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Within days of Apple’s release of the video iPod last month, the guys at Cinecast flipped on a camera and started offering one segment of their movie-review show as a videocast. Switched:on host Bryan Castles is also experimenting, but says he’ll go slow to figure out how to offer something more than a visual version of his existing show. And Nate and Di, podcasters who haven’t even gone video yet, already predict their show will be exclusively video by next year.
A podospheric migration to video has begun, but it’s been hardly at the breakneck pace seen in June when Apple released the podcasting-capable iTunes 4.9 software. That event kicked off a tsunami of new audio podcasts that has yet to abate.
By contrast, Apple’s early-October debut of the new iPod and its video-capable iTunes 6.0 hasn’t had nearly the same effect. One podcast directory, PodcastPickle, had 27 videocasts at that launch and, four weeks later, has added just six. This month’s Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California, the first-ever podcasters convention, has attracted very few videocast-related registrants or exhibitors, says convention organizer Tim Bourquin.
“Audio creation is just easier,” says Yahoo senior product manager Lee Ott, who oversaw the October launch of the search engine’s podcast directory. That directory also offers just a few dozen videocasts. “You don’t have to be a good actor and you don’t have to be pretty to be a good audio podcaster. It’s still a lot harder to create good quality video.”
That said, thousands of podcasters, previously contented to believe they were at the forefront of the new technology, became unnerved to find with the video iPod’s advent that they might suddenly slip behind the curve.
“It’s a natural progression,” says Aaron Burcell, spokesman for PodShow, the company that produces podcast pioneer Adam Curry’s PodFinder shows and owns the Podcast Alley directory. “You’re going to see a lot of audio podcasters go to video because they’re interesting personalities.”
But catching up is hard to do. Brent Morris, the Australia-based host of The Closet Geek Show, is one of those who feels the tug to go video but is daunted. To get his audio podcast going, he invested a mere $7.50 in a good microphone and used Audacity, a free sound-editing program.
“It’s a much more costly endeavor to start a videocast,” Morris wrote in an e-mail. “You’ll need to purchase a video input card or a digital video camera and the tools for encoding to video. Currently, there’s no standard video format that exists like MP3 for audio. DivX/XviD encoding is popular but run into problems requiring extra software. QuickTime, Real and Windows Media video encoders run into the usual problems inherent with proprietary formats.”
Those who overcome technical obstacles are still vexed by what to put on videocasts. Switched:on host Castles sees the potential, as long as he can do something new with his Keller, Texas-based buddies-hanging-around-joking show. He’s shot a couple of short films, including a spoof commercial of a fake brand of vitamins, but is offering them only on his site for now because he put one out in his podcast’s RSS stream only to have subscribers revolt at being given material that didn’t work on their iPods.
“Nobody’s gonna watch talking heads for two-and-a-half hours,” says Castles, who says he filmed the vitamin bit with Motorola V551 cell phones. “What we think would work are some of the things we talk about that are funny but would be a lot funnier if we could show them in a quick video.”
Other podcasters do believe folks want to see them chatter or interview guests. Emily Morse, host of the Sex With Emily advice show, has been videotaping her programs for months in preparation for offering a video version at some point soon. And Nate and Diana Fulmer, the Charleston, South Carolina, couple behind the Nate and Di chat show, are convinced that videocasts will supersede audiocasts in popularity within a year.
But not everyone’s so sure. Jawbone Radio host Len Peralta has no plans to start a videocast and is especially dismayed by podcasters who just turn a camera on themselves.
“The Mary and Karla Show, for example, is painful to watch,” complains Peralta, referring to a show by a pair of Portland, Maine, audio podcasters who, on the video version, sit by their computer or on couches talking. “It’s a head scratcher why people would watch that. What is added from the audio show?”
Karla Preston, one of the co-hosts, takes the criticism in stride, noting that many listeners were curious to see what the Portland, Maine, podcasters look like. Their videocast, which started the same week Apple released the new iPod, is simply another way of experimenting in a new media, she says.
“We wanted to be one of the first to try it out, and it turned out to be a huge success for us,” says Preston, who notes her show has been recommended by Curry on PodFinder and regularly resides in iTunes’ top 100 rankings. “Our viewers love us and they keep asking for more…. People love the expressions on our faces and they like watching us move on camera.”
Still, Burcell hopes some will restrain themselves. The Daily Download, a podcast in which host Chris Rockwell interviews people while on the toilet, “probably isn’t going to be as compelling in video,” Burcell says.
“I’ve met him and he knows his podcast isn’t going to translate into video podcasts,” Burcell says. “The visual element doesn’t add anything there. If anything, it would probably subtract.”
