A couple of episodes back I made the case for Apple Podcasts’ new HLS video. Then I had to go and actually do it — because the theoretical version of podcasting-about-podcasting is slightly embarrassing, and I hold myself to a better standard than the people spouting expertise about things they’ve never tried.

So I enabled video for B2B Podcasting Insights, my other show, in Captivate. A real show, in a crowded market, with real numbers. This episode is the field report.

In this one:

• What HLS video actually is — and why it isn’t the old MP4-in-the-RSS-enclosure trick that nobody could see
• What the listener experience really looks like (spoiler: “clean” is a Michelin star in podcast infrastructure)
• The hosting catch — it lives or dies on who you host with
• Three workflow changes nobody warns you about, including the upload time and editing for two audiences at once
• What two weeks of data actually showed — told straight, no fake growth-hack victory lap
• The honest verdict: who should switch it on now, and who should wait

LINKS

Got something about your show bugging you at half eleven at night? Go to podmastery.co and click get in touch. Let’s sort it rather than just theorise about it.

Recorded on Boomcaster — free trial + 50% off your first three months (affiliate link): podmastery.co/boomcaster

And go follow B2B Podcasting Insights if you want more on getting the most from a B2B show: podknows.co.uk/b2bpi

Around two months ago, I made the argument both for and against Apple Podcasts HLS

video, which meant that, of course, I then had to go and actually enable it

to test it because there's a version of podcasting about podcasting that stays

permanently theoretical, and I find that version slightly embarrassing.

I mean, some of my peers have no problem with spouting so-called

expertise around stuff that they've never actually tried or achieved, but I

hold myself to a much better standard.

So I did it.

My other podcast, B2B Podcasting Insights, I enabled video in Captivate,

and this is a real commercial show.

I mean, I make that show as a lead generation tool

And I wanted some actual results to present.

So this is my report, and hopefully, my podcasting

Padawan, you will benefit from it

Welcome to Podmastery Podcasting Insights.

It's the podcast for indie creators who want more from their shows.

I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster, and each episode, I'm doing my level

best to help you make progress on your journey towards podmastery.

Now, if you've been following the last few episodes, you know that I've been

working through the case for and against this, not just for you, but also my own

head, to figure out whether or not I want Podnos, my podcasting agency, to start

leveraging this on behalf of clients.

I need the theory of it, what it is, what it isn't.

Well, this episode is gonna be different from the usual ones because

this is an actual field report.

I've done it.

I've enabled video in Apple Podcasts for my show, B2B Podcasting Insights, and that

show's a little bit like this one, but it's specifically targeting people wanting

to get the most out of their B2B podcasts, their branded podcasts, a show they're

doing for the benefit of their business.

And that kind of podcast is in a crowded market.

At last count, I noted around 50 shows that I could class as

a direct competitor to my own.

And I'd heard that shows with HLS video enabled were getting prioritized

in the feeds within Apple Podcasts.

More on that in a second.

But the point is, the show is now a video podcast on Apple Podcasts

via Captivate, and I've now got two weeks of data and an honest verdict

on the whole thing to share with you.

So let's start with the basics

Let's talk about what HLS video actually is.

HLS stands for HTTP Live Streaming.

Three letters that sound less like a streaming protocol and more like

something you might see mentioned in a scary letter from HMRC.

Also, it isn't, despite what your inbox's AI summary might suggest, as a high-level

strategy document that someone needs back by Friday, complete with your comments.

It's actually an Apple-developed streaming standard.

What makes it different from previous attempts at video in podcasting,

and believe me, there have been lots of attempts over the years, as

far back as the mid-2000s when the video-enabled iPod Nano was released.

Anyway, what makes this tech different from the MP4 pass-through standard that

Libsyn have bragged on providing for years is that this tech streams in chunks.

Your video gets broken into small segments and delivered at whatever

quality the listener's connection can handle right at that moment.

So instead of a long delay while the podcast apps download enough of

that MP4 file to begin playing it to you, this protocol means it can

start playing almost immediately.

And with a strong signal, you get high quality.

If you hit patchy 4G through a motorway tunnel, the quality adjusts automatically

with no buffering, no spinning wheel of screw you while you scream about

your phone, your service provider, and the life choices that all led you

to this exact tunnel just as John on your favorite podcast was starting

to explain email open rate success.

