For one of our online courses, we wanted to include some video testimonials with former students to discuss how the class prepared them for the real world. The only problem was that some of former students we wished to talk to lived in California – not particularly conducive for a quick recording session in our studio on campus. Instead, we used the video conferencing tool Zoom to facilitate the call and I used Camtasia to do a screen recording of the interview. While the concept is simple, I found some tips that can make the execution feel a bit more professional.
First, the basics of remote video recording still apply. The subject sat at a desk that faced a window which provided a lot of natural light. It was also around 7am in his time zone so it was pretty quiet as well.
In some scenarios, to get the best possible video quality, I’ll ask the subject to record themselves with an application like Quicktime and then send me the video file. While this helps bypass the compression of streaming video and screen-capture, it comes with a couple drawbacks. First, I as the video producer don’t have direct control over the actual recording process which is a risk. Second, subjects are usually doing you a favor just by agreeing to the interview, and the less you ask of them the better.
Ruling this option out, there’s two other choices. Using Zoom’s built-in recording tool, or using a third-party screen capture tool like Camtasia. They each have their plusses and minuses. Zoom’s built-in tool allows the user to simply hit record within the interface and save the file either to their local computer or the cloud. This will generate both a video file and an audio-only file. However, if the meeting unexpectedly shuts down or the conversion process is interrupted, the recording files could become corrupted and non-recoverable. With Camtasia, the recording is isolated from the conferencing tool so I can better trust that it will record successfully, even if the call drops.
Recording with Camtasia does present another problem. If anything shows up on my screen, be it an email notification, or my mouse moving and activating the Zoom room tools, that is all recorded as well. Zoom’s local recording tool will capture just the video feed.
For the purposes of this video, I would just be showing the subject and would edit out the interviewer’s questions. For this reason, I wanted to make sure that Zoom only gave me the video feed of my subject and did not automatically switch video feeds based on who was talking, which it does by default as part of the Active Speaker layout. By using the Pin function, I can pin the subject’s video feed to my interface so that I will only be seeing the subject’s video, whether I record by screen capture or by local recording. This won’t affect other participants’ views, but it’s also important to note that it would not affect the cloud recording view either.
While facilitating the interview, I muted my microphone to ensure no accidental sounds might come from my end. And because we would be editing out the interviewer’s questions, we coached the subject to rephrase each question in his answer. For example, if we asked “Why is programming important to you?” the subject might start their response with “Programming is important to me because…”
Ultimately, it was just a simple matter of starting the video conference, pinning the subject’s video, and hitting record on Camtasia. From there I could just sit back while the interviewer and subject spoke. Like a lot of video production, proper planning and research will make your job a lot easier when it’s actually time to turn the camera on.
