Last year we introduced Micro.blog Studio, a new subscription plan with greatly expanded support for video hosting. You can upload a video to your blog and Micro.blog will prepare it for streaming, so videos up to 20 minutes start playing back right away on your blog.
Today we’re adding two major features:
- YouTube cross-posting. Just like cross-posting from a text blog post to Bluesky or Threads, Micro.blog can now copy videos to YouTube automatically. We also support sending videos to Bluesky and PeerTube.
- Video podcasts. When you upload a video, Micro.blog can extract the audio as an MP3 and attach it to your podcast RSS feed. Podcast players that support HLS podcasting can seamlessly switch between the video and audio versions.
RSS-powered video is not a new idea. I remember watching Merlin Mann’s podcast video interview show way back in 2007. But video files are big and even for MP3s, many podcast players have switched to streaming by default. Video needs to adapt too.
For too long, we’ve let YouTube, TikTok, and other silos dominate video hosting. It was bad enough that so much of the web’s video was concentrated in one place. These silos have now leveraged the popularity of podcasting to control even more video. There are many exclusive audio shows that are not based on RSS feeds. If left unchecked, this will eventually erode the interoperability and radical beauty of podcasting.
The way forward could not be more clear. Podcast clients should support both video and audio based on open standards. And video and podcast hosts like Micro.blog should make it easy to post to your own blog first and send the video out to other social networks to reach existing audiences.
If you’re on Micro.blog Studio, under the “Blog settings” podcast section you’ll see two checkboxes:
“Save podcast audio” is off by default. Enable it to get the new MP3 extraction for video and the updated podcast feeds.
When Hugo publishes your blog, there’s a new parameter .Params.podcast_video that the default RSS template now uses to link the audio and video versions of an episode:
{{ with .Params.podcast_video }}
<podcast:alternateEnclosure type="application/vnd.apple.mpegurl" height="{{ .height }}"{{ with $.Site.LanguageCode }} lang="{{.}}"{{ end }} title="HD Video Stream" rel="alternate">
<podcast:source uri="{{ .url }}" />
</podcast:alternateEnclosure>
{{ end }}
The automatic leveling checkbox is another new feature we added recently. It makes podcast audio sound a little better without having to process the file with an external tool like Auphonic. In Micro.blog Studio, you can even record a new episode directly on the web.
Happy podcasting! Special thanks to everyone who has laid the groundwork for this. This post by Justin Jackson is a good place to start. 🎙️