The previous method that I just alluded to, as in attaching a

video file directly to an RSS enclosure, was technically possible.

Some hosts offered it Like I say, Libsyn bragged about it.

In fact, when I told Libsyn that I was leaving them to move to Captivate

a few years ago, that was one of the things that they mentioned.

"Oh, you won't be able to publish video anymore." Almost nobody was publishing

video via Libsyn anyway because most podcast apps just stripped the video and

played the audio version anyway, which is kind of like the digital equivalent

of ordering a steak and being handed just the peppercorn sauce and an IU- and an

IOU note where the steak should have been.

HLS works because Apple Podcasts is genuinely built for it.

In fact, they invented it.

It's not a workaround that a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds came up with just

so they could enjoy watching production companies nagging Amy Poehler into

applying some makeup for recordings.

And it's a clean experience.

I know, that's not a word that gets pulses racing.

Nobody is subscribing to a magazine called The Clean Podcast

User Experience Quarterly.

Three issues a year, free tote bag if you renew before March.

But for anything in podcasting infrastructure, clean is pretty much

the equivalent of a Michelin star.

Someone follows B2B Podcasting Insights on Apple Podcast.

The new episode lands.

Wanna watch?

There's a button.

Tap it.

Watch it.

Driving?

Just tap the button again.

Listen to it from exactly the same place it was.

Clean.

There's no, "Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience."

There's no, "This episode contains visuals best appreciated on our website.

Go to www.blah." No QR code that you're scanning one-handed

while doing 60 on the A40.

There's none of that.

The video just sits there.

Offline downloads work too, the video version specifically, and I'm mentioning

that because things in podcasting that are supposed to work and usually

don't has become kind of a meme in the podcasting industry, certainly over

the last six or seven years whenever Apple Podcasts tends to update something

Now, before you make any plans at all, your podcast host needs to support this.

If they don't, there's no clever workaround, there's no plugin,

there's no bloke on Fiverr who can sort it all out for you for $15.

The encoding and delivery isn't happening at creator level,

it's at host level, full stop.

Now, Captivate supports it, and that's what I use for B2B Podcasting Insights.

So do Transistor, Acast, Art19, Omni, Libsyn, and Buzzsprout.

I think I've got most of them there, if not all of them.

Oh, rss.com, I think they now do it as well.

A few of the others appear to be treating it less as a technical roadmap

item and more for a long-running philosophical debate about the

nature of video itself in podcasting.

Now, look, I get it.

It can be a bit annoying when new stuff happens in podcasting that gives

us all an excuse to go, "I've been around in podcasting since before

it was called podcasting, and if it doesn't have an RSS feed, it's not a

podcast, and that includes video." But look, it does have an RSS feed now.

So I look forward to hearing their conclusions on why they're still

not doing it, possibly in time for the next Gen Alpha deciding

to reinvent what podcasting is.

Maybe they'll invent astral projection podcasting.

Who knows?

Anyway, the day Apple properly announced this, the usual fleet of podcasting

commentators on LinkedIn had already formed their strong opinions and

published thoughtful 10-page carousels, everyone with a different font, in

roughly the time it took the rest of us to finish reading Apple's press release.

And a fair number of those carousels didn't even seem to

realize that the feature was dependent on who you host with.

So we've learned to take these people's opinions with a massive pinch of salt,

and that's why I'm bringing you here some real insight from a real podcast

person, me, who's in the trenches doing it

So let's talk about the workflow.

Yes, it's changed.

Not massively.

Don't buy into the drama of, oh, it's gonna take 10 times longer than

it used to to make podcasts now.

Not massive changes like that, but it has changed, and how much that matters to you

depends entirely on what your show is.

Now look, B2B Podcasting Insights, my show that I have now enabled

video for in Captivate, it's a monologue narrative show.

I record it in BoomCastr.

The link to grab that, by the way, if you want to, I highly recommend

the tool, is podmastery.co/boomcastr.

And if you click that, you'll get a free trial and 50% off your first three months.

Yes, it's an affiliate link, and yes, I do get a very tiny

benefit if you sign up through it.

I'm telling you that now upfront, past- partly because that's the right thing

to do and partly because I've spent many years mocking people who bury that

kind of detail in paragraph four of a blog post that nobody was ever reading.

Glass houses, you see?

I'm fully aware.

Right.

The actual workflow change then.

