Recently I’ve given some thought to doing some experimentation with a video podcast. My initial thought is something in conjunction with my Disruptive Telephony blog to show/discuss some of the things happening in the world of telephony. I anticipate doing it with a webcam on my laptop and then perhaps also with recording video on my Canon digital camera (once I get a new one). For my current experimentation, I’m thinking that I’ll just use Windows Movie Maker to add title and end slides and do whatever minimal editing I need.
But my question is this: where do I host it?
What I am looking for is a site where I can upload the video in some format and have it automagically converted to appropriate viewing formats, complete with the ability to embed video players in blogs. Though I expect that I’ll primarily promote the blogs on my own web page, I would like to be able to have a “show” web page on the hosting site. At the moment, I’m not really interested in running ads, I don’t think, but I guess at some point that might be an interesting option – but I want control over exactly what ads go where. Today, really all I’m looking for is a publishing platform.
A year and a bit ago, when I first looked at doing something with video, there didn’t seem to be all that many choices other than, say, YouTube. But today, there seem to be a great many players in the space. I’m NOT looking to do a live show, so that pretty much seems to rule out ustream and blogtv.com. It seems that to me that some of the major players are the following:
- blip.tv
- hipcast.com
- brightcove.com
- podshow
- and then, of course, YouTube
So my question for you all out there reading this is – if you are doing a video podcast or video blog or vlog or whatever you want to call it, where are you hosting your videos? And why did you use that site/service?
Any thoughts/comments/feedback would be most appreciated. (Thanks!)
Blip.tv, hands-down. About six months ago I did a lot of research on this question — granted that’s getting long in the tooth in this always-changing landscape but I check back in every so often and it still looks to me like blip.tv’s well ahead of others in terms of social features, upload experience, video quality, flexibility of the platform, APIs, adoption by leading vloggers, its “smart” free-tagging system, granular choice re licensing of your content, etc.
— Ian (a former Green Mountain Boy, now in Asheville NC)
Yeah, I think blip.tv is the way to go.. though I’m not sure it’s ideal for video podcasting… but ideal for vlogging. For video podcasting you probably want to create content that’ll play on an iPod which would be different from what blip.tv does.. though I say this without really using blip.
Brightcove seems to be targeting larger business then the social media crowed.. They are some pretty bad ass flash developers though.. but its really blip that’s targeting our needs.
I also think it makes sense to post your video, with links / keywords / whatever.. in as many places as possible in order to maximize the viral possibilities.. but bare in mind that YouTube, for instance.. can only be a certain length.. so if you’re going to post to YouTube and your video is longer.. then you’ll have to consider this in how you approach it… and there might be other differences between the different platforms..
Further.. working in this sorta way can help your over all search ranking..
A recent meeting of the Boston Media Makers had some amazing information on this stuff: http://bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/next-meeting-sunday-june-3rd/
Definitely follow the links on this one.
Hey guys,
Thanks for recommending blip! I just wanted to point out that blip.tv actually does video podcasting — it’s built-in, and it works well. You can upload your original iPod-compatible QuickTime files to blip and then point people to http://yourname.blip.tv/rss/itunes/ for subscription in iTunes. We even help you get listed in the iTunes Music Store once you have your account at http://blip.tv/prefs/itunes/. And if you don’t want to create your own iPod-compatible QuickTime files you can sign up for a blip.tv pro account ($8 a month) and have us create them for you automatically.
Yours,
Mike Hudack
Co-founder & CEO, blip.tv