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Comment by jfernandez | Hacker News Reader

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go.

For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from the need for dedicated apps/clients for a more mainstream audience), but I'm sure this isn't a novel idea.

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I run https://sysadmincasts.com/, which is a weekly bite sized screencast for sysadmins. Also posted to Show HN a while ago [1]. I can tell you that my inbox is flooded with "Thank You" messages, and requests to put out more content, I am struggling to keep up! As patio11 put it, if you can say: "I'll save you 12 hours of Googling and reading Free Information On The Internet (TM) and it will cost you $50" [2], you can make money. There is just so much text content out there, and not very many high quality videos, so there is a major void in the market. Shane Smith (creator of VICE) talks about how he is creating tons of video content, and text is pretty much toast [3], well worth a watch, just think about how this applies to the tech education space.

I am not doing anything unique or novel though, there are countless sites that I have learned from, railscasts.com, railstutorial.org, egghead.io, laracasts.com, gorails.com, etc. Granted, so far this has all been free, and I have not started to monetize yet, but I do have traction, and see a clear need. So, take that for what it's worth. Very happy to have any feedback, or answer questions, just shoot me an email (see profile). Also, if you have a talent in a particular area, I would highly suggest thinking about how to share that via video with other people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011081

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8508187

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHjln3yZFs

Just listened to the ZFS on Linux episode. I was sceptical about watching a command-line narrative, but this was incredibly well executed, with episode transcript and mini-reviews of related sites. As the episode started, the speech pattern was so slow I wondered if it was a TTS robot aimed at non-English listeners, but then the voice quickly picked up speed to reach excited-hacker cadence.

How long does it take to write and produce each episode? Would you care to share the toolchain being used for screencasts?

I miss the lost promise of SMIL which would have allowed in-context video links to URLs for related sites, or deep-linking to related video snippets in other episodes. If your project continues, you will quickly grow a library which will benefit from cross-indexing. You will also find that a subset of content will need to be refreshed, as tools and environments change. Metadata for modular snippets will improve discovery, reuse and update.

Rails Tutorial has generated six-figure revenue from screencasts combined with an ebook, so there is precedent for monetizing self-service video training.

Thanks for the kind words ;)

> How long does it take to write and produce each episode?

Rough guide is about ~2-3 hours per minute of video. Research, playing around with ideas, demos, writing, recording video, recording audio, editing, etc. So, ZFS part one was 12 min, that's about 24 hours, and part two is 18 min, so about 36 hours. Those two episodes are about 60+ hours of solid work. ZFS did take a little longer than 60 though, since I ended up doing tons of research, but I rather error on a better quality video, than putting out sub optimal content. These figures are shocking to many people, but I have honestly not found a quicker way. As I learn to use the editing software a little more, I have been able to shave an hour here and there, so that is nice!

> Would you care to share the toolchain being used for screencasts?

Sure, here is a basic dump of the tools I use:

  Ubuntu (deskop)
  Kazam (desktop recording)
  Audacity (audio recording)
  Kdenlive (edit the audio/video together)
  Screenkey (keystrokes on screen)
  Decrypt (intro screen)
  OpenOffice Writer (transcripts)
  Shaky (ascii diagram to png file)
  Asciiflow (diagram tool input for shaky)
  Gimp (graphics)

> Rough guide is about ~2 hours per minute of video.

That makes sense, given the high quality result. A 2003 thread estimated production cost for training videos at $1000-$3000/minute, http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=254620 and that range still seems relevant, https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/871420

> here is a basic dump of the tools I use

Great that you were able to achieve this level of quality with FLOSS tools. Have you considered pay-what-you-want pricing, with a suggested anchor? Or creating (for pay) screencasts for commercial software? I've often felt that training material should be included in the marketing budget, as it increases the size of the market. E.g. a portion of donations/fees could go towards the OSS project.

Thanks for the links! At least I am not going crazy ;)

> Have you considered pay-what-you-want pricing, with a suggested anchor?

