Robb Montgomery, CEO of a public charity that promotes journalism education called Visual Editors, said in an email interview that web video consumption overall is a booming phenomenon but maintains that we are still at the beginning of an emerging art form and story form with video blogging and it may be too early to generalize about long-term effects.

It may seem surprising that video blogging hasn’t take off considering how cheap the equipment has become and how easy it is to shoot, edit and post video online. According to Adam Singer’s Future Buzz blog, some reasons it hasn’t include: it’s time consuming to produce compelling video, video is not searchable, and pros still have an advantage.

But the demand is there. In August, more than 161 million viewers watched an average of 157 videos per viewer, according to data from the comScore Video Metrix service. A whopping 81.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video and the average online video viewer saw 9.7 hours of video in August.

Video viewing doesn’t show signs of slowing, but what about video blogging?

Web Video Puts People on Equal Footing

Video on the Internet does two things — it puts people on equal footing versus the top-down communication of broadcast media and it allows for direct talkback from the audience.

Michael Rosenblum, CEO of Rosenblumtv, said in an email interview, that the only reason people used to differentiate between average person and journalist is that access to the equipment and the ability to publish was just too complicated and too expensive. He said that went away with the web, which gave anyone the ability to write or publish whatever they wanted.

“Now that freedom comes to video — as the cost of cameras goes to next to nothing and the web carries video with the same fluidity that it carries text,” he said. “What we are looking at here is the true democratization of video — a real ‘free press.’ This, I think, is a very positive thing.

“The move to video blogging, just getting started, is to my mind the same as the move to writing books post-Gutenberg. It took the printing press to liberate writing from the few literate monks; now the web will liberate video from the few ‘video literate’ TV types,” said Rosenblum, who just launched an online video training site called the New York Video School.

What Makes a Good Video Blog

With lower costs for equipment and software, anyone with a video camera phone could become a video blogger. Technical barriers to video production are getting lower, but the big question is, what makes a good video blog?

Ryanne Hodson, a video blogger, editor, and trainer who, with co-founder Michael Verdi, launched Freevlog.org in 2005, said the number one tip for video bloggers is to be passionate and to cover topics they care about. She and Verdi, along with Diane Weynand and Shirley Craig, wrote the book Secrets of Videoblogging. “Be excited about something and go out and capture it,” she said. “If you have something to say and you want to share it, you have a venue.”

Montgomery said that most web video needs to get to the point right away. “Hit them with your best sound bite and start your story arc there to pull them in. People make a go or no-go decision usually within the first 10 seconds. Once you have them, standardizing on story length becomes less important. The key is to know how to keep the story moving at a good pace,” he said.

The length of video clips can vary depending on the style of the video created, but always keep your audience in mind.

“We live in a world of rather short attention spans. We find that two minutes or so is the ’sweet spot’. The whole notion of hours is kind of an abstraction. Think of music. Most songs are three minutes long and that works great, and delivers a great story and experience for the listener,” Rosenblum said.

Josh Leo, who has been video blogging since 2005 and has four vlogs, said good videos are a mixture of the basics of good production: editing, good, clear shots, and good lighting. Beyond that, he adds, it’s an incorporation of one’s personality. “You can create a copycat video, but you’re contributing to the noise,” he said. “It’s not about the quantity, but the quality.”

Leo tries to post a video every other week. He said he learned to improve his videos through trial and error — posting, watching them, and posting again. “The important thing is to post something and learn as you go,” Leo said.

Creating a Video Blog

Montgomery said choosing a video camera depends upon your beat, style, audience and frequency of posting. “I have seen people be effective with a mobile cam or laptop camera. At the other end of the spectrum are solo video journalists who have the chance to make high-quality stories from the field with small cameras like the Sony A1U and about an equal dollar investment in microphones and Final Cut,” he said.

The software Montgomery recommends is a mixture of low-cost and professional applications: Final Cut Studio, GarageBand, iPhoto, Fission, and Audio Hijack Pro for editing and audio.

Leo said that during his first three years of video blogging, he used a Sony Handycam for shooting and iMovie for editing. He now uses Final Cut Pro, an HD camcorder, and an iMac.

Hodson said she likes the Flip cam and Sanyo’s Xacti HD cams. She said Mac users can use iMovie and PC users can use Windows Movie Maker, and a step up from those are Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Elements.

Rosenblum said Flip cams and the JVC HM100u are great, and noted that shooting in HD is important for certain types of video blogs. “HD is necessary if you want to sell the content for broadcast, and the market for that is expanding all the time. So if you are going to buy a camera, I strongly suggest HDV,” Rosenblum said. He said he loves Final Cut Pro because it’s simple and accessible, and users can start editing from the first moment.

But it’s not just about the video — audio also matters, according to Montgomery. “It is far wiser to invest in microphones and recorders that capture high-definition sound than it is to go for a camera with high-definition pictures and a small lens,” he said.

In the end, though, video blogging is exploding because the barriers to entry are so low. “The bottom line is, if you want to get into video blogging it is remarkably simple and very, very inexpensive,” Rosenblum said.

Distributing a Video Blog

Hodson posts her videos on YouTube, Blip.tv, Archive.org and embeds clips on her blog. She also likes using Flickr for video and photos because she can email them from her iPhone 3Gs, then Flickr sends a link out to Twitter. But, she stresses, no matter where you post your videos, you should add your video clips on your own web site or blog as well.

Rosenblum said he loves YouTube because it is simple and so easy to embed, and that quality of Vimeo and Blip.tv is great and fast, while Montgomery said he uses Vimeo for its quality and YouTube for its search.

“It really helps if you engage with your audience in social media. I got 9,000 YouTube views in one day for my ‘Obama in Cairo’ report (second only to Al Jazeera) because I used Twitter, keywords and other social media to promote the publication at the right moment and in the right social space,” he said.

Leo posts his clips to Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook and his blog sites. He points out that people are loyal to their video providers, so uploading to multiple sites is smart. “It’s just giving people the opportunity to choose how they want to view your video,” he said. “Not everyone uses an RSS feed. Find who your audience is and post it to where they are.”

Video Blogging Tips from Robb Montgomery:

- Only avoid using a tripod when it is impractical

- Be yourself

- Avoid trying to copy TV news formulas

- Film exciting and visually interesting B-roll

- Audio matters for brand identity

More social media resources from Mashable:

- The Journalist’s Guide to YouTube
- The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter
- The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook
- 12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive
- How Social Media is Radically Changing the Newsroom

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jorgelum

Tags: video, video blog, video blogging, vlog

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