In the last few months, online video conferencing services have become an incredibly useful resource for schools, colleges, companies and organizations all around the world. One of these services is Zoom, a software app that gained substantial popularity thanks to its simplicity and because it’s free (although, the free version has certain limitations compared to a paid subscription).
Zoom allows users to record meetings among other things, but this feature can be enabled or disabled by the meeting host, meaning the meeting organizer. If the host enables the Record option before the meeting, this will be visible to both participants and host on the right side of Chat, therefore anyone can record the meeting. But the host can decide to not allow recordings when setting up the meeting.
What can you do, then? If you really need to record Zoom meeting sessions for personal reasons – despite the host not allowing it – keep reading to find out about a simple hack that you can apply to the situation.
Record Zoom meetings with a screen recorder
Screen recorders are the best solution to this issue. A screen recorder app allows you to record everything that happens on your screen in real time. So, whenever a Zoom meeting is about to start, you’ll just need to open the screen recorder app, which will start recording the meeting until you decide to make it stop.
OBS: Open Broadcaster Software
OBS is rated as one of the best – if not the best – free screen capture softwares. It is very popular in the field of gameplay livestreaming, so we could say that it’s a legitimate high quality service.
OBS is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Even though it might look not so easy to use initially, don’t worry, because we’ll show you how to properly set it up.
How to screen record with OBS
For starters, go to the OBS website. Choose the OS you’re currently using and start downloading and installing the software on your computer. Now, open the app.
Before you start using OBS, there’s a couple settings you’ll have to adjust:
- click on Settings at the right bottom of the screen
- select Output, then click the Browse button next to “Recording Path” to choose in which folder the screen recordings will be saved
- in the “Recording Quality” section, we advise you select High Quality, Medium File Size
- for “Recording Format”, select mp4
- for “Encoder”, select Hardware (QSV)
- now, click on the Video tab
- for “Base (Canvas) Resolution”, select the highest resolution available
- “Output (Scaled) Resolution” > select the resolution closer to base resolution
- click Apply and OK
Now that we got the settings out of the way:
- click on Start Recording to start the Zoom meeting screen recording
- when you’re done, go back to OBS and select Stop Recording