As of late 2014, I am working on this full-time. Scary, but I think I can pull it off. I am shooting for a $12 monthly subscription fee (auto-renewing), that will give you blanket access to everything for 30 days. My thinking is that, I am targeting sysadmins, devops folks, and developers who want to learn about ops. So, if I can save you even 1 hour per month, then it more than pays for itself. I am hoping to push this out in a few days actually, so I will have more data soon! I don't think it will be an overnight success, but hope to build it over a couple years. At least that is the plan.

> Or creating (for pay) screencasts for commercial software?

I have looked at this. Even brokered a deal, but ended up backing out. It just takes way too much time and I needed to focus on putting out my own content. I just need to get some funds coming in rather quickly, or go get a job again. So, I am putting everything I have into this. Once I have some money coming in, then I might look at this again.

You can have more than one distribution channel, e.g. your own monthly subscription site, plus a bundle of transcripts (reformatted as an ebook) + a package of screencasts, sold via https://www.softcover.io/ which takes 10%. Use 80/20 rule to figure out which topics are in high purchase demand and could benefit from a deeper dive. Lower-cost channels can feed demand for deeper/premium products/channels.

Background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8224896 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7350265

Thanks for all the links. I will definitely be checking this out! I had watched Nathan Barry's screencasts with Michael Hartl, but I didn't know he was active on HN, these links look pretty good, so I'll want to read these over! Thanks again.

Hey, what kind of computer do you run with those programs? Apple or PC?

Hey, your site is great, just a suggestion, you might consider submitting your site to PocketCasts (email support@shiftyjelly.com), it's the most popular podcasting app on Android, and you don't seem to be in their directory. I've added your feed to their app, but it would help people discover your show.

I have been working over ideas recently on how to solve the problem of people podcasting in different geographic locations. I think the big problem is latency and audio quality. The audio quality one seems like it is easily solvable with local recordings on both ends adjusted for said latency.

The other thing I think would be cool is if with something like the oculus rift you could tune is and sit as the third person or at the table that it was happening at and actually look around. For example imagine sitting at the table with Charlie Rose interviewing Bill Gates.

Out of curiosity, are you using the term "podcast" to refer to something more like a Shoutcast stream? I may be behind the times but I always thought the term "podcast" essentially referred to mp3s (or other pre-recorded audio files) delivered via an RSS-type feed. Kind of the audio equivalent of setting a TV show to record and only watching them as they show up on your DVR.

I messed with live streaming audio quite a bit back in the 90's and early 00's and bandwidth/latency definitely could cause issues but I haven't seen a whole lot of interest in that format for quite a while. For better or worse, people seem to prefer that DVR/on-demand format where you get something delivered to your computer or device and then watch or listen when convenient.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is a reference point for me. It is streamed live on uStream. Video is put on youtube and Vimeo and audio is pushed to RSS feeds. It might be content a little less suitable to HN so Ill let you find a episode of it to see the video format but I think being the third person sitting at the table in VR would be amazing.

> with local recordings on both ends

This is what Jason Snell & co. do with The Incomparable. They also do a significant amount of editing to cut out people talking over each other, and make everything sound nice. The result is great, but it's a lot of manual effort:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_2Y74p4UpU

I want to automate this.

I still think that people need to be told about the medium and often convinced why they should care. I think we'll probably start seeing more networks of podcasters that can pool their resources to produce better content, kind of like what npr has done and what http://gimletmedia.com is trying to do. I'm not really convinced that podcasts will be able to be entirely supported through ads in the future so I think there will have to be some innovation on that front, maybe an all-you-can-eat service like Spotify will emerge...

I wonder if soundcloud will become a major player in this space since a lot of the podcasts I listen to end up being hosted by them.

It would certainly make sense for Soundcloud to leverage their position beyond the hosting standpoint yeah. I wonder what are their thoughts on this manner.

