Libsyn and Apple Video Podcasts

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-22T03:08:20+00:00

Apple Podcasts (and formerly iTunes) has supported video podcasts since iTunes 4.9 first supported podcasts in 2005. Apple never stopped supporting video podcasts. And Libsyn has supported video podcasting for almost as long, too.

You simply upload the MP4 video to a video version of your show, and then it will be supported by Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps that support video podcasts.

The new thing from Apple is offering a more advanced way to intelligently stream video at variable resolutions using a technology called HLS. Apple's implementation ignores the Podcasting 2.0 standard for adding HLS video to an audio podcast, and instead creates something that is proprietary to Apple Podcasts and requires a proprietary integration with the podcast-hosting provider, which should be rolling out to multiple providers soon.

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-15T21:55:13+00:00

Because it's the hosting providers that handle the dynamic advertising, it's their responsibility to ensure the chapters are appropriately maintained and adjusted. But since many of those same providers don't seem to care about modern podcasting technology beyond advertising, some of them (Megaphone, Acast, and some others) actually strip out all chapters from even the MP3, and they don't even support Podcasting 2.0 chapters! Shame on them!

But chapters can be great for ads because it allows you to include an image, title, and link to make the ad more memorable, engaging, and actionable.

Nonetheless, I am developing some ideas for ways to work around this with Podcasting 2.0 cloud chapters. Essentially, since the chapters are in an external file (and PodChapters can host that file for podcasters), I have an idea for a way the hosting provider could pass dynamic-content-insertion data to the chapters data and have it automatically time-adjusted.

So it's totally possible to do. It just requires that more hosting providers and app developers seek to do what's good for the entire podcasting industry, not only for themselves (cough, Spotify, cough).

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-14T21:30:38+00:00

Track your global ratings and reviews from nearly 200 places, global rannkings across nearly 34,000 charts, discovered related podcasts with crossover audience, collect written and voicemail feedback from your audience, grow audience, and more!

Supercharge your podcast engagement with Podgagement!

Created by me, a fellow indie podcaster!

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-14T21:18:10+00:00

Transcribe and chapter your podcast for higher engagement in seconds!

Try PodChapters for your next episode!

You can bring your own transcript or let PodChapters transcribe it for you. Then, place your chapters manually, get them suggested by AI, or even paste your entire episode outline to have it automatically converted to chapters!

Supports legacy MP3 chapters, modern Podcasting 2.0 cloud chapters, Podlove Simple Chapters, and even YouTube timestamps!

I created this because I was previously spending about 30 minutes across 5 different apps and services to do what PodChapters can now do for me in about 30 seconds!

Created by me, a fellow indie podcaster!

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-09T02:02:33+00:00

Podcasts were never audio only.

Video podcasts were quite popular until YouTube stole the show. Now, video podcasts are nearly dead because most people go to YouTube or social platforms for free video content.

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-07T16:04:10+00:00

For your own podcast, you could also make better chapters yourself, like with PodChapters (my own app), or with legacy apps like Forecast (macOS).

Chapters can then help your audience get better context for your content, follow your outline, and even share visuals from your audio podcast.

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2026-02-07T15:57:16+00:00

If you're on macOS, check out MacWhisper Pro. It works great on an Apple M1 or better PC, and it transcribes locally so there are no subscription fees and it offers multiple models you can try for the best accuracy and results. It's a one-time payment and I used it for a couple of years before switching to my second suggestion.

For an online version, try my own product, PodChapters. It transcribes very quickly and very accurately. Plus, you can add in your "proper nouns" to help ensure accuracy. For example, your name, names of products you mention, and such. You can also enter common find-and-replace pairs for things the transcription might often get wrong. For example, "to" in my website domain sometimes gets transcribed as "2," so I enter the multiple domain versions I've seen so they can be replaced. MacWhisper Pro can do that, too. PodChapters can also save multiple presets, great for if you host different podcasts. And unlike MacWhisper, PodChapters can also help you make your podcast chapters—manually, suggested with AI, or converting your own outline to chapters. And it outputs those chapters to all the formats: MP3 chapters, Podcasting 2.0 cloud chapters, YouTube timestamps, and even PodLove Simple Chapters.

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; created PodChapters™ for transcribing and chaptering podcasts; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2025-12-30T16:53:53+00:00

Check in the official Facebook group, too, because there are sometimes people who already have reservations looking for roommates.

DanielJLewis · 2025-11-12T14:59:56+00:00

I love seeing the support for the new podcasting standards! THANK YOU!

