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Recording Zoom Meetings For CastingWords Transcription Service

Screen shot of a Zoom meeting between two people

Why Record and Transcribe?

Today’s reality of virtual meetings and working from home has introduced a whole new set of challenges into your workday. Transcription services can help take one task off your plate by converting your audio or video recordings into neat, searchable text documents.

Whether you’re attending board meetings, conducting interviews, or meeting with individual colleagues, taming those hours of conversation into manageable text will save you time and keep you organized.

If, like so many others, you are using Zoom for your meetings, we have good news! Both free and paid accounts allow you to record sessions right to your computer (or the cloud).

“Local Recording” on Zoom

Zoom’s Local Recording option allows you to record meeting audio and video locally to your computer. The host must be the one to record the meeting, or must grant a participant the ability to record.

Please visit the Local Recording page in the Zoom Help Center for detailed instructions on how to record a meeting in Zoom.

Important note: Zoom has an option that allows you record each participant’s audio stream as a separate audio file. We strongly recommend against doing so if you’re planning on ordering a transcription. With additional files, the chances of mistakenly selecting and uploading an incorrect file are increased.

Photo of an individual remote call

Zoom Recordings and File Formats

Zoom creates files in MP4 video and M4A audio-only formats. For faster uploading to CastingWords, and faster processing (making the file transcription-ready) we recommend using M4A audio-only files.

Video files are approximately 10 times the size of audio files – and we process only the audio portion of the file anyway.

By default, Zoom recordings are saved to a subfolder on your computer (/Documents/Zoom on Mac, and \Documents\Zoom on PC). You can of course adjust your settings to save the files wherever you like.

From that folder, you can upload the files directly to CastingWords, or to a file storage service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or a streaming service like YouTube or Vimeo.

Things to Keep in Mind

  • Be sure to upload the recording of the full meeting, not just one participant’s audio (unless that’s what you want)!

  • We handle many audio and video file formats, and transcode all material to mp3 format before distributing tasks to our workers. This means the transcribers and editors will handle the audio portion only; they will not see any onscreen content.

  • Your transcript will contain the audio portion of your recording. Chat messages will not be included. However, when you record a meeting, Zoom does save a separate text file containing the in-meeting chat.

  • Zoom can embed timestamps into the video recording for you when recording. These timestamps will not appear in your transcript, but you can include the Timestamps or Subtitles & Captions upgrade to the file when placing your order if desired.

Place Your Order!

For one-offs and occasional meetings, choose from our three CastingWords transcription products:

If you’re recording meetings frequently, consider using our subscription service, WatchingWords. Connect a file source such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP, or RSS feed and sit back. We’ll transcribe everything as it comes in, so your transcripts are ready and waiting when you need them.

Photo of a laptop displaying a virtual meeting
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