The Tech of Recording: How to Recover your Lost Podcast Video in Zoom

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host, and today I want to talk about a recording program that in my experience with all the podcasters we work with at pod, about half of our podcasters are using Zoom to record. And I think that's because people are familiar with Zoom. It's really easy to work with. You just send your guest a link. It integrates well with a lot of systems like calendar programs to automatically create meeting links. There's a lot of good features, and in the last couple years, since the beginning of the pandemic when so many more people started using it, they've really improved their technical capabilities.

And have made much higher quality recording, not only locally when you record your local machine, but also now in the cloud. And that's a big distinction and I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I want to share with you what the situation used to be a couple of years ago and what it is today. And there is a technological benefit for those of us using Zoom to record our podcasts.

So a couple years ago, in order to record split tracks, meaning an individual audio file for each person participating in your Zoom Call, which by the way, is really recommended to have to record, save and provide to your audio editors to use because they could do a better job editing your audio when each person is on a separate track. In order to do that well, you had to record locally to your local computer, not in the Zoom cloud. And there was a checkbox in your settings of the local Zoom app on your computer. You had to check so that it would record those split tracks. And the way it's described in Zoom is the checkbox says save a separate audio file for each participant, I believe is what it says, or something close to that. And when you do that and you recorded locally after you end the Zoom call, you have to close the Zoom app. Even if you stopped recording at some point and you're still on the Zoom Call, Zoom waits till after you end the Zoom Call session to start processing the audio and video of that show, and you'll see A window pops up on your screen, there's a little blue bar that goes across in a timeline and you can stop it if you don't want to save the recording for any reason, or maybe you need to shut your computer down, down, and you don't have time to let it process because you're running out the door to go catch a plane or go to the airport or something and you don't have to do it right then. And I think a lot of people don't realize that if you don't allow that process to complete, you don't have recordings yet that you can use. And this is the main point that I want to share with you today is about this process of allowing those recordings to save. And then what happens? What do you do if you can't find your recordings? If it's this strange file, you know, it looks like. And I'm going to get to that in just a minute, but I do want to follow through with what I was saying up front, is that now, a couple of years later, and I think it's been this way for the better part of the last year, Zoom Cloud recording now also will save a separate audio file for each participant. Now, that didn't used to be the case. You couldn't do that not too long ago, but you can now. And we've started doing that actually at Pilotize for our own podcast episodes that we record using Zoom is that we've started recording everything in the cloud. And there's another reason why when you record in the cloud, you get multiple videos. So if you're using the video from your Zoom call for a video cast, or even just taking video clips, using some for highlights, and you're not really publishing the full length video. Although I'm sure a lot of you listening to this are doing that. And that's great. When you record locally on your local computer, whatever you have your Zoom screen set to display is what will be recorded. And that's all you get is one video recording. So if I have it set to speaker view and it switches automatically depending on who's speaking, then that's what I get. If I have it on gallery view, where I see everybody on the call in boxes, kind of old school, looking like the Brady Bunch or something like that, then that's how the video records. And in fact, as the host of the meeting, if you switch from speaker view to gallery view and back randomly, or maybe not even randomly, just specifically at different times, that's how that video is going to record. And again, you get just the one video. So in the past, it used to be that cloud recording in Zoom was a little more limited, that you didn't get the split audio track recordings, and that recording locally gave you more recordings and better quality recordings. And now it's kind of flipped the other way a little bit because now Zoom Cloud recording will allow you. You have to set your meeting recording settings in the Zoom Cloud recording settings, which would be logging into Zoom us in your browser to do that. But in your recording settings, you can set it to record that separate audio file for each participant. But the wonderful thing that they did at Zoom when you record in the cloud now, different from what it used to be, is that it will save you multiple video files at one time. It will save your speaker view, it will save your gallery view separately, two completely different videos. And if you ever share your screen, it will save another one of each of those types. It'll save a speaker view with screen shares that you did and a gallery view with screen shares. So you get four actual videos. Now, if you're really into video editing or you have a producer that does video editing for you, having all four of those videos is really useful. It makes it much easier to cut things out, to switch from one person's view to another, from gallery to speaker, or to go to a SlideShare view, a screen share view. There's, there's a lot of things you can do creatively to make a better quality video. And you haven't had to do anything on your computer. I mean, you can even set up your podcast recording meeting to automatically do all that recording and save it to the cloud automatically. And we even have ours integrated with Dropbox, where at first we'll save it to the Zoom cloud, and Zoom Cloud will only keep it for seven days before it deletes it. But there's an integration with Zoom to Dropbox, and you can have it automatically upload all your recordings to a Dropbox folder in your Dropbox account. Now, occasionally there are glitches with that. I've had it happen where a recording is in the Zoom Cloud but fails to copy over to Dropbox, and you want to keep on that. If that happens, you're going to need to download it and re upload it to Zoom. A little bit of an inconvenience, but at least you still have the videos. But now to come back to what is now sometimes problematic about recording locally in Zoom, which I had a customer we support with their production and potatoes about a week ago, call me up on the phone in a panic. And he was like, tom, I can't find my Zoom recording. I don't know where it is. Now. This is a very nice person we've supported for four and a half or five years. So he is a very seasoned podcaster. He knows what he's doing. However, he's also gets overwhelmed with tech, computer tech especially, and things like that. So he knows how to do what, he knows how to do what he's been doing for four plus years of his podcast. And when something goes wrong, he sends up a flare and needs some support. So that's what he did. He went to find the recordings and when you record locally to your computer, which again, was the best way to do it up until sometime this year. And for four years he's been doing it, so he keeps doing it the same way and that works for him. That's great.