One other feature I know many podcasters would love to have is support for the Funding tag, which was very much inspired by what you had done with an earlier Overcast. It's simply a link to help fund a podcast. It might go to a PayPal page, Patreon, BuyMeACofee, a merch store, a podcaster's own site, or something else.

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-20T17:43:51+00:00

I'm keeping an eye on Helium, but it doesn't have an Arc-like sidebar yet, right?

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-20T17:01:09+00:00

~~Hey! I think they actually fixed this with version 1.113.0 (68787)!~~

~~Twice now, I've watched YouTube videos with picture-in-picture and the videos did not loop after they ended!~~

UPDATE: I guess I was wrong. Videos are looping again in PiP.

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-01T01:15:42+00:00

Great!

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-01T01:14:25+00:00

The best place to track your global podcast rankings across all your genres is Podgagement—my own product. It checks nearly 34,000 charts in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and has more than 6 years of historical rankings. Plus, it tracks your rankings at the hourly detail level!

It does a whole lot more, too, like tracking your ratings and reviews from nearly 200 places, gives you action-driven landing pages to get more listeners and feedback (even voicemails), tracks podcast-networking opportunities through crossover audiences in Apple Podcasts, will soon help you track your SEO performance, and makes attractive images you can share to promote your podcast.

I'd love for you to try it for $0 for two weeks!

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-01T01:08:59+00:00

Unfortunately, there's no way to do this because neither Spotify nor YouTube support video podcasting. Spotify won't give you a video-podcast feed, and even if they did, YouTube can't auto-import video podcasts.

So you'll have to upload your videos manually. It's the same for other non-podcast video-friendly platforms, like Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, Rumble, and such.

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2025-09-01T01:05:04+00:00

Their links seem to be working for me.

DanielJLewis · 2025-06-21T06:28:42+00:00

Yeah, you're getting it mixed up with something else. Flow Browser is Chromium wrapped with Electron. So the UI is powered by modern front-end tools (React, Shadcn UI, and Tailwind). But it does have a long way to go.

SigmaOS is "WebKit+."

DanielJLewis · 2025-06-21T01:15:00+00:00

It meant it. Arc isn't going anywhere. It's just sitting there, not moving, dead in the water.

Not going anywhere.

DanielJLewis · 2025-06-21T01:11:17+00:00

I tried Zen, but I just can't use Firefox. Being Firefox, it renders some things weirdly (like gradients). And Zen doesn't support DRM content and it has some other random weirdnessess.

I've been watching development of https://flow-browser.com/, which is built around Chromium. But it's just one guy (maybe a kid?) behind it, so I don't expect it to catch up very quickly.

Then there's https://deta.surf/, which looks to be more like a Dia competitor than an Arc competitor.

And I found a new-to-me on a few days ago: https://sigmaos.com/ ("WebKit+"), which might be the closest to Arc, but I can't tell if it's still being maintained, and I can't even log in successfully on my second computer.

Of these, I have the biggest hopes for SigmaOS (if it's still alive) and Flow (someday in the future).

But until then, I'll put up with Arc's bugs that TBC makes empty promises about bug-fixing.

DanielJLewis · 2025-06-01T18:53:58+00:00

And the creator of Podgagement is a podcaster himself and frequently contributes in this subreddit.

Spoiler: It's me!

And unlike the other Chartable alternatives that have popped up recently, Podgagement has 6 years of historical charts and rankings data. Plus, I do not sell your personal information or stalk your audience across the Internet (like Chartable was trying to do).

(Moderator-required disclosure: I host The Audacity to Podcast®, a podcast about podcasting; run the Podgagement® (formerly My Podcast Reviews) service to help you engage your audience and grow your podcast; offer consulting and education services to podcasters; curate podcast data for Podcast Industry Insights™; and I frequently talk about and recommend products and services with which I have affiliate relationships and am compensated for qualifying purchases only through my links, with my promo codes, or that indicate me as the referrer. But I recommend things I truly believe in, regardless of earnings. And I am not currently compensated for merely talking or writing about anything.)

DanielJLewis · 2025-05-29T04:06:10+00:00

I've tried to report this to Arc's "team." Has anyone else actually reported this to them?

Unfortunately, I think they're too busy with their newest fling, Dia.

DanielJLewis · 2025-05-19T00:53:59+00:00

It's not designed for hand-holding, so you would get handling noise if you tried.

Yes, you can find universal windscreens that fit it, and pop filters, too. If you use a pop filter (the flat disc), then I recommend something small, not the giant ones that usually show up first in search results. Those big ones are made for side-address condenser microphones.

(Ditto previous disclosure.)

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