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Dream of starting a podcast but feel overwhelmed by the tech, self-doubt, or fear that no one will listen? Podcasting with Hiwi G helps aspiring podcasters gain the clarity and confidence they need to create shows that are as unique as they are, without the unnecessary confusion, overthinking, or perfectionism.
How to Start a Video Podcast in 2026 (Full Tutorial)
00:00:00.040 — 00:20:18.860
Over the past year and a half of making YouTube videos, I have said one thing very consistently and quite controversially about starting a podcast, and that is that you should probably start an audio only podcast when you're first starting. If you have no experience with the medium. Even though I know that you are probably listening or watching this on YouTube.
And here's the thing. I still stand by that. I think starting a video podcast for a lot of people just has so many moving parts that it's overwhelming. But if you are gonna start a video podcast, it has never been as easy as it is at this particular moment in time. In the good year of 2026, and today, I'm gonna give you a step by step tutorial on how to create a video podcast in 2026.
Now, this is going to be useful for you. Whether you have never created a podcast at all, or if you've created an audio only podcast and now you're ready to upgrade to video. So we'll be covering the kind of gear that you need, how to record in front of the camera without looking and feeling super awkward. And we're going to talk about the post-production workflow, which is what has become significantly easier to do in 2026 than ever before.
Now, today's video is sponsored by transistor, and they play a big part in why video production has become super easy for anyone that wants to get started with it. But we'll talk about that a bit later. And if you're new here, welcome. I've been producing podcast for the past decade, and here are a list of the shows that I have made.
Two of the ones you might know are. Where should we begin? With a stare, Paul? Or This is dating, which is listed as one of time magazine's best podcasts of 2022. I also run the Emerging Voices Accelerator, which is a program for people who have something meaningful to say but feel really stuck either with the tech, with their idea, or just not knowing how to begin and actually consistently create their show.
If that sounds like you, you're welcome to apply to the Emerging Voices Accelerator and maybe we will work together. Now, before we get into the gear and the setup and all of that, we need to be very clear about what exactly you're making and who it's for. I say this all the time, and if you watch many of these videos, please don't be mad at me.
It's because it really is the foundation of making a very good show. So if you're still not clear on that, we'll put a link to a video where I deep dive into how to get clear on all of that. Please watch that after you've watched this video. Because the gear, the tech, all of that is like fun to do. But it's actually the easy part.
Knowing what you're making is the most important. And if I'm being honest, the hardest part of creating a podcast that you're actually super proud of. Okay, so now let's get into your setup. The most important thing for you to remember is if you've done any research on what gear to buy and how to start a video podcast, it's very easy to feel like, oh my God, I need to spend like seven grand setting up all of these tools to feel like I'm making a serious podcast.
I'm here to tell you you really only need three things. Okay, all of the other stuff is a nice to have. It's not a need to have. Your first option is to use your iPhone. Now, if you have an iPhone 14 or newer, it records in 4K, which means it's actually like better than a lot of the webcams that are on the market.
And it's a lot less work for you to set it up as a webcam, or even to record directly into your camera if you're doing a solo episode or a solo podcast. Okay. And you can use your phone in one of two ways. First, you can use it as a webcam, so you can use the Continuity Camera feature on a mac to be able to use your phone as a webcam, you would essentially just need to buy a $15 like mount on your laptop so that your you could look directly into your phone and that would be your camera.
Or you could just get a tripod and record directly into your camera. If you are making, say, a solo podcast. Okay, so those are genuinely good options. In fact, a friend and I were going to start a podcast a few years ago, and both of us just tested the whole concept on our iPhones, and it was really high quality.
Your second option is to invest in a camera. Now I am using the DJI Osmo Pocket three, so that is what you see me doing all of this with. I don't have face tracking enabled, but that's something that it does. You can also record in 4K on this camera, and it's just so small and compact. Like this is by far my favorite camera that I have ever used, and anything above this would just feel too clunky and like too much for me and my lifestyle, so that is a genuinely great option.