Uploading the video file to Captivate instead of just the audio, which does

Right, the actual workflow change then.

Uploading the video file to Captivate instead of just the audio does add

way more time to the upload procedure.

I used to see that little bar whiz by in less than two minutes

when I was just doing audio.

Now the upload is closer to 20.

In fact, I've had to completely rethink how I publish my episodes on that show.

You need to make allowances for that time, especially if you

tend to upload the content on the same day that you publish it.

You're gonna need to factor that in.

Now, three things become real considerations with this workflow.

One, you need to care even slightly how the video looks.

And I wanna be precise here because there's a version of this advice that

ends up with you whacking 400 quid on a camera, buying a ring light, a

backdrop, and bringing so much main character energy that you didn't

have before and don't strictly need now, you've forgotten your own name.

What I actually mean is camera at eye level, light in front of you

rather than behind you so you're not pr- presenting the 10 o'clock

news from inside a wardrobe.

If you've done a webinar in the past four years, you're basically there already.

You just might need some tweaks.

Two, the edit has to work for two audiences at once.

So a guest points at something on screen and says, "Like this one

right here." That's great in video, but it's absolutely cack in audio.

You don't wanna be responsible for someone doing 70 miles an hour driving past

Birmingham swearing at you through their car speaker because you just told them

to look at something that they cannot see, and then realizing they missed

their turn because they were so incensed.

You either catch it in the edit or you train yourself during the chat

to describe things out loud even when you've got a visual right there.

That's a radio instinct that us lot in broadcasting got trained for in the early

days of studio webcams and internet radio simulcasts with FM and things like that.

And so it's become automatic.

But for you, it might require a bit of conscious thought.

Either way, it's not optional if you wanna keep both audiences.

There's a trust factor there.

Three, file sizes.

Like I say, video is enormous next to audio, so

That's pretty obvious until the moment that you're watching a

two-and-a-half gigabyte file inch across a progress bar on a connection

that your provider calls super fast.

But even more than that, you might be quickly kissing goodbye to storage

space on your hard drive if you commit to doing this regularly and

you haven't mastered folder control

It might well be worth you starting to spark up a relationship with your

favorite AI tool to start looking at how to manage your folders with you.

Okay, so here's the bit that we're all wanting to know, right?

What the metrics have actually showed, the impact on show growth.

Let me manage your expectations here.

My downloads did not spike, with caveats.

Now go on, sit with that one for a moment because I had to No, the downloads did

not spike, and I'm telling you that straight rather than avoiding the topic

entirely because podcasting already has more than enough people who've changed

one setting, watched a number wobble slightly, and announced they've cracked

some growth code with the confidence of a man who's just invented fire.

I'm not gonna do that to you.

There's no course I'm selling, none of that stuff.

But here's the bit that actually matters though.

My downloads shouldn't have spiked, and there's a good reason for that.

First off, HLS video isn't a discovery feature.

It doesn't introduce B2B Podcasting Insights to a single human

being who wasn't already looking for it or already aware of it.

The video capability is not its own algorithm.

There's no specific recommended for you just for people who have

enabled it in Apple Podcasts.

It's also worth me noting that Apple Podcasts isn't even the platform

that most listeners to that show have been listening to it in, and that was

something I was actually curious about.

Would adding a feature that Apple Podcasts really wants to push lead

to any meaningful push towards new listeners that might enjoy the show?

And here's the answer.

Perhaps.

I mean, the most recent two episodes which do feature video versions, and

indeed one of which talks about adding video to podcasts those did indeed see

Apple Podcasts overtake Player FM as the most popular app for listening in.

Now, for full transparency, the popularity of the show in Player FM was helped by

some paid targeting within that app a few months ago, and the conversion of that

campaign was high, so we've kept around 45% of that audience that we paid for.

But Apple Podcasts has now beaten that as the number one listening platform

recently, as in coincidentally with this change across all the episodes,

not just the ones with video enabled.

And that suggests some compound growth occurred across my back catalog thanks

to some kind of strange algorithmic surfacing that's going on somewhere.

The show's definitely not being promoted in any obvious way within

the app, but I can't ignore this growth has come from somewhere.

This is something I need to keep an eye on and revisit once I have more data.

My suspicion is that when people are listening to podcasts about

podcasting that have a video track enabled within them via HLS, maybe

my show is being recommended as you might also like kind of content.

Possibly.

