Sunday, August 21, 2016

Zoom - A Great Video Conferencing Tool with Easy Recording

I did a "video interview" with Amy Babinchak a couple weeks ago. We fished around for various technical solutions before we settled on recording a Skype call via Camtasia. The first time we did it, the audio was messed up. Google hangouts may have worked, but it didn't work for us. I have a GotoMeeting/GotoWebinar account that is great . . . but doesn't record web cams for two people.

We are now well into the 21st Century. You would think there would be an easier answer.

Then I found it!

Last week I appeared on Lisa Hendrickson's Office 365 podcast ( see http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2016/08/call-that-girl-with-lisa-hendrickson-on.html ).

She uses a tool called Zoom (zoom.us). For only $14.99/month, you can have several people on a call and easily record them. I loved it.

I am going to start up a new podcast/videocast series. So I was very happy to find this tool. I used it to record a quick chat with my brother Manuel (see yesterday's blog post).

The recording was super easy. If you are using a "producer" you can hide one of the attendees altogether and assign the record function to that person. For an extra fee you can have sessions recorded in the cloud.

I also like the layout. Skype isn't bad, but having to engage another tool to record the screen and hope it's working is not ideal. Google Hangouts will record a meeting, but I find the screen jumping-around to be very annoying.



With a nice wide screen monitor, the recording is also well formatted for branding. In the example here, I just threw in a banner for the Great Little Seminar site and had room at the bottom for call-outs.

The recording is automatically formatted in both MP4 and M4A. These can be edited and combined in Camtasia, Adobe Premiere, Microsoft Movie Maker, or any other program that will load these formats.

Overall, I like the Zoom.us tool very much. Lisa's been using it for years and swears by it.

Check it out if you're producing video meetings, podcasts, etc. I think you'll be impressed!

Also stay tuned for the new series right here and at SMB Community Podcast - www.smbcommunitypodcast.com.

:-)

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