You can start with just the camera, which is about $600, and then if you get the creator combo, which is what I have, it includes the mic and the stand which it's standing on. All of that together is closer to $800. I'll look up the exact prices and put them on the screen for you. Okay, this is a brilliant camera.
If you were like, I think I really want to do this, but I want to use my camera for other things as well. Now, the other option, if you want a traditional camera, which I don't have experience using, but I've seen a lot of creators recommend, this is the Sony ZV ten and it's around $800, including the kit lens and similar to the DJI Osmo Pocket three, it has face recognition and it's really built for creators.
So both of these are cameras that you can connect to your computer if you're going to be doing virtual interviews, or you could just speak directly to those cameras in the way that I'm doing right now. As you're recording for your podcast. In terms of microphones, a solid microphone that costs you anywhere from like 100 to $150 is really all you need to get started.
My favorites are the Blue Yeti nano or the Audio-Technica at 2020. If they don't have the At 2020, the ATR 2100 is also very good. These are mics that I have used personally and have loved. I kind of love the Audio-Technica more than the Blue Yeti Nano, but I will say both of them do an outstanding job. They're also just small compact.
They plug directly into your laptop and make your life as a creator way easier. But if you're watching this and you're like, baby, I got money to spend on this podcast, I would highly recommend what I'm using right now, which is the Shure and V7 plus. The brilliance of this camera is that you can plug it directly into your computer, which is what I'm doing right now.
Or when you're ready to upgrade, you can use an XLR cable, connect it to an audio interface, and then connect that to your laptop, which, if you're just beginning, you really don't need to do all that. But it's true that when you use an audio interface, your audio quality goes up significantly. This costs around $300, so if you have the money to spend.
Who am I to tell you not to spend it? Okay. The only thing I will say here is you just have to have a real mic. You can't use your AirPods. You can't, like, figure out if you can maybe just use your computer camera. Because people, whether you're making video or not, people will forgive a lot of things. They will not forgive bad audio.
They'll just turn away from it and start listening or watching something else. So just get a real microphone. Okay. And this brings us to our third thing, which is lighting. Now the free version of good lighting is just to sit in front of a window or diagonally in front of a window, which is exactly what I did in like 40 of my first videos.
And I only moved. I only changed that setup because my office flooded. So I had to get out of that space. And now I'm using an Elgato light which sits diagonally in front of me. I will say, like, my current setup is not what you should replicate, because this is a temporary office that I'm using because my office got flooded like the mistakes I'm making, for example, or that you can see a reflection of my light.
I don't know if you ever noticed that, but if you did like this is not the ideal setup. And if you want to go from okay, I don't need to do the free version, or I don't have a place where I can record in front of a window, then you could go up just a tad and get a ring light from somewhere like Amazon or Best Buy. It's gonna just improve the quality of your video significantly.
The main thing to remember is that the light should always be in front of you and not behind you, whether it's a window or any sort of other light. And that's because it's going to create a silhouette of you. If the light is behind you and we can't see you clearly, you need to be well lit up. So you need to be in front of the light.
That's the main thing for you to remember here. So once you have your camera and your mic and your lighting, you probably have a little dopamine running in your system. You're gonna feel like I'm really doing something and I'm not mad at that. But that is not the part that trips most people up. Most people stop because they just can't figure out how to not sound like a robot when they're recording in front of the $800 camera that they just bought.
Okay, so let's get into that. All right. So if you've ever recorded yourself on camera, I would be willing to bet that you felt a bit awkward, maybe a bit silly recording and speaking to an inanimate object and trying to feel normal doing it. And that is perfectly normal. A lot of people will watch themselves back and be highly critical because they just feel really uncomfortable watching themselves.
And all of that is extremely normal, even for me. Sometimes I watch videos of myself and I'm like, what was I thinking? But that is all part of the game. The truth is that you really just need three things to make sure that your videos come across as professional from the very beginning. The first thing is framing, and I don't literally mean like technically how you frame yourself, which just be in the center.
Like it's not more complicated than that. I actually mean, on a more psychological level, which part of yourself is it that you are going to be sharing with your audience? Like how is it that you want to come across to your listeners? Okay, now there are a few things you can do to manage this from a technical perspective.
