Producing Your Own Vidcast for Video Sharing
Part 3: Editing and Distribution (page 2)

You've now got your vidcast edited and encoded into popular file type(s), now where will your new show live? Do you already have a Web site or blog dedicated to your show's topic? Perhaps you've opted to deliver your shows exclusively via RSS. And what about those free video sharing sites?

With the obvious exception of free hosting sites, be sure to check into a few details from your provider. The first is your monthly bandwidth allocation. If your show is lengthy, or if you've encoded using a high quality setting, you will likely have a large file that people will be downloading. And if your show becomes popular, you could easily exceed a modest monthly bandwidth limit. Early popular vidcasts like Diggnation found their initial bandwidth projections were way off...and excess bandwidth can cost a lot. The second detail is to confirm with your Web host that you'll have enough server storage space for all of your future vidcasts. You may find you'll need to increase this, but it is usually something you can do as it becomes needed.

What about uploading to popular free video sharing sites, like YouTube? While it won't hurt to use these additional free sites, they probably should not form the core of your distribution plan for episodic shows like a vidcast. This may change, but they are currently most popular for one-time videos rather than reoccurring shows.

Congratulations! You've got your first vidcast up. But we're not done quite yet. While the incredible popularity of online video may provide opportunities for us as video producers, it also provides challenges as we shift our role to distributor and marketer. Because so many people are readily consuming video online, there is a whole new level of access to potential audiences. But the widespread delivery of online video makes cutting through the clutter that much more difficult. We'll conclude our series with five tips that will help get your new vidcast seen by as many people as possible.

1. Create an easily recognizable small icon (AKA, chicklet or avatar). This effectively becomes the logo for your show that aggregators use in their listings. Due to size, make it simple.

2. Add your RSS feed to popular aggregators and directories like iTunes and Feedburner.

3. Send an email with a link announcing your new show to everyone you know.

4. Link to other vidcasts, user groups and forums with complementary or similar interests.

5. If you've housed your vidcast on your Web site, include a link to your current show on your homepage.

Contributing editor Brian Peterson is a video production consultant, trainer, and lecturer.

If you shoot with more than one camcorder and find that you are spending more time than you'd like transferring your footage from tape, check out the latest generation of direct to disk recorders now on the market. Since ingesting footage from tape is a real-time process, you automatically gain one-to-one time savings by having your material already on disk. And, as most recorders allow you to edit directly from the portable disk, you don't even have to transfer (at least immediately) to your edit computer. Depending on the size of your camcorder and options for external brackets, the only tricky part can be finding an appropriate mounting surface.

Producing Your Own Vidcast: Part 1
Producing Your Own Vidcast: Part 2

• Digg This!
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit