How to Record Video Case Study Interviews with Zoom

Advertising that comes straight from champions of your brand is shown to be considerably more effective than standard business generated promotion. Data collected from Nielsen shows that 84% of customers trust recommendations from other people above all other sources of advertising. You can capitalize on this trend by quickly and easily creating video case studies using Zoom. 

What is a video case study?

A video case study is a piece of recorded content that highlights the story of one of your customers. While some marketers create case studies in a written format, video case studies can often be more engaging for your audience. Video case studies are most frequently structured as in-person interviews, where you or a company representative ask structured interview questions of your customer. With the help of technology, these video case studies can be captured through video conferencing, even when the interviewer and interviewee are in completely different states. Zoom calls are quickly becoming one of the most popular formats for video case studies.

How to prepare for recording a video case study in Zoom

Once you’ve contacted your customer to arrange a case study interview, you’ll need to do some prep work in advance. There are some best practices to follow when prepping for an interview — for instance, if the video or audio quality are poor, you may need to reshoot the case study, resulting in delays and frustration for your customer. To ensure you can produce a high-quality video on your first try, include the following steps in your preparation.

Get your recording settings right

Lighting has a huge impact on the quality of your video, and it can take some time to find a good balance. Start by capturing a short test video recording in your Zoom using the same location, lighting conditions, and time of day that you plan to record your case study. Light filtering in through windows can impact the amount of light you’ll need in your room, and you may need to pair desk lights with overhead lights to find a balance that doesn’t leave you looking washed out or blurry on camera.

If your audio sounds choppy, fuzzy, or unclear, your audience may not be willing to listen to the entire clip. Low audio quality can also leave your prospects wondering if you offer low-quality services in other aspects of your business. To avoid unwanted misunderstandings or negative assumptions, make sure you have a solid microphone with a headset. Using a microphone built into a laptop isn’t recommended, as these microphones can pick up ambient sound in the room and can also cause feedback from your computer speakers. As for the video quality, record a short snippet in advance and listen back to the audio file to make sure the result is crisp and clean.

Use a strong Internet connection

The strength of your network connection has a significant impact on the quality of your Zoom video chat. Even if you are recording the interview for later playback, your recording can become choppy or pixelated if you experience internet lag. To avoid this, plan to record in a location with a strong connection, and use a wired connection if possible. If your only option is wireless, stay as close to your wireless router as possible, and reboot your modem, router, and computer shortly before the interview to minimize any technical issues.

Preparing the interview

While you don’t want the interview to appear overly scripted, an unstructured conversation can be tedious for your viewers and distract from the overall story. List out your interview questions in advance, and practice asking them in a natural, conversational way. As you are practicing, consider the order you will use during the interview to build a natural story flow for your case study. It’s also a good idea to send your question list to your interviewee in advance, both to aid in their preparation and to avoid putting them on the spot.

How to record a video case study in Zoom

Once you’ve done your preparation work, recording the actual video is fairly straightforward. Before you start the interview, discuss any last-minute concerns with your interviewee. If they are relaxed and comfortable on camera, this will make for a better recording for your viewers. You may even decide to practice a “dry run” question before you officially conduct the interview.

When you are ready to begin the Zoom recording, click the round “Record” button at the bottom of the Zoom toolbar. Zoom meetings provide two recording features – you can record directly to your computer or to the Zoom cloud. However, your Zoom cloud storage may be limited depending on your plan and account settings.

After your video case study interview is complete, click the “stop recording” button to end the Zoom video. By starting and stopping the recording promptly, you can avoid needing any major edits after the interview is complete.

Finalizing your video case study

After recording the interview, you’ll need to export the recording and prepare it to share with your community. The exact steps for finalizing your video will vary based on your selected recording settings and your ideal format for sharing your video case study.

Exporting the recording

Zoom stores completed recordings in different locations, depending on which option you chose when creating the recording. If you selected “Record on this Computer”, you can find the completed recording on your computer’s hard drive. Zoom creates a separate folder for every meeting named with the day and time the meeting originated. All recordings, screen share captures, and chat logs from a meeting are stored in the meeting’s designated Zoom folder. By default, Zoom stores all of your meeting folders in a master folder named “Zoom”, which is usually stored in your computer’s master Documents folder. Depending on your computer’s download settings, however, the master “Zoom” folder may be stored in a different location on your machine.

If you selected the “Record to the Cloud” option, your recordings will be in your online Zoom account. To access them, you’ll sign in at Zoom.us and click on “Recordings”, then click on the “More” button next to the recording to download the files.

Adding captions for increased accessibility

After you’ve downloaded the raw video files, you may want to add captions to your video case study before sharing it with your audience. Adding captions will make your video case study more accessible to a wider audience, including viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Additionally, studies show that 85% of videos on Facebook are watched on mute, so captions can help your viewers get the main takeaways even when watching without sound. Videos with captions are also shown to have additional benefits, including higher SEO boosts and longer watch times than videos without captions.  

Fortunately, you don’t need to waste time with manual captioning or costly transcription services. With Rev, you can upload your video file directly to the platform and have an expertly formatted caption file within 24 hours. Rev’s captioning services cost only $1.25 per audio minute and are guaranteed to be 99% accurate, giving you a cost-effective way to get the most out of your video case studies.