something on my screen, and I'm explaining and giving a tutorial about. Now, Screenflow is also an amazing video editor in and of itself, so again it's used for screen capture in particular, but also I use it because it's just a great interface and super easy to use for just editing and splicing and doing a lot of the things that are really all we need to do to create a nice looking video. Especially if you're going to be putting it up onto a directly like iTunes. It might have a little bumper in the beginning, and you can add text on top of it. You can add music on top of it. You can change a lot of the settings and the coloring and the volume and fading and transitions between parts of the video. You can cut and splice and trim and do all those sorts of things, again, with Screenflow which is . . . I believe it's like $99 just to have. You can go to askpat.com/screenflow to check that out.

Now, if you are on a PC, there's a tool called Camtasia Studios which does essentially the same thing, and there's actually a Mac version of that as well. I'm just very loyal to Screenflow at the moment for Mac users, but if you're on a PC, Camtasia Studios is the one to use to do screen recording, and it can edit and do all the same sort of things the same way. Now, you could also edit using Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro, which is sort of higher level video editing tools. You could also use iMovie on the Mac which comes installed already when you purchase a Mac computer or a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air or something like that, and you can use that as well. Again, it doesn't matter how you get the video. You just need to get a video file, and however you plan to edit it for your show, that's great.

So once you have that video file, then you upload it to a server that could potentially give you that RSS feed, and there's a server in particular that I choose specifically for video podcasts, and I want to thank my good buddy and videographer Caleb Wojcik from DIYVideoGuide.com. DIYVideoGuide.com. If you're doing any sort of video, especially if you're doing it on your own, that's a place you should absolutely be going to and subscribing to. He also has his own video podcast as well which has been ranking really well on iTunes, and especially in the business section, so again DIYVideoGuide, and Caleb Wojcik is the DIY video guy. Any of those URLs will actually work. Now, he has a podcast that's been doing very well. It's a video podcast, and I have one as well. Now, the tool that he recommended to me, the host for the video files is Podbean. P-o-d-b-e-a-n.

Now, there are a lot of great hosts that you can work with. I work with a lot of different ones from SoundCloud to Libsyn for audio files, and you could upload video files to Libsyn as well, but the plan pricing doesn't really work as well through doing videos. Because when you think about it videos are very large files, and Libsyn's plans are basically for audio files unless you want to pay a little bit more money or increase the amount that you could upload every month, which obviously comes with a higher fee. Podbean, for video, is $18 a month, and that's unlimited videos and unlimited bandwidth, so as many people as you can get in there listening and viewing, it's not going to affect the price at all, and you can upload as many videos as you want again for $18 a month, which is fantastic actually, and currently that works really well.

There's also Vimeo Pro. Vimeo Pro. V-i-m-e-o P-r-o, which is a little bit more established in the industry, and I don't know necessarily what the pricing is for that, but that's also another place that you can use to upload video files and grab an RSS feed from those places. And again that RSS feed will have the video files embedded into it, which will also include the title and the description and all the meta data behind that episode as well, so you can then submit that to iTunes as a video podcast, and then iTunes will read all that information and then put those videos up there, and when people subscribe it gets automatically downloaded and pushed to those people's devices.

So that's kind of the quick rundown on how video podcasts work, and it's been working really, really well. I've actually calculated that about 40% of my views from SPI TV. Mind you, I have a YouTube subscribership of over 40,000 people. 40% of my views are actually coming from iTunes, and Caleb, we talked about in a recent episode that he was on on SPI, he talked about how his show, which he started as both a YouTube channel and a video podcast channel at the same time. He's gotten more views on iTunes as a video podcast than on YouTube, and again he started both of those at the same time, so it's incredible. There's a lot of opportunity out there. A lot of people don't want to put the little bit of extra work in, and if you have a YouTube channel already, and you're doing videos, and you're uploading them to YouTube it's just a little bit of extra work to get them into a podcast feed like on Podbean.com to grab that RSS feed. Again, you can't do that specifically. You can't get an RSS feed from YouTube unfortunately, or else it would be really easy to grab an RSS feed from YouTube, and put that into something like iTunes to create your show. But no, YouTube wants it all for themselves, and that's quite understandable. So if you want to repurpose, just simply export another file, and have that be uploaded directly to Podbean or Vimeo Pro if you want it to be a little bit different than your YouTube video. It could actually be the exact same video just uploaded in a separate area. First you upload it on YouTube, and you do that thing, and then you upload it into that other one. Either Podbean or Vimeo Pro, and then you're good, and that RSS feed will help you deliver those video files to those directories.

Woo, so Kara, that was a little bit more technical than probably a normal podcast here on AskPat is, but again you can go to PodcastingTutorial.com to get access to free videos, no emails required, to show you how to get a podcast set up. And if you just imagine that instead of the audio files mentioned there, you have these videos and the tools to create the videos I've already mentioned here at the top of the show. It's pretty much the same thing, and again the hosts for those are different as well, so hopefully that helps, Kara. I wish you all the best, and thank you for calling in. An AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way for having your question featured here on the show. My assistant will get in contact with you within the next couple weeks to collect that information, so we can send that to you free of charge, and again thank you for listening in, and for asking your question. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page.

I'd also like to thank today's sponsor which is Lynda.com. You know, challenge yourself. Learn something new, and you can try it out. Go to Lynda.com/askpat. You can get a 10 day free trial to Lynda.com. Unlimited access to every course on Lynda. You can view tutorials on tablets and iPhones and Android mobile devices, and there are new courses that come out every single week. And one of my favorite things to do on Lynda is when a new software comes out, to check to see if there's a tutorial for that new version, and you know because we all have different softwares, and they're always upgrading them, and we don't always understand what those upgrades are. I always check on Lynda.com first to see what those upgrades are, and more often than not there's already a video on those things, so again check it out. Lynda.com. L-y-n-d-a.com/askpat for a 10 day free trial. All-access.

Thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate it, and as always I'd like to end with a quote, and today's quote is from Maya Angelou. She says, “You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

Cheers. Thanks so much. Be creative, and if you have a second, head on over to iTunes, and leave a quick review for AskPat. Love it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Cheers.