In this episode, we discuss the theme of converting your possible video recordings or “chats” to audio podcast episodes. This discussion has had two instances recently in the podosphere:

• In a recent article in medium.com titled “Turn your video chats into podcasts,” the suggestion was made to convert video content into audio podcast episode content; and
• In a recent episode of Podcasters Roundtable, the discussion did receive some controversial points of view, especially from co-host Daniel J Lewis of The Audacity to Podcast.

The medium.com article

In this recent article sponsored by Anchor, the sub-title and explanatory text at the beginning posits this theme:  “Turn your virtual hangouts into a podcast with Anchor’s new video-to-audio conversion — Now Anchor makes it possible to turn your video files into podcast-ready audio — so the next time you have a great conversation over Zoom, Google Meet, Instagram Live, or your favorite video chat tool, you can share it as a podcast for everyone to hear.”

The discussion presents the fact that Anchor now has tools that converts your video files into editable audio. There is a 20-second video that announces this new capability for podcasters.  Then the article goes into the steps required to perform this task:

• Record the video file of your “chat” and download the video file;
• Upload the video file to anchor;
• “Your converted audio file will show up immediately as a segment in your episode builder and in your library, so you can split it, trim it, and start adding edits right away.”
• Publish your new audio file as is or use some of the tools in anchor to modify the audio file to your liking (see the article for which files are supported, both on the upload and pre-publishing);
• “Anchor makes it easy with free unlimited hosting and automatic distribution to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere your listeners might be.”

The article then gives links to various instructions  “from different platforms on recording and or exporting video chats.”

However, the key question everyone will have is about YouTube. And the article gives the following details: “You cannot upload YouTube links directly to Anchor, but if you own the raw video file (.MP4 or .MOV) you can upload it and convert it to audio.”

The rest of the article then gives some samples and examples of files that will work in this type of environment.

The purist description of audio and video content

In a recent episode of Podcasters Roundtable from Ray Ortega, we heard purist Daniel J Lewis give his viewpoint that converting from one medium to the other (e.g., audio to static-view video aka “audio-videos” — or from video to audio content) is really not a general good idea. The reason is that there are specific aspects of each medium. And just doing this automatically may not work, and perhaps you can alienate your audience that expects the benefits of that specific medium.

Also, the fact that YouTube links are not supported may run into a show-stopper from many podcasters that want to have their content easily syndicated on various media.

And I had tried to do this in the past for a client when I was a podcast consultant, and the aspects of video were lost in converting automatically to audio content — and some of the audience listeners did unsubscribe, as it did not meet audio content expectations. And so I would tend to agree with Daniel and his viewpoint that you might not do this on your flagship podcast — i.e., keep video content on video platforms and keep audio content on audio platforms. To experiment with this type of cross-conversion in your main show (if you are an experienced podcaster) is something that I would not suggest. You may want to start another podcast show under another name in order to run this experiment.

The author if the article ends with encouraging any aspiring or new podcasters to record their specific video “chats” and create a new podcast  episode or show with the content.

However, if you, as a podcaster, wish to create audio content from your video informal “chats,” be careful about running an experiment that may backfire on you. And it all depends on your ability to have great video content that could be adapted for audio podcasts. And the jury is still out on any positive results for experienced podcasters on their flagship podcasts.  But we here shall be looking at some results of this type of experimental cross-conversion of platform content and see if this type of promotion for creating new podcasts will last.

Thank you for your attention.

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