What Zoom does is we'll save especially. I'm going to speak from the perspective of a Mac. I suspect it's the same on a Windows computer. But when your local recordings are saved, your computer saves to your Documents folder and then a Zoom folder within that. And there is a folder for each meeting there you each different Zoom session where you record it. And once you end the session, it will process. Remember I talked about that blue bar that's going to go from one side to the other and as a progress bar as it's processing. But if something on your computer interrupts that process or you had to shut your computer down because you had to leave, and there may be other ways that it happens, that's a glitch that's not intentional. Those recordings won't be on your computer. But I have good news for those of you that have experienced this or may be worried this may happen to you. That recording is still saved, but there's some encoding and processing the Zoom application has to do. So if when you go into your Zoom folder on your computer, you're looking for your most recent recording, you go into the folder for that session and there's always a date and a timestamp. So you know, hey, I had my meeting at this time of day, on this day. Let's go find that folder. Inside of there you'll find there's no video files, there's no audio files, but there's a bunch of funny looking Zoom file names. And within that file name it says double click to convert.

And so our customer thought he'd lost his recordings. He didn't know where it was. All I did was get on Zoom with him, had him share his screen, navigated to the right folder, and then saw that was the case and he double clicked on his files. They then that blue bar then goes and processes and saves all the files he needed. They were not lost. They just hadn't completed the process of converting from what the computer is saving all along as you're recording after conducting your podcast. And that's not really usable in all the conventional kind of MP4 files and M4A or MP3 audio files you might use, or WAV files, things like that. So Zoom goes through the process of converting them all and then saves them, and they're right there. And so he was very relieved. He just needed to be reminded what he has to do. So if you ever are missing a recording now, this is specific. In Zoom, every different recording program works differently and saves their files differently. And I'm not here to talk about all of those. And I don't really have experience with every different recording software out there. I think I've used just about everything out there, whether it's SquadCast or Riverside or Streamyard or even more podcast recordings using GarageBand or other kinds of programs that are just on your local machine. I am pretty recording platform agnostic, meaning all these different programs do a really good job at recording at least audio, if not audio and video. They all do a pretty good job. Occasionally I've seen each one have a glitch and have a problem, but for the most part, they all do a good job. I really think everybody should use whatever program they're most comfortable with, and it's going to be easiest for them to use and easy, more importantly, for your guests to use. If you have a guest format podcast, or occasionally or frequently have guests, anything that gives them a simple link that they can get into and boom, there they're in. The meeting is ideal in the session. And then of course, obviously this assumes remote recording and not recording in person. I mean, that should be obvious, I think, because we're talking about Zoom primarily today. But the quality of your recording with any of these programs, I find is really more a factor of how good is the microphone you have plugged into that computer and how good is the webcam that you have plugged into your computer when you're recording video? Those make a whole lot of difference in the end result and the outcome you're going to have. They all do a good job recording. Some will do more compression than others, others will do more raw audio and video recording, which editors would love. But eventually here's the way I feel about this. And this is just Tom's personal opinion on the quality factor. You've got a quiet environment, good quality microphone, good webcam. Even if the software using is going to compress those things and your video might lose a little quality there. Every different podcast host is going to compress your audio and convert it to MP3. So it's only going to have a possible quality height of a certain level. And with video, there's some similarity there. I mean, YouTube processes and compresses things. Now, YouTube will do very high quality video for sure, but embedding that on your website and other things you might do, your viewers probably aren't going to notice as much or think that looking at your video, that, oh my gosh, that's not as good a quality as it could have been. It was recorded on Zoom and it was compressed in the cloud. Especially if you're using a decent webcam and the color is good, the sharpness is good to begin with. These things compound when you use often a built in webcam to your computer that is not as high a quality as a external USB webcam, things like that. So anyway, that's just a little tip. Tom's thoughts on what should I use to record? There's not an absolute right or wrong answer to that. It's different for everybody. I'm really happy with Zoom. It works for pretty much everything I do. And I'm a host of multiple podcasts and I've recorded, I don't know, well over a thousand episodes in my podcasting tenure and my co host Tracy's recorded well over 2500. And really I think the quality of your show is more about the content you record, the message that you're bringing to the world, and a little bit less about the actual quality of that video. I do think you should have the highest quality audio you can possibly record and produce, given your situation. But there's a very wide acceptable range, I believe, of audio. I mean, I'm someone that if I hear really bad quality audio, I can't listen to the podcast and I won't. So, I mean, I don't think, hopefully anybody listening to this podcast is willing to produce lousy audio quality like that. And you certainly don't have to. It's just really not that difficult to record good quality audio these days. So again, the recording softwares you use as a choice, probably a personal one, more of a function of your specific needs and preferences. What's easy for you, again, if it becomes difficult to do you're not going to do it. So I would say use the best quality software you can for what you can afford or are willing to pay, and for the level of tech and setup that you are either capable or willing to deal with.

So that really comes to pretty much the end of what I want to share with you today. The departure point of this again was customer potatoes that had trouble and thought they lost their Zoom recording. And fear not, it is almost always there. I don't think I've ever in my history of using Zoom over many years now had a Zoom recording really fail. From a tech perspective, I have had one where I forgot to hit record. Now that's user error and that's tragic if when that happens, I think every podcaster does that once, but only once because that's so painful. You're like, oh my gosh, I am never going to let that happen again. But from a tech perspective, it's pretty solid and I'm a fan for what that's worth. All right, well, I hope that was useful for all you listening. We'll be back next episode with another great topic. Until then, have a great one. This has been Tom on feed.

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