The Video Podcast Effect

[by James Quintana Pearce]Video on mobilesThere is a strong argument that the technologies which are successful are those which allow person-to-person communication, for example voice calls, SMS, e-mail and so on. People like to communicate and tell stories, which is what makes podcasting so successful…at least in the zeitgeist.

Podcasting is receiving a lot of attention, perhaps more than it deserves and perhaps not. The next step will be video podcasting (vidcasting?), which is simply recording video clips that people can download to portable devices in the same way that people download audio clips for podcasting. It’s a reasonable bet that the only reason podcasting didn’t include video in the first place was because iPods couldn’t play it.

That’s all changing now — even if rumors that Apple plan to launch an iPod with video capabilities prove premature, a bunch of other devices capable of storing and playing video (including the Playstation Portable and Gizmondo) with mobile phones leading the charge. It’s funny, but most of the articles I’ve come across about vidcasting haven’t mentioned mobile phones, or if they have it’s only been in passing. Until this point mobiles haven’t been very useful for storing files the size of MP3’s, so one that can store video files can seem a long way off. However, Motorola’s proposed “iTunes phone” has been reported to store up to eight hours of songs, and several handsets have been mooted with memory in the gigabytes.

Public content is increasing too — Jay Dedman, developer of ANT (described as iPodder for video), told me that “just in the last 3 months, the number of video feeds has grown by 500%”. This is obviously off a small base, but is indicative of the fact that people are interested in making video podcasts and will do so…

How will this effect mobile phone content? For starters, there’ll be a lot more competition. There will be a lot of free stuff floating about which will be easily accessible – especially by the kind of person likely to be a high-user of content. Which isn’t really a threat, it just means that commercial content providers will have to ensure their content is compelling and has high production standards. It may also mean that more content will be ad-supported rather than paid-for than might otherwise be the case.

Paris HiltonIn fact, in the same way that commercial audio producers such as radio stations have latched onto podcasting commercial video producers are likely to latch onto vidcasts. TV shows are likely to offer varying vidcasts depending on the type of show they are. Comedy shows have obvious candidates for vidcasts, but all shows can offer something that is likely to be well received by their fans – and others. Soap Operas can have cast members do vidcasts, either “behind the scenes” or as part of the show, and talkshows can vidcast highlights, outtakes or host homilies.

Movies can fare even better. Paris Hilton will do a podcast to promote the movie House of Wax, which she appears in. I’m sure Paris, the studios and customers would undoubtedly prefer a video version, and I expect that to be the next method of promotion to come out.

The important thing is for vidcasts to be as easily accessible as podcasts, which uses an RSS-like system which automates feeds. There are some programs available… they’re still being worked on but they should be perfected soon enough…

Check out:
ANT:Vidcasting client.
Intervision:Converts video for the handset.
Feedster:Aggregates video blogs/clips
MeFeedia:Aggregates video blogs, automates creation of RSS feeds with enclosures.
Vogbrowser:Alpha version of video aggregator.

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