I wanted to take a few moments to lay out the steps for publishing a video podcast for free using the very cool Google Video service. There are several free video hosting services out there, but Google is the only one that provides features like multi format conversion and a flash player that will work in almost any browser.

The steps to use Google Video to create a podcast are not patently obvious, but all the tools are there and I believe that I’ve figured it out. In fact, if you head over to http://www.podcastnyc.net/video then you can see it in action.

This little tutorial does not address the actual creation and editing of the video. My assumption is that you’ve got a piece of video ready for the web.

Step 1: Sign Up for Google Video. Head over to https://upload.video.google.com and apply for an account if you don’t already have one.

Step 2: Google Video Uploader. Download and install the Google Video Uploader on your computer.

Step 3: Upload your media. Take your finished media and upload using the Google Video uploader. It’s important to note that I’ve had the best success with uploading WMV files. I’ve gotten errors when trying to upload most QuickTime files but you might get better results than me.

Step 4: Edit video information. Once upload is successful you need to edit the video information before it can move to the next step in the process. Go to https://upload.video.google.com, login and proceed to fill in the details of the video. There are two key

There are two key fields in the details that will allow you to use Google for a video podcast. The first is the video title and the second is the production company name. Make sure that each video title contains common elements that can be accessed in a search. Check this search of Brother Love Notes for an example. The same thing goes for the production company name. Make this field as unique as possible as in Far Far Away Entertainment, Inc.

When filling out the video information, there are advanced options that are selected by default. No need to change these as you want the video to be free, downloadable and shareable.

Step 5: Wait for verification. Submit and wait for verification. Once you’ve entered the video information there is a verification period that can take from 1 to 3 days. The only way to know if the video is live is to periodically check your dashboard at Google Video. This is important time to factor in when you plan on publishing for your podcast.

Step 6: Create your RSS feed. Google Video supports RSS but doesn’t necessarily make it easy. RSS is supported via search results. This blog post explains how it works. Start off by doing a search at http://video.google.com using the unique video or production company name in quotes. For example, a search for “Flow Video” would yield the following url: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Flow+Video%22.

Now we turn these results into an RSS feed by adding &num=20&output=rss to the end of the string resulting in http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Flow+Video%22&num=20&output=rss. This url will return RSS for the last 20 items captured for this search. Adjust the num=20 element to change the number of items present in the feed.

There’s one issue with this feed that you may want to correct prior to taking the next step. The r results aren’t sorted by date. Most podcasters want their newest post to show up first. You can correct this by adding a sort order element of &so=1 to the string. So your corrected feed would look like this: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Flow+Video%22&so=1&num=20&output=rss. Now you’ve got results sorted by date.

Step 6: Make it iTunes compliant. What good is a video podcast if you can’t list it with iTunes? I recommend that you run any podcast RSS feed through FeedBurner to add the necessary iTunes podcasting elements.

If you haven’t used FeedBurner before just head over to their site, enter your Google Video RSS like, click the “I’m A Podcaster” checkbox and click the Next button. Check Feedburner’s help on Podcasting for more info on getting this set up.

If you’ve done everything right your resulting feed should look something like this. Look for the “Play Now” link associated with each post. This means that there is a podcast enclosure that iTunes, Yahoo Podcasts! and other podcatchers can pick up on.

Step 7: Rinse and repeat. You’re pretty well set to go at this point and you should only need to repeat steps 3 through 5 for further posts.

There are a few pros and cons to this approach that you should consider.

On the Pro side: You get free bandwidth, statistics, a shareable flash player and multi format support. So if you upload a Windows Media file (or non iPod compliant QuickTime file), Google does the conversion to support the Video iPod format.

On the Con side: This approach only yields an RSS feed but not a blog with commenting support. Your RSS output is dependent on a unique name to search on. So choose your name wisely. Some folks would rather not wait a couple of days for their video to be ready in the RSS feed.

There are other options for free video hosting which you may want to consider. Two popular sites are:

YouTube - Free hosting, flash player, sharing and statistics. Supports RSS but uses .SWF files for enclosures that aren’t iPod video compliant.
Blip.tv - Free hosting with stats. Podcast RSS feeds supported but only ten items allowed in each feed.
OurMedia - Free hosting and very basic stats. Podcast RSS feed supported. No embeddable sharing. Uploading ability and download speed very inconsistent.

There are other sites that provide similar functions and free hosting including MySpace and YouAre.tv. Some say they are multiplying like rabbits so you might be able to find another one that works well for you.

Tags: Google Video, Video Podcasting, Video Blogging, Blip.tv, YouTube