Multimedia

Video Podcasting FAQs

What is RSS feed?
What is podcasting?
What is video podcasting?
How to subscribe to video podcast?
I subscribed to a podcast. Why can't I view anything?

What is RSS feed

You may notice small RSS feed icons on Websites and blogs. These icons represent content to which you can subscribe using a feed reader (feed aggregator)- a program, which collects news from various Websites and provides it to you in a simple form.

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS has to do with syndicating your information flow - in other words, you can subscribe to the information feeds you want. A typical RSS feed is actually an XML file that contains one or more news items.

What is podcasting?

Podcasting is online audio content that is delivered over the Internet via an RSS feed. A RSS file includes an enclosure, which points to an audio file. Podcast software (often called "podcatcher") reads the RSS feed file and determines from the enclosure where the podcast is located.

What is video podcasting?

Video Podcasting or Vodcasting is the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via RSS enclosures.

How to subscribe to video podcast?

People can easily subscribe to a Podcast and automatically get updates whenever a new episode is posted. The first thing you need is a video podcast subscription software to manage your video podcast subscriptions.

There are three options to choose from:

• Web-based aggregators
  Web-based aggregators are sites that aggregate feeds for reading in a browser.
  
  
• Desktop aggregators
  Desktop aggregator is a software that can be downloaded and installed on a computer. At present iTunes is the only one free option that will play both video and audio.
  
  
• iPod

Note: Your computer must have a sound card in order to listen to audio of a video podcast. You need QuickTime Player or iTunes or any other software that supports mp4 format files to view a video podcast. If you want to make your video podcasts portable, you will need to transfer them from your computer to a portable media device that supports both video and audio in mp4 format.

I subscribed to a podcast. Why can't I view anything?

• Confirm that you have software that lets you subscribe to video podcasts and you can view mp4 format video files on your computer.
• Check that the correct audio/video file was downloaded to your computer. You may need to modify the update settings in your video podcasting software to ensure that this process occurs automatically.
• Check the update times in the description and make sure that a new edition has been posted.
• Help Using iTunes

SAMHSA's Video Podcasting