How to Record a Zoom Meeting at Top Quality for Video Editing

In this post, we offer a step by step guide to setting up your next Zoom recording and achieving the best results possible. It’s an easy process, but there are limitations to recording resolution that you should keep in mind.

Next, we’ll give you some easy tips to improve the look and sound of your next video call.

After that, we review our favorite gear for your teleconferencing setup.

Let’s dive right in:

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Setting up and Recording Your Next Zoom Call

Step 1: Dial in the Recording Settings

Once you’ve downloaded the latest version of Zoom, select Preferences in the Zoom.us menu. Next, navigate to the Recording tab.

Use the Store my recordings at dropdown menu to select a destination for your finished files. We’ve chosen one of our external Filmkraft drives:

Zoom recording settings for editing by Filmkraft

Next, make sure to check Record a separate audio file for each participant. This might be one of the best features that Zoom offers for video editing because it will allow you to work with separate audio tracks in post.  

Lastly, click Optimize for 3rd party video editor.

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Step 2: Check out the Video Settings

There are two settings in the Video Tab that might be of interest to anybody who will be filmed in the recording.  

First, there’s the Touch up my appearance option. This will put a slight blur on the image to smooth out skin tones. If you have time to do this in post, we recommend leaving this off.    

Second, be sure to enable HD. In theory, checking this option would allow you to broadcast a 720p video. However, when we tried recording the video stream with this option both activated and deactivated, we saw very little difference. We still think it’s a good idea to enable HD, but the video recording quality might not improve much because of it.  

Let us know in the comments below if enable HD helped you achieve better recording quality.    

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Step 3: Audio

As of September 2020, Zoom has introduced a new High Fidelity Professional Audio option. Selecting this setting disables several features such as echo-cancellation and post processing, and raises the codec specs to 48Khz, 96Kbps mono/192kbps stereo!

One drawback is that this feature requires a very fast internet connection, so Zoom recommends a hard ethernet connection rather than wifi.

To select this mode, head to the Audio Tab and navigate all the way down to click on Advanced.

Once you’re there, check Show in-meeting option to “Enable Original Sound” from microphone and then High fidelity music mode.  

If you are recording music performances or interviews and have the bandwidth, we recommend that you check out this impressive feature.

Zoom’s high fidelity music mode

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Step 4: Recording Basics

Starting a recording on Zoom is very easy. To begin, just click on the Record button in the menu bar.    

IMPORTANT: If you are conducting an interview with somebody and would like to only record their video stream you must pin their video. Otherwise the video will cut back to you every time you speak or make a noise.

Remember, the finished package of audio and video files will only be generated after you leave the Zoom meeting.  

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Zoom Meeting Recording Quality

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The footage you can expect when recording in this way will have the following specs:

• Video format: .mp4
• Frame rate: 25fps, the European PAL standard
• Resolution: This is a tricky question! In December 2021, Zoom released a chart that breaks down what specs you can expect from your recording (360p, 720p, or 1080p). In August 2022, they specified that 1080p recording is only available to Business and Enterprise plans!
• Audio: Recorded separately as .m4a files

Again, to get the best resolution you will need to follow the chart: use an HD camera, turn on Full HD, limit the amount of participants, and make sure to set the application to full-screen mode.