If you want to share the part of you that is relatable, that is honest, that is genuinely just sharing who you are in as authentic of a way as possible, then you want to make sure you are eye level with your camera. Okay, that is what's happening right now. If I were if I had my camera down here, that's a very different power dynamic.
And if my camera was up here and I was speaking to it, I have a very different relationship with you than if it is right here. So that is quite a simple and important thing that you can do from the very beginning. Now, the other part is that you want to leave a couple of feet of space between where you are and where the end of your room is.
Okay, so you don't want to be directly against a wall because it can feel a bit claustrophobic for the person watching you. Now, even if you get all of these things right, the part that's going to be hardest is not feeling awkward or silly when you're recording. And I have two things that I've done for a very long time that really helped me with this.
The first is that I have a very clear sense of who I'm speaking to, so I know who my ideal listener is and that this person is extremely smart, extremely capable, and that they really struggle with perfectionism, with procrastination. And so they need things as simple as possible. And if I feel genuinely like connected to that person, and there's a real person that I know that fits this description.
So I think of her when I am recording all of my videos. The other part, and this is something I learned when I was just getting into public speaking, is to remember that the people who are taking the time to actually watch your content want to see you win. Like, these are people who are rooting for you. If someone doesn't care about what it is that you're creating, the algorithm won't feed it to them, or they've swiped away and are watching something else.
So just remembering that you showing up and trying your best is more than enough because this person is rooting for you, will calm you down significantly so that you can speak to the camera like you would speak to a friend. And for a lot of people, it's just to remember that, like your inner critic is going to be judging what you see in the camera way more than the person who's watching it.
So remember the people who love you, your best friend, your mom, whatever that person's opinion is as important as the inner critic inside you who is being super judgmental. I hope that makes sense. So like, balance your perspective and remember that you're probably being more harsh on yourself than you need to be.
So chill out. And if you're using the DJI Osmo, you can just look directly at the screen and it comes off like you are completely naturally having a conversation with someone. Two more really important things here are. If you want to come across as natural, please do not read your script word for word right now.
I'm speaking to you right here, but I will periodically glance up at my script and we'll cut the parts out where I'm glancing at my script. All you'll see is that I'm speaking to you directly. So if you need to do bullet points instead of word for word scripts, that is a great idea, because we never want to feel like you're just reading your script.
We want to feel like you're connecting with us when we're watching your video. The second part is to just not rush. I have to remind myself of this all the time. Sometimes I'll record and I'll notice that I'm just going a mile a minute and I'm speaking really fast, and I have to remember that that's not how I talk to a friend.
I talked to a friend like this and we have plenty of time together, and I know the internet will make you feel like if you're not speaking fast enough, they'll watch it on to X speed. Let them let them watch it on to speed. But for me to come across as my most natural self, I need to speak at a pace that is normal to me.
And also if I say um, or I say like or I say uh, that's not a criminal act, baby. Like, that's okay. That's a normal part of speaking. And if you say it too many times, you can cut it out. You don't want to say phrases like, that's so interesting over and over again, which I used to say all the time in my interviews.
And then you'll learn to stop saying that. So just be a little gentle on yourself. The second thing to focus on is clean audio. Now we've talked about microphones, but you need a couple more things to make sure that your audio is come across as very clean. So the first thing is, if you are recording virtual interviews or even solo episodes, you want to record on platforms like Riverside or Descript to make sure you're getting the highest quality audio, and you want to make sure that it's actually your mic that's being picked up and not your computer audio.
Okay, this is usually a step that people skip, and then they're really frustrated by the outcome. Also, both of these platforms can record backup versions of each of your files so your and your guests files so that you both have some sort of guarantee in case there's an issue with the audio. And the other thing on audio quality is that you want to make sure you're in a space that has as many soft surfaces as possible.
So you want to record on a couch instead of a hard chair. You have blankets and curtains and rugs in your space in order to help absorb the sound. I am actually recording in a very not ideal space, but we got to do what we got to do until I get back into my studio right now, this is a temporary space. But baby, we're making it work.