Again, I need more data.

But beyond all this, what enabling video does do, in fact, the entire job that it

does, is make the experience better for people who already showed up to your feed.

So if you're enabling this expecting your numbers to do something

dramatic, they may well not, but you may see some slight lift.

I'd rather tell you that now in a slightly disappointing tone of voice than have

you find out in three months and write an angry post about how HLS just doesn't

work, when really it works exactly as advertised, and the advertising was

just more subtle than you'd hoped after seeing 20 LinkedIn posts from so-called

podcasting experts selling it on the growth opportunities, mostly because

they don't have the first idea about anything in podcasting, and therefore

they do what any clueless idiot does, they monetize it with an expertise-based course

with no expertise in it, and a made-up algorithm and formula, the magic pill.

But of course, what do we always say about numbers?

Well, download numbers are only ever a part of the story.

It's all about the plays, really.

And in Apple Podcasts Connect, the analytics are unclear despite promises

to the contrary that were included in the whole marketing bumpf that

Apple threw out there at us when they tried to get us excited about this.

They told us we'd be able to see exactly where people were listening and watching.

No, we can't.

I can see the episodes have been engaged with, but I can't see

anything that tells me those plays were in video or audio only.

That might just be my Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard.

That could be a glitch.

Maybe others are seeing something different.

I don't know.

But I can tell you this, I did not see that data.

So if you are seeing that data in your own Apple Podcasts Connect, please do

reach out to me, podmastery.co/getintouch, and I'll be grateful to hear from you

That's podmastery.co/get-in-touch

In terms of the average consumption… In terms of the average

consumption, yeah, that held steady.

It may be nudged up slightly.

I mean, I'm not building a TED Talk out of two weeks of data, but nothing got worse.

So again, this is something that we'll need to revisit, and this is

probably worth saying, not a single complaint from the audio-only audience

moaning about the video being added.

And to be fair, the video is mostly AI-generated because nobody wants to look

at me yapping my gams for 20 minutes.

But I had heard other podcasters, a shout-out to Danny Brown, who does

the, uh, what's the name of the show?

But shout out to Danny Brown who does The Artifacts Show and did enable

video on that show until he got some criticism from people saying, "Ugh,

AI slop." That has been a bit of a running theme with some podcasters,

listeners complaining about now having the video making it a bit jarring.

But then maybe these people have more than the 300 or so regular

Apple Podcast listeners that I have.

I certainly didn't experience that.

Maybe it's early days

So should you do it?

Here's an honest verdict.

If your show is audio only, if it's a hobby or something you make

no money from, if it's a scripted monologue with no guests and nothing

particularly visually striking happening in the recordings themselves, wait.

Genuinely, the overhead's not enormous, but it's not zero,

and there's no real listener benefit for your format right now.

You'd be doing more production and admin for the sake of production and

admin, and nobody needs more production and admin in their life, do we?

If you're already recording video of your conversations, and that's

currently all going on YouTube and nowhere else, when you finish

listening, go look at this properly.

The video already exists.

You're still-- You're actually making the effort into it.

It's sitting on a hard drive somewhere, so uploading it to your host instead

of just the audio is a small extra step for maybe an improvement, maybe a

growth opportunity, if indeed there is some organic growth available for you.

If you're running a focused B2B show and your audience genuinely lives in

Apple Podcasts, which for a lot of probably niche professional shows, it

does, then this might be worth doing.

Also, by the way, go follow B2B Podcasting Insights because that show's

even more for you than this one is.

But anyway, the bottom line is you're not trying to find

these people with the video.

You already found them.

This is not about making them work harder than they need to

But the bottom line is you're not trying to find these people with

the video, you already found them.

This is more about what you're offering them in terms of

their consumer experience.

I'm Neal Veglio.

If you wanna talk through your video strategy or genuinely anything else

about your show that's generally keeping you awake at half past 11 at night,

go to podmastery.co/get-in-touch,

and let's actually sort out your problems rather than just theorizing about them.

Until next time, good luck with your continuing journey

towards attaining pod mastery

I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster.

If you wanna talk through anything to do with your show that's generally bothering

you at nighttime, go to podmastery.co and then click the link for Need Help

There you can book yourself on a 60-minute coaching call with me,

yours truly, and we'll help you get over any slopes that you need to.

Until next time, good luck with your continuing journey

towards attaining podmastery