MsKitka.com

So, now that you’ve read Part 1, you’d like to know the technical details of what you will require to make your video-podcast or vlog…

Software (for compression and editing) – You will require software for two main reasons: editing and compression.

For editing, Windows Movie Maker is acceptable and affordable for those of you with shallow pockets. If you have incredibly deep pockets, there is much better software out there for you to buy, but it will depend on your budget (and how professional/amateur you wish your podcast to be).

For compression, you will have to figure out what formats you wish to present your show in. I used to think that Windows Media Player was universal and good quality until I started making Kitkast. If you only want to put out one format, the best software to compress your media files to is Quicktime. Here is my reasoning:

• Windows Media unsynchs the video and audio after about 5 minutes. This is fine if your video-podcast is under 5 minutes, but if you plan to put out something longer… forget it.
• Sam Sugar from SugarBank once told me that people in the jizz biz prefer Quicktime.
• Quicktime is more universal since it is used on both Windows and Mac operating systems.
• Using Quicktime is another way to tell Bill Gates to go take a flying leap…

Actual compression is important because otherwise it would take forever for people to download your vidcast. My ten-minute episodes of Kitkast are approximately 40mb each and take about ten minutes to download. Rocketboom puts out a podcast less than half the length of mine at the same size, so both broadcasts take about an equal amount of time to download. The faster it is to download, the better.

Hosting – If you market your show the right way you will probably have a lot of traffic and will need to make sure that wherever you choose to store your files, you have unlimited bandwidth.

Kitkast is hosted by LibSyn and my package (Podcast Advanced) gives me 525 mb of storage space for $20/month. There are other packages if you think you require more or less space on a monthly basis.

RSS Feed – If you want a regular audience of people subscribed to your podcast, the next thing to do is to make sure you have an RSS feed.

While LibSyn and others offer their own RSS feed for your files, Zod has set me up to use Feedburner. Kitkast has a feed on Feedburner for every type of format that it is available in (Quicktime and Windows Media).

Publishing – The way Kitkast publishes/distributes each episode is by making a blog post with media enclosures via WordPress at mskitka.com. The enclosures are key to distribution since it is these enclosures that are downloaded through iTunes, iPodder, etc.

In order to differentiate the mskitka.com feed from the various Kitkast feeds, Zod created his own code available here (open source): Hacking WordPress for Podcasting different Media.

Helpful Hints – For detailed information and tutorials on formatting and compression, check out freevlog.org. Although their main focus is to influence people to put out personal video-blogs, you will certainly be able to find a lot of helpful information. Zod and I got most of our guidance for Kitkast from this site in the beginning.

Part 1: Creative Planning
Part 2: Technological Planning
Part 3: Filming
Part 4: Editing (Coming Soon)
Part 5: Marketing (Coming Soon)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Videoblogging, How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.