Zoom meetings have many moving pieces and also many different options for recording each of those pieces. We are going to talk about these different recording options in this post so you can configure your recording to best suit your needs.
Common video layouts
The most commonly used video layouts are
Single video – 1 video stream with a combined speaker and shared screen or just the shared screen.
This is the best option when
- you need to download the video.
Picture-in-Picture – 2+ video streams in a specialized player with 2 video windows, usually a large and small video. These screens are interactive and can be switched, moved, or shown side by side.
This is the best option when
- you want a good view of the shared screen
- the meeting includes a sign language interpreter
- the video will only be stored in Kaltura which has the built in picture in picture player
These are some of the common use cases but otherwise you can use which layout you like best or is needed for interpretation services.
Navigating to Zoom Recording settings
Now let’s talk about the setting for recording Zoom videos.
First to get to these settings, sign in to Meredith’s Zoom portal from your browser.
Click Settings in the sidebar.
Click the Recording tab in the main window.
Scroll down to the Cloud recording options.
Setting options
The full choice of setting options are
- Record active speaker with shared screen – records 1 video with speaker overlaying the shared screen
- Record gallery view with shared screen – records 1 video with gallery view (thumbnails of participants) overlaying the shared screen
- Record active speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately
- Active speaker
- Gallery view
- Shared screen
- Record audio-only files – does not record any video, only audio. Good for podcasting.
- Record the Interpretation
- Record sign language interpreter – records a separate video file
- Record language interpreter – records an audio file of each language
- Save chat messages from meeting/webinar – a text file of the chat is saved
You can choose any of these settings that work for you. They can also be changed at any time so if you need a specific recording configuration for 1 video, you can do that.
Best settings for the common layouts
But which settings do you need for the common video layouts we discussed already?
Single video
1 video stream with a combined speaker and shared screen image.
- Select Record active speaker with shared screen
- Unselect Record active speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately
- Unselect Record the Interpretation
- Unselect Record gallery view with shared screen
1 video stream, only the shared screen with no video of the presenter.
- Select Record active speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately
- Select Shared Screen
- Unselect Active Speaker
- Unselect Gallery View
- Unselect Record active speaker with shared screen
- Unselect Record gallery view with shared screen
Picture-in-Picture
2 video streams – 1 of speaker view, 1 of shared screen. I prefer to leave out the gallery view generally.
- Select Record active speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately
- Select Shared Screen
- Select Active Speaker
- Unselect Gallery View
- Unselect Record active speaker with shared screen
- Unselect Record gallery view with shared screen
As always when changing video settings it is best practice to record a short sample video so test how it displays. A few tests and it should be just right! For any questions or help with Zoom recording, please contact IDAT Services and we can help.