How to Record Online Meetings from Zoom, GoToMeeting etc.

Recording online meetings is crucial because either the host or participants or even those who can’t join in the meeting could view the discussion history with important decisions and details for further reference. So how to record online meetings from Zoom, GoToMeeting, Webex, or other places without limit? There are two ways to go.

Record Online Meetings from Zoom, GoToMeeting etc.

The novel coronavirus is now spreading worldwide, which compels many workers to work at home. Home mode seems to be comfortable, however, also brings about a big challenge to companies or teams who haven’t experienced this kind of working mode before. So the group leaders or HRs are looking for ways to ensure the efficiency of communication and productivity. Holding online meetings is one of the efficient ways to connect teammates and guarantee collaboration.

Then, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Webex, Skype, Google Hangouts, what web conference tool do you utilize for remote communication? Well, no matter if it’s one of these mentioned smash-hits or any other, you are given the power to record the online meeting events.

Content Navigation:
#1 How to Record Online Meetings Without Download
#2 Built-in Recorder vs Third-party Screen Recorder
#3 How to Record Online Meetings with RecMaster

Yes. You can Use Online Meeting Tools to Record Meetings as They Want

When coming up with online meeting recording, you must know that web conferencing service providers usually embed recording features in their meeting applications. As long as you’re the video meeting host or a common participant with recording privileges, you can easily film the whole process with only a click.

But things are usually more complicated than they look because the online services do have strict rules on the recording privilege, ways, and length when you use it to record online meetings. Specifically, let’s take Zoom for example, it offers four meeting plans to meet different business needs – Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Setting aside the number of participants and meeting duration, it does allow both the free and paid subscribers to take video capture of the meeting.

The difference is free users can only conduct local recording (need additional conversion) while paid users have another cloud recording option with free limited (Pro-ers for 1GB free space) or unlimited cloud space alongside. Only when you upgrade to a higher plan can you enjoy unlimited cloud recording.

Surely the premise of all these assumptions is you are the meeting host! What if you are only a universal attendee? Any non-host worker is unable to take advantage of the built-in recording functionality of Zoom unless the host empowers him/her with the privilege.

You may ask how about other Zoom alternatives?

Is there any software that doesn’t set restrictions on talking time and recording capability? Don’t be so naive. After looking into the similar services like GoToMeeting and Cisco’s Webex, you will find they all share the same workflow:

– Local and cloud recording are both available here.
– For cloud recording, the more meetings you need to capture, the higher the business plan they need to purchase or the more cloud storage they need to pay.
– For local recording, the recorded file usually needs to be converted to local or the format is not mainstream, like Webex’s .arf and .wrf.

Built-in Meeting Recording Feature vs Third-party Screen Recorder

The internal meeting recorder is super convenient by offering a 1-click online meeting recording method. With a high-level subscription, users can enjoy unlimited cloud recording with transcription. Nevertheless, if you are a free user, a low-level subscriber, or an attendee who’s forbidden from recording, you may need to pay for something (e.g. the extra cloud space) or turn to an extra screen recorder. Most importantly, if your meeting happens to shut down or the recording conversion process (for local recording) is interrupted due to certain reasons, the recorded file will be broken too, unavailable for recovery.

A third-party screen recorder gives either the host or participants a more flexible way to record what’s going on during the conference without conversion. With no time or size limit, you can work out any high-quality meeting capture to hard drive effortlessly, even if your meeting is unexpectedly disconnected.

How to Record (Zoom) Online Meetings on PC/Mac as You Want

In-app recorder is convenient but has many limits. That gives third-party meeting recorders the chance to show their talent. In case you are not familiar with a dedicated screen recorder, here we take how RecMaster records Zoom meetings as a demonstration. It’s an easy yet feature-rich screen capture tool, so don’t worry about the usage, capture quality, etc.

Firstly, before you check the steps on how to record an online meeting with RecMaster, you should download it and install it on your computer. Only Windows and Mac are available now.

Then launch it to do as follows:

Step 1 – Choose a screen recording mode for your upcoming Zoom meeting.

You can select “Full Screen” to film the entire screen/full-screen video meeting or select “Custom Area” to record the windowed meeting. “Webcam” mode is suitable for capturing your own facecam and “Audio Only” of course simply outputs the audio file.

Step 2 – Set for the online meeting capture

RecMaster enables you to set video/audio format, video quality/frame rate, and decide whether to show webcam overlay, system sound, microphone, mouse cursor, enable watermark or not. Define all of those according to your situation. You can go to Menu>> Settings>> Video to find the details. Or you can directly use the default settings.

Video Settings:

Below are the RecMaster-supported media formats, all of which are compatible well with players, devices, and editors.

Video capture formats: MP4, FLV, AVI (for Windows PC) | MP4, MOV, M4V (for macOS)
Audio capture formats: MP3, WAV (for Windows PC) | CAF, M4A (for macOS)
Frame rate: 20-60 fps (any value no more than 30 is just enough for online meeting)

Recording Settings:

In the next step after you choose a recording mode, you can set which monitor to record, whether to record the system sound, microphone, or webcam.

Step 3 – Start the recording

When your meeting and capture settings get ready to start, click the REC button on RecMaster and you just put your focus on the meeting and team members. During the recording, you can pause resume, and annotate at any time.

Step 4 – End the recording

When the meeting is over, you can use hotkeys Alt + 2 to stop the recording and check it from the recording list. What’s more, the preloaded video editor could cut the unwanted parts off.

About Task Schedule & Timed Recording

RecMaster for Windows has a task schedule function. Similar to Zoom’s Schedule Meeting, it’s able to record the online conversation at customized start and end times. And Mac version doesn’t have this mini tool but another one called “Duration” to define the capture duration for auto-stop. If you’re recording a Zoom meeting on Mac, to ensure a 100% successful capture of meeting audio, you are suggested to choose and set “Auntbox Audio Device” as the speaker in advance.

Final Words

After finishing this post on how to record online meetings, you must get a clearer understanding of the two ways mentioned above. Using the attached recording feature on meeting software or a standalone screen recorder, you can grab the discussions and communication easily for tacking in the future.

If you’re a meeting host and plan to record some key conferences, you are suggested to run the two methods at the same time in case there comes any error in either of them. Also, the screen capture tool can also be applied to record webinars, record online videos, record online audio, and so on.
Coronavirus is dangerous! Maybe you’re eager to go outside for the new fresh air or go back to the familiar office seats to proceed face-to-face meeting physically, however, COVID-19 is not yet beat, and you still have to wait for the day to come.

More Recording Guides:

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How to Record Remote Desktop?
Record Conference Calls
Record Google Meet with(out) G Suite, Enterprise, etc.?