If you do those things, you will significantly upgrade your audio quality and just remove any of the echoey sounds that can show up. If you're recording in a space that has lots of hard surfaces, kind of like I'm in right now. And the third thing is a 62nd pre-recording checklist. Okay, so I'm gonna read this off to you.
Make sure that you have each of these checked off before your next recording. First, we want you to check your audio level. So when you are speaking into your mic on Riverside Descript, wherever do you see green? When you are speaking? If so, great! Then you're at the right distance from your mic. If you're seeing yellow or red, that means you are too close to your mic or you're too loud.
You want to change one of those things. Second, you want to check your framing is your face in the upper third of your screen. Third is your camera and your laptop fully plugged in. That's super important. And finally, have you actually hit record? And I'm saying this from experience and from working with so many people who thought they were recording an interview and remembered halfway through that they never hit the record button.
So don't be that guy. Make sure you have this checklist ready before your next recording. Okay, so now you have your gear. You have your episode recorded, your lighting is good, your framing is wonderful, and you're feeling good. Let's get into the post-production process before you hit publish. You'll want to edit your episode more than likely, so you can do that on Riverside or on descript.
Whichever platform you use to record, you should probably use that platform to edit your podcast as well. And editing has never been easier because we have AI based tools that transcribe our recordings for us. So you can just edit the transcription and it allows you to edit the video for you. The one thing I'll say is don't over edit because it can feel really jarring for the person who's watching it.
And if you have funds to invest in an editor who can actually make the edits for you, that's also a brilliant idea. And once you've edited, we have distribution. And this is where transistors completely changed the game. Until recently, if you were making a video podcast, you would take the audio part of your podcast.
So you would just pull out the audio and you would put it into your podcast hosting platform, and that would get distributed to Apple and Spotify and all these different places. And then if you had a video version of your podcast, you had to upload that individually to Spotify, to YouTube in order for it to work.
But now podcast hosting platforms like transistor make it so easy because you can just upload your video to transistor and then it'll distribute it everywhere, including YouTube, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you have video podcasting, you can distribute it directly from transistor. And then for any platform that is a listening only platform, like podcasts, for example, they will only get the audio version of your podcast.
Brilliant. Okay, like that just cuts out your time significantly. Actually, for the first year and some change of making these videos, I have not uploaded them to podcasting platforms because I just didn't have the time or energy to individually upload these two platforms like Spotify for creators where even when Apple Podcasts allowed for video, it was going to be too much work for me to have to do this individually for every platform.
But now, thanks to transistor, everything that we do here on YouTube exists on every other platform. In fact, transistor is one of Apple Podcasts approved partners for video streaming. So basically, Apple Podcasts works a bit differently than other video podcasting platforms. You can stream your podcast the same way you would stream a show on Netflix, and transistor has the capacity to do that.
So Apple has approved them as a partner. All right. So this is what it looks like I'm in my dashboard for transistor. I'm going to go into my podcast. And I just started uploading this just a few days ago. So it's really interesting. I haven't even announced this. So who are these 25 people will find out. So let's say I'm preparing this week's episode.
I would just come here and I would upload a new podcast episode. All right. So I am going to upload, let's say this video on how to actually make money from your podcast. One thing I'll say is that you need your video to be in this format in order for the video to be uploaded successfully, so make sure you change your video format to this.
You can just use a tool like handbrake in order to do that. Okay, so now we are
00:20:19.920 — 00:27:07.210
Here. I'm gonna title it the same thing I know it's going to be. Can you actually make money from a podcast? And I'll. I'll say my name is Hewitt and I'll put in some of my keywords. So for me it's podcasting podcast how to emerging voices entrepreneurship creator economy. These are the words that I think people will probably be searching for.
So we'll call this episode four. If I have a specific piece of artwork for this episode, then I can upload it here. I personally do not. And then in terms of a show description, because this was already on YouTube, I can actually just pull all of that and pull it in here. So I've pulled in my show description here.
I will also add in the application to the accelerator, because that is something that I mention in the video or in the podcast. And then we also have a ten step guide to launching the podcast, which we will include a link to that as well. If we have a YouTube video then already up, then we can link to that video right here.
