Recording Teams / Zoom Interviews

[TomHoward]

Hi all

 

As the transition of moving everything online rolls on....

I've got to record some interviews, with one local person who's on the same site (although not necessarily with me) and one person who's remote. Ideally I'd like to get these two videos files separately, so I can edit them together with the option of making one or the other fullscreen afterwards.

 

We're Teams users, and Teams has NDI integration that I've got working, but the recording of it is a bit of a pain. Using the Newtek monitor, the file cuts every time the resolution jumps and creates a new file.

The audio also is grouped for all users and isn't selectable per user afterwards, but this may not be too much of a problem.

 

Zoom does the audio nicer, but doesn't have any individual video recording facilities. I could use two computers and full screen each individual - I have one decent computer with 3 monitors, and if I was able to drag Zoom big enough across two or more windows I might be able to do a screen recording that way?

 

I'm thinking for Teams, a workaround might be to put it into OBS as an NDI source, set that to record and it could sort out my switching resolution?

I could run two instances of OBS, one for each participant, if they play happily and don't melt my computer down...

 

I could ask the remote user to also set up an iPhone or similar, if they are able, to record themselves, then remote their video and use that?

 

Sorry this is a bit of a train of thought, but I'd be grateful of any pointers of how anyone's managing to make this work for them..

[Dave m]

I was discussing this today.Apparently the series "staged" (I haven't seen it) used the actors' phones for the audio.

If you were close enough (say the next room?) Could you run a camcorder through a capture card/ BM recorder/elgato capture into your computer while recording in camera?Is there the possibility to do the same at the other end as well? And post the SD card or Dropbox it?

We are supposed to use teams at work but prefer zoom. Teams does all sorts of flickering and reshuffling the pictures for me.Not sure if you can pin each speaker and make a recording of one individual one one computer, and the other on a second computer? I could have a play tomorrow? You might need to give each person joint host status so they can record?

Edit- if each person participating could cope with not seeing themselves, they could pin the other person? Do a local recording on their computer and send it to you? (Along with better audio?)

Edited January 11, 2021 by Dave m

[J Pearce]

Take a look at OBS.ninja - I used it to record a show that we rehearsed on Teams (with the plan to use the NDI out, but that got caught up with university IT dept...).

[timsabre]

Vmix also has a built-in way to do this but only in the more expensive versions.

 

Does obs ninja give you a talkback path to the remote person? I played about with it a while ago but I think it needed another phone call to talk to them.

[TomHoward]

I have thought about rigging up a camcorder with a capture card at our end for the webcam we have control of, and then recording in camera to double up the stream for the local copy.

 

The remote end, we don't have any control over or any means to visit or send / receive anything physical. The ideas I have for a remote recording are - encourage them to double up with an iPhone, if they're on a Mac they can easily record the webcam locally with Qucktime whilst they're still on the call, or there probably is a PC equivalent but I'm not sure about it.

Both of these will result in huge files to post and given the state of most people's phones / laptops they might be full to the brim anything - I'm not sure what 1hr of recording on an iPhone does for the storage.

 

I have actually got the NDI out of Teams working - our IT dept fortunately are helpful and have enabled it as a group policy for us. The problem I've found with it is that the bandwidth is for all users, so reduces quality dramatically if you've got a big meeting, even if there's only one person talking you care about. It would be good if you could turn on NDI out per user, rather than it encoding 1 speakers and 50 delegates watching for you. I'm not really using the NDI properly as I'm outputting and recording on the same screen, it just takes the branding off.

 

My plan for talkback is I'll just join as a 3rd person in the meeting as a 'silent partner' - and once I've got the recording going I'll turn my webcam off and shut up.

[richard]

I would second the use of OBS.ninja - very easy for the user end and does allow for the talkback etc. Would also give you individual audio feeds for each user.

 

Other option is to get them to record themselves on their laptops while on the call (could use quicktime if on a mac) then you just sync that later. Thst would be best qualilty but more complicated for the user

[richardash1981]

If you can do in-camera recording at the "local" end, I would have thought the zoom solution would be:- In-camera recording locally

- Pin the remote person in Speaker View (certainly do-able in Zoom)- Record in that zoom client, which will give you the compressed zoom video feed into a file. If you start recording after going into speaker view, it records the pinned (or spotlighted) speaker.- Record separate audio option enabled, so you have that.

Failing that, two "recording" computers join the call (with their audio and video muted), each pins one participant and records locally, and you have to sync afterwards (but can sync to common sound track).

 

[J Pearce]

Does obs ninja give you a talkback path to the remote person?

 

Easiest way is to use a 'Room' - which enables multi way chat, like zoom et al but p2p, better quality, and with individual outputs. Rooms work great with 2 people, I had issues with 3+ people where everyone had a different non-deterministic return latency from each other user (because it is p2p) which made not talking over each other problematic. Probably ok for a structured interview, less good for recording a play.

We ended up doing video over obs.ninja but audio via Teams (which wasn't great but got the job done, without needing cast to become technicians and manage heath robinson setups at home on their own).

 

 

[AndrewF]

Hi Tom,

I have been looking at this for making promo videos. Another tool you could try is https://riverside.fm/ It is aimed at simplifying doing a double-end record for your contributors by running the whole thing in Google Chrome.

 

I think it is similar technology to OBS Ninja but has the benefit of doing the recording on the local machine, then trickling up the file in the background at the end of the interview.

 

Hope that helps :)