Using the native Substack video features

Sunday weblog notes from December 14, 2025 that were compiled and shared.

Earlier this week I decided to go ahead and take the plunge of adding video to my Substack posts over at nels.ai which has been an interesting adventure. It has been some time since I recorded daily videos and I had to sort of get back into the practice of completing the task in a single take. Using the native Substack video recording option for a post is a single click record button setup without any editing or anything to tinker with during the recording process. That means I have one good shot to make the recording. It would be easy enough to record the content using something else and then just upload it, but that seemed less of a challenge. I have been using the upload to YouTube feature as well which sends over the main recording and makes some short content from the video. That has been the most interesting part of the process for me as I have never really had anything automate YouTube short video creation before. It’s all my content, but the clipping is automated and so is the upload.

For better or worse I have figured out how to get the Yeti X microphone setup to record and have tried a few different camera angles. It turns out that I can talk to the camera directly during a Nelscast type recording effort, but during the course of reading something I prefer a more indirect camera angle. The other thing I ended up doing was allowing the Yeti X microphone to be in the frame during the recording process. That gives the whole thing a bit more of a podcast vibe. I was able to publish video content with all 5 of the nels.ai posts this week and with the Lindahl Letter. That pace of writing and video recording is probably sustainable. I have really been enjoying the daily deep research into quantum, robotics, and AI/ML. Watching back my video content does remind me that I need to make sure to stay up temp and be consistent. At some point, I’m going to do a lengthy multi-hour Nelscat which will test my ability to deliver consistently as a content presenter.

Using the Substack video feature was helpful in terms of introducing simplicity to my workflow. Both of my 4K cameras work well enough, but the workflow from recording and editing video requires a lot more planning and effort. It is much easier to record a one take and go 1080P video from the browser. Maybe at some point I’ll end up switching back over to 4K quality video, but that switch is not something I’m planning any time soon. Maybe the most interesting part of this daily video posting experience last week was realizing that the YouTube shorts format picks up more views than anything else that I loaded. It seems like making videos targeted at the shorts format might be the way to go moving forward. Everything within this effort is all focused on my daily research notes which are driving my lifelong learning efforts to better understand technology and the world around me based on deep exploration.