Video Workflow issues: How publishers set up, edit, and distribute

Publishers in the Video for Publishers roundtable showed some great set-ups that prompted a discussion:

When you need a camera, or when does an iPhone work? What about Riverside versus a switcher – or for that matter, recording on Zoom and editing in Adobe?

The basic setup for many publishers, such as Builder Innovator, which shoots vendor videos at their conferences, and AgProud, which collects off-site video, is an iPhone with a mic and a dead bunny noise muff. The video is then Dropboxed to a production editor.  AgProud also uses Zoom to record webinars.

However, some set-ups are getting more sophisticated.

As mentioned in part one, Keith Yarber of Tops Lexington Magazine went all in, and is building two studios in-house, one for podcasts and one for video.

Professional video can be a service or a hosted show, adding to the client services offered by his digital agency,  leveraging professional photographers, a social media guru on the team, and extra office space.

To create the “showbiz” environment,  a TV-studio-like environment, Yarber has purchased a couple of $1000 lounge chairs

and ordered a neon sign that says Tops.

Preset lighting and sound will be ready to go when a guest walks in. He plans to offer professional head shots of clients, a much-needed service, as a loss leader to bring potential clients in the door.

Who’s on the video staff is not yet settled. Current thinking is that the current photographer, social media guru, and Yarber will fill in as host.  He may look around for. videographer.

Yarber anticipates the podcast will have two sponsors, but the main goal is to have closer relationships with clients and community leaders. Clearly, they are planning to have some fun.

When the office is the studio

Angie Thompson, Fishing Tackle Retailer, has a background in television, so she simply set her own office up to be “always ready” for a shoot, in this case, a weekly show showcasing the numbers products that run as native ads from corporate sponsors in the daily newsletter.

To have great  B-roll video – and more than a talking head, she taps the corporate members who often have organized amazing professional shoots.

Claude Coworker is trained to write the scripts. The lights and cameras are set around her in the office and never come down. A green screen can be pulled down from the ceiling.

The video is run from the muliple cameras through a switcher, and on to production for editing.

Riverside gets some love

Paul Gewuerz, founder of webinar series Local News Industry Pulse, said Riverside, priced under $50 a month, is definitely a worthwhile upgrade from Zoom.

Riverside’s platform can record and ingest content, normalize audio, remove pauses and uhms, edit from the text transcript, add captions, music, and sound effects, and split the video into social clips without leaving the platform. In addition, the image quality is better, he said.

Thompson tried it the week after this call and said it was super easy to use. She plans to use it for a new podcast.

So, when do you upgrade from phones to cameras, or from Riverside to a switcher?

Selecting a video setup depends on the publisher’s purpose, Gewuerz told the group. If they are trying to “wow” prospects with professional quality production values and a TV-like studio experience with multiple cameras make sense.

For a one-on-one webinar, shooting from the computer on Riverside more than does the trick.

Similarly, Gewuerz found multiple feeds can test the limits of Riverside’s “ease of use” value proposition. A switcher can make it easier to pull feeds from multiple angles together.

In this clip, he walked through the issues with the group.

Gewuerz also shared his new tool, Localpod.co,  a new company he created to turn text content into a podcast and distribute it across a broad podcast distribution network  We’ll keep you posted on this promising tech.

Many thanks to the publishers on the call who shared their strategies with us! If you are Riverside curious, Gewuerz is leading a workshop for publisher on July 23, 2026.