How to Select Audio or Video for My Podcast

A podcast is simply a series of media files (audio or video) that you make available for others to hear. It is called a podcast because it is usually broadcast on a daily or weekly basis. It’s pretty simple to select whether to publish an audio or video podcast depending on the resources you have available.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Web site or blog
• Internet access
• Audio editing software
• Video editing and graphics software

1. Assess your personal technology resources. Do you have audio and video capabilities on your computer? Are you able to store fairly large MP3 files on your hard drive? An MP3 file for a short two-minute audio podcast can take up around 3 MB of hard drive space and video podcasts will take up even more space. When you start creating more podcasts, your hard drive space can be consumed fairly quickly.
   
2. Determine what your listeners’ capabilities are. This may be difficult to do since you might not have any listeners just yet. But you can always pose the question on your Web site or blog, asking them what their preference is. If many of your listeners are connecting with dial-up connections, downloading large video podcasts might be problematic.
   
3. Determine your publishing and hosting capabilities. Think about your hosting provider. Is it a free Web host with limited storage space, or do you have a professional hosting account with plenty of bandwidth and disk space?
   
4. Choose a topic once you have a good idea of your technical capabilities. The topic should be one about which you are passionate and for which you are willing to devote a large amount of time researching and creating content.
   
5. Determine whether the content needs for your topic are visual or whether audio will be sufficient. Certain things will require video. For example, if you are going to create a podcast discussing the use of a certain type of software, you will need to be able to demonstrate how to use it visually. For simple news reports, audio is fine.
   
6. Decide on your format:
   a. If your technology resources are robust and you are doing shows that require video, then by all means create your video podcast.
   b. If your technology resources are meager and you are doing shows that require visuals, create an audio podcast supplemented with photos and pictures.
   c. If your technology resources are robust and you are doing show topics that do not require video, try creating a professional audio podcast with intro music and exit music.
   d. If your technology resources are meager and you are doing show topics that do not require video, create short sound files that can be uploaded and downloaded quickly by both you and your listeners.
   

Tips & Warnings

• You can mix it up. If you have shows that might require a video once in a while, you are not forced to have only audio shows. Create a video every once in a while to keep your podcast interesting. In fact, certain MP3 players now allow video.
• Remember that listeners can only hear your voice, not see you, in an audio podcast. Your topic or theme should be something about which you are truly passionate. This will help to make the podcast exciting to your listeners because they will hear in your voice how much you love the topic.