Vodcast Hosting

I have been creating mathcasts (math screencasts) for a little over a year and have recently begun to use Camtasia Studio to produce them. My students can access the mathcasts via our district website but I would like them to be able to subscribe and/or download them to their iPod or other portable devices. Does anyone have any advice on how to make this possible? Is there a hosting site that may be better than others? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Tags: mathcast, podcasting, vodcasting

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Permalink Reply by Steve Dickie on January 23, 2009 at 3:56am

I use Blip.tv for mine. It's nice because I can upload in multiple downloadable formats (including iPod, HD, or whatever you uploaded). Blip will list your podcast in the iTunes store and/or give you feeds that can be subscribed to in iTunes or another aggregator.

There are a couple more positives as well. I have mine set up and tied to my Archive.org account. When I upload it to Blip it also gets sent to the Internet Archive automatically. This means all of my videos are accessible from two different sites, so if Blip is ever down my students can go an alternate link to get my videos.

Lastly, there's always a danger that your district blocks Blip (or whatever page you happen to pick). With Blip your url is you.blip.tv I'm at falconphysics.blip.tv. This might not seem important, but I've been told by several network admins that even if your school/district blocks all of blip.tv that they can unblock "yourpage.blip.tv" while still blocking the rest of Blip. Whether they will or not is another question.

My videos currently have ads displayed at the bottom. This is optional. I'm experimenting to see what sort of revenue it might generate. I was hoping to raise the funds I'd need to get a better microphone and camera. So far after 5 months I'm at almost $8 (they pay you when you get to $25). I'm about ready to call this one a bust and turn the ads off again.

If you have any questions about Blip or the Internet Archive please feel free to ask.

One last bit. Not related to hosting. For my screen captures I use TipCam. TipCam will save videos as flv files. I then just convert them to iPod format and upload both versions. The flv file is available immediately after uploading to Blip (no transcoding needed). Here's a brief video showing off TipCam.

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Permalink Reply by Ann on January 24, 2009 at 9:20am

I've used Podomatic. There is a free version and a paid for version. I spent the $99 last year so I would have more storage space and better statistics, but the free one is great too. I like the fact that I can have a school page with the links to different ways of downloading the podcast.