I see podcasts moving to a space where a person can consume in more than one way. Video, audio, and text.

Depending on what you're doing at the time, you'd be able to 1) watch the hosts talk along with guests, relevant images and all that, basically a youtube show, 2) Just listen to the audio like "normal", or 3) read a transcription of the audio just as you would a blog post.

Allowing a person to choose how they get the podcast's information depending on what they're doing seems very logical to me.

And I don't think there's anything special about podcasts. You can get the same information through blogs currently. What's different is the passiveness of listening. It allows me to listen to something interesting when I'm working out rather than just music. But sometimes I would want to watch, and other times I would want to read the text. That's why having the content that's currently on podcasts move multiple formats makes the most sense for the future.

"I see podcasts moving to a space where a person can consume in more than one way. Video, audio, and text."

I feel like a site like Grantland is pretty much there.

Of course, they do a much better job than just providing a transcript. Bill Simmons or Zack Lowe might write a long article about a topic, then discuss it on a podcast, then maybe extract some video clips and add some animation to spice it up.

The key, I think, is the creative people driving the process. Having the right instincts for what deserves a long form piece, a tweet, a blog length take, a podcast, or even a short documentary.

To follow on to your YouTube analogy, does anyone know of a place where someone can make a playlist of podcast (or radio) excerpts? To me a one hour commitment to a podcast seems daunting, especially if it hasn't been well recommended. Is there a place where I can find 3-5 minute "best of" clips for given episodes, maybe arranging those together to form a playlist about a topic? Like "Today we have Bob Smith on the SoandSo show talking about Big Data, John Doe talking about something on the BlahBlah show, followed by..." and I could easily listen to the whole show if the excerpt sounded interesting.

Might be a stupid idea as I'm not a big podcast consumer.

I listened to the most recent episode of 'Welcome to Nightvale', and the hosts said that their listeners actually asked for their podcast to be on youtube which is interesting.

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/commonplace-books/welcome-to...

Personally as a huge consumer of podcasts, the only thing I've been curious about is if they could do custom ads. So say you click play on your favorite player, it would stich a relevant ad immediately during that play.

I'm not in the podcasting biz, but I do listen to a lot of them, both from established radio players like NPR, and from people who got started by "casting pod." Radio is terrible, because you can't decide when to listen to what you want. However, radio producers have vast experience making audio content that people like. My guess is that people who know how to make radio will move over to podcasting and make money via "native advertising," the same way they make money via "advertising" today.

The subscription/download orientation of podcasting is so ridiculous. With music and video you just find what you want and consume. I don't want to subscribe and I don't want to download!

Subscription is available (and popular) on YouTube for video, and the content of Podcasts is generally episodic, lending itself to a subscription model. What about this do you find to be 'so ridiculous'?

Not to mention that most podcatchers I've messed with also allow you to search for content and listen on demand as the file is downloading (which is all a stream really is anyway).

Yeah I agree, it's sort of the 'early adopter' version of where it'll be in a few years hopefully. That said because it's sort of a different medium model, I can see why this is hard to change or move past.

Subscriptions make sense with Podcasts. It's kind of like a season pass for a TV show on iTunes. They tend to be something you follow and want each episode of rather than something you listen to once. I think this is mainly because finding something you like is difficult (good content, good hosts, good length, good production values) so you stick with it when you find it.

That's not how Hulu, Netflix and Amazon handle it. The subscribe thing is unnecessary.

I'd like to see it on those services. Besides, you don't have to subscribe with podcasts. You can easily just search and download a specific episode.

You _can_ on some of them but they're still subscribe/download oriented. Which I think is one of the reasons podcasts have remained in the background (also the word "podcast" is tired).

Podcasts can be two people and a mic, or something that a team of talented people make over a year or so, like Serial. You can't put both of these types in the same bucket.

The other ridiculous thing about subscribing is that way overstates listenership. Podcasters routinely overstate their audiences by 10x or more and get away with it. Good for them, I guess.

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