Zoom has changed the world.
It allows us to communicate better with teams internally and customers across the globe. It’s properly boosted our effectiveness, nearly all our meetings are virtual now so we can serve clients better, both near and far.
But some people also use Zoom to share valuable information with customers through weekly calls, hot seats, and webinars. Some of our clients do this, and it’s really helped them connect with their audience. It’s also a great opportunity to repurpose this video content for social media or YouTube.
So how exactly do you go about it?
Zoom comes with endless complex settings. What do you need to tweak to achieve the best video and audio quality, and how can you share that with a professional video team to get the best outcome?
In this article, I take you step by step through setting up your Zoom account so you can create video content from your Zoom calls.
Set up your Zoom account for Local recording
The first step is to make sure your account is optimised for local recording. To do that:
- Log into your Zoom account in a web browser
- Head to ‘Settings’
- Go to the ‘Recording’ tab
- Find the ‘Local Recording’ option and make sure the toggle is turned on (like in the image below)
- Toggle the ‘Automatic Recording’ button too to save you needing to remember to hit record!
You have the option to include a customised disclaimer before the recording starts too, so it’s recommended to do this so everyone in the call is notified that they are being recorded.
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Set up your Zoom account for Cloud Recording
Enabling cloud recording in Zoom provides you with the convenience of saving video recordings of meetings directly to Zoom’s cloud storage. This feature comes pre-activated for all paid Zoom subscribers, so if you’re not yet on a paid plan, you’ll need to upgrade to use this functionality.
How to Manage Cloud Recording for All Account Users
If you’re an admin on your Zoom account, here’s how to enable cloud recording for all users on your account:
1. Log in to the Zoom web portal.
2. From the navigation menu, select ‘Account Management’ followed by ‘Account Settings.’
3. Navigate to the ‘Recording’ tab.
4. Toggle the ‘Cloud Recording’ option on or off.
5. If a verification dialog pops up, click ‘Enable’ to confirm the change.
Customising Cloud Recording Settings as a Host
Now, you have the flexibility to personalise various aspects of your cloud recordings. To do this:
1. Log in to the Zoom web portal.
2. Click on ‘Settings,’ then navigate to the ‘Recording’ tab.
3. Adjust the available basic and advanced cloud recording options according to your needs.
Here are some settings that I’d recommend looking at for creating a well-rounded recording:
Record Active Speaker, Gallery View, and Shared Screen Separately: This option allows you to record the active speaker, gallery view, and any shared screens as individual videos.
Record Audio-Only Files: Choose to record audio files separately in M4A format. You can opt to record a single audio file for all participants, individual audio files for each participant, or both.
Record One Audio File for All Participants: This produces a single file containing the audio for the entire meeting.
Record Separate Audio Files for Each Participant: This feature records up to 200 speakers separately, giving you individual audio files for each. This is particularly useful if you plan on editing or enhancing the audio for specific participants later on.
Add a Timestamp to the Recording: This adds a timestamp based on the host’s time zone to the recording. However, consider turning this off to avoid clutter in the video frame.
Display Participants’ Names in the Recording: This adds each participant’s name to the bottom-right corner of their respective video frames. Feel free to enable or disable this based on your preference.
Enable Group HD
If you have a Pro account, enabling Group HD allows you to record to the cloud in a much higher resolution.
To do this, head to Settings > Meeting > In Meeting (Advanced) to activate this. It does use more bandwidth, but it’s definitely worth it!
Setup in the Zoom Desktop application
Finally, there are a few settings in the Zoom Desktop app that need looking at before you start your call.
- Store my recordings at:
- Firstly, pick the folder where you want the recordings to be stored. The best option here is to choose a folder on a cloud service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. If you share that folder with your video editor, any recordings can be automatically synced between the two of you hassle-free!
- Record a separate audio file for each participant who speaks
- Definitely useful to have this option on! When it comes to the edit, this means that the video editor can mix the sound levels of each individual speaker. Handy if your participants tend to talk over each other, or forget to mute their mic!
- Optimise for 3rd party video editor
- This means the files that Zoom creates will be easier for video editors to work with as they’ll be in a specific file type. MP4, if you’re interested. Tick this box for sure!
- Add a timestamp to the recording
- Untick this box, you don’t need an ugly timecode all over your video!
Starting your Zoom recording
Now you’re all set, here’s how you begin your Zoom recording. It can only be the host who records the meeting, or grants a participant the ability to record, so make sure you have this set first.
- Start your Zoom meeting as the host
- If you have Automatic Recording enabled, the Zoom call will be recording straight away!
It’s as simple as that!
Once your session is complete, Zoom will convert the meeting recording and open the folder where the files are saved.
Share your files with a professional video editor
If you followed all the steps above, you’ll be ready to share your video files with a professional video production team. They can then turn your Zoom recordings into a polished video for your company intranet, YouTube or social media.
We’ve done this several times for our clients, adding captions, graphics and animation to fairly simple Zoom recordings to create valuable online content.
Until the day comes when we can safely share a meeting space or event hall, this works pretty well!
