How to VideoBlog on your Mac

In this, my videoblogging debut, I chose to go over how you can create a videoblog cheaply on your Mac (tomorrow I’ll talk about PC’s). My advance apologies for the questionable sound quality, boring white background and my tired voice. I’d done a bunch of takes by then and it was the end of a long day. Nevertheless, I hope you find this useful. I promise it will get better tomorrow.

I’m adding the transcript below primarily to make this more searchable. Who knows? I may pick up a few new readers who stumbled across Bourland.com while looking for videoblogging solutions for their Mac.

Greetings Bourland.com readers… or should I say… viewers.

I’m Andy Bourland here to tell you that business bloggers would be wise to begin exploring how to integrate videoblogging into your marketing mix NOW.

It’s a great way to more effectively communicate your message to your market, and it’s surprisingly cheap and easy to do so.

Today, I want to review how you can videoblog from your Mac.

Tomorrow, I’ll review what you’ll need to know to videoblog from your PC.

It doesn’t take a megamachine to set up your videoblogging station. I’m using an Apple PowerBook G4 which is no longer on the market.

You can get the equivalent — a MacBook Pro for less than $2000.

Among the many cool things about is is that it has a built in iSight webcam and microphone, and runs both MacOS and Windows XP operating systems flawlessly.

My webcam is an Apple iSight, which you can pick up for $149, or — as I mentioned — comes built in to all new Macs available now.

I also have a lapel microphone, which came free with my PC based videoblogging software, but can be purchased for pretty cheap online.

The software I’m using to do the taping is VideoCue Pro from Para Software. The key feature I like about it is the built in teleprompter.

I’m able to read the text while looking directly into the camera. This really helps if you are as memory challenged as I am.

Once I’m done taping, I’m going to load the video and all the screen shots into Apple iLife 6’s iMovie HD.

It’s fabulous software. Easy to use. Very powerful, and lets you add all sorts of things like the captioning you are seeing as you watch this video.

Once I’m done editing, I can save it as a QuickTime Video and either load it up to my blog as is — though I don’t know how to do that — or I can upload it to Google Video and have them serve it up for me as a Flash video.

When I go from QuickTime to Flash, I take a hit on video quality, but it’s easier and more convenient for me to put a Flash video on my blog page than it is Quicktime.

As soon as that changes, I’ll stick with QuickTime.

So, for less than $500, you can convert your Mac into a Video Workstation capable of producing professional quality videos for your blog.

But you don’t want to go overboard on the production.

Keep it personal.

Just like Robert Scoble did on Microsoft’s Channel 9, you might just want to wander into people’s offices in your company just to see what projects they’re working on.

It’s a great way to keep your customers up to speed on what you are up to as a company.

… and it lets them know the faces and personalities that comprise your company.

That’s not always easy with a written blog.

So check out your alternatives.

See if videoblogging will help you build a more solid relationship with your customers and vendors.

If it doesn’t, ignore this message.

If it does, go for it!

You’ve got nothing to lose.

I’m Andy Bourland from Bourland.com saying thanks for tuning in.

See you tomorrow!