I'm going to add chapters right here because I have that already on YouTube. If you have chapter markers in your edit, you can just say use the chapter markers embedded in the audio file if you've done that. Okay. And I don't want to publish it right now, I want to schedule it. And let's say my publish date is going to be every Thursday at 10 a.m..
Perfect. I'm going to save and schedule for publishing. Now, this is just a demo, so I'm actually just gonna save for now. And it's processing the audio. Eventually you'll see that it's encoding the video and then it's going to ask me again, are you happy with everything that we have here? You can paste your transcript right here and then say create transcript and let that be that okay.
Or you can just upload a text file of your transcript, which is quite easy to do because Riverside and Descript allow you to just download that and then upload it here. All right. So here you see that it's encoded the video and everything looks good. We have an RSS feed which is connected. But we can also connect this to our Apple Podcasts Connect by using the API key that Apple will give you.
I'm currently waiting for Apple to give me my API key, because sometimes you have to request for Apple to allow you to do video because it's a relatively new thing on the platform, so I'm just waiting for that. Once I have that, I will upload it right here, and then I'll connect to Apple, and then you'll be able to see the video version of this on Apple.
For now, it's just distributing the audio version to Spotify, to Apple, and really anywhere else that you get your podcasts. Guys, I can't explain to you how happy this makes me, because it just significantly reduces the mental load of trying to get video to every platform. So transistor, you really ate it up with this one.
Okay, so a few other reasons for why transistor is so brilliant and makes this whole process easier. It allows you to have your own website for your podcast, which is something that usually takes tons of time to do, and it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. So at the moment it allows you to listen on any platform.
It shows you what episodes exist. If you click in, you can see which episodes have been uploaded, you can find your podcast on all the streaming platforms, and if you click into one of the episodes, you can see your show notes along with the transcript, which significantly improves your likelihood of people finding you because you're now more search engine optimized.
And this is something that transistor includes in every single plan once you sign up. So you don't have to be on a higher tier to have access to this. I love that, I love that for you, and I love that for transistor, because generosity is what it is circular. The more generous you are, the more generous the world will be to you.
Okay, I don't make up the rules. This is just what it is. And if you have a newsletter, for example, for me, my newsletter is on ConvertKit. Transistor can integrate with ConvertKit so that the whole process is just significantly easier for me to manage. The second thing that transistor does extremely well is their analytics.
So it allows you to look at things like listener trends. But my absolute favorite is episode comparison. So I'm looking at these three episodes that I uploaded completely quietly. I didn't tell anybody because I was just testing to see how this would work. A couple of weeks last week and look at which episode is doing better than the other, and it's making me think through what worked in one episode, what didn't work in the other, which I love to get into, and two other things that I feel like people don't talk about enough.
And I just love about transistor, is that a you can run as many podcasts through one account as you want. So for me, this is super important because I have this channel and this podcast that I'm making, but I also have other shows that I know I'm going to be creating. So to be able to have one platform that I go to and multiple shows that I can create within it, game changer.
So if you ever decide to launch a second show, you know that you can stick with this one platform and be able to to use it for a very, very long time. The other piece is that whenever you have issues, it's a real human being that is going to answer. Now, I ran into an issue when I was first uploading my video file, kept getting rejected and it's because I didn't have the right specs.
So I talked to the chat bot. It was actually a person that I have spoken to many times before this, because I've interacted with their team and they gave me very specific advice, and it's that your video needs to be under these specs in order for it to get accepted and streamed on all platforms. So that's a lesson I learned from another human being that you don't have to learn.
So transistor has a free 14 day trial, so you can test it before committing to anything. And we'll put a link in the description so you can try it yourself and see if this is the right platform for you. So that is it. That's everything you need to start a video podcast in 2026. And if you've made it to this part of this episode, you're a real one.
Okay? You're really committed to making your show, and I love that so much for you. Now, of course, I can't get into every single detail in every issue that might come up along the way, but if that is the kind of support that you need, highly recommend you apply to the Emerging Voices Accelerator below, and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.