Podcast production etiquette, continued

I previously blogged about some pitfalls podcast producers in the news business may want to avoid. I'd also like to amend that manifesto with something that just now struck me, given the very large size of video podcast files. Since MP4s, Quicktime movies, M4Bs and other files can get fairly big (most of mine exceed 30 MB per clip), it also is wise sense to cut down on either severe additional charges or total stoppage of service in the limited amount of data transfer you get from your host if you keep only a few video clips active in your feed.

Think about it: if you have several casts archived, say 300 MB of video spread over a few files in a feed, you'll force your server to transfer at least this much data per user. So multiply this by a few hundred to a couple thousand subscribed users, and you could potentially be serving up several gigabytes of data every 24 hours. And depending on the popularity of your podcast and the number of subscribers you support, you'll have clients banging on your RSS file all day long anyway.

Most all modern podcatchers (iTunes 4.9+, iPodder, iPodderX, etc.) are smart enough to, by default, list all of the available tracks in an RSS feed, but only skim the first few to download to the client. This is a preference that has to be manually changed by the user, saving you and I from unnecessary bandwidth losses. This helps a lot on conserving precious data transfer space.

So reinforcing my previous suggestion to segment your served video over multiple tracks, I'd also advise to keep the video made available to a few per session.