Working with Lync 2013 Meeting Recordings

When you record a Lync meeting, Microsoft Lync 2013 saves meeting recordings as MPeg4 (MP4) files. It is possible to edit these recordings and save them in a variety of formats for different uses. To edit and convert Lync recordings I use Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, which is part of the Windows Live Essentials bundle. (Search Bing for Windows Live Essentials Download and make sure you download it from the official Microsoft.com download site).

When you open Move Maker you are presented with a blank project:

To add your Lync meeting recording, either click the "Click here to browse for videos and photos" link in the right pane, or click the "Add videos and photos" button in the ribbon.

You can browse to the folder that contains your recording. It will be in your My Videos/Lync Recordings folder:

Here I'm selecting the recording of the Skype team All Hands meeting (yes it was a real meeting!). Click the recording you want and click Open.

Now you can use all the features of Movie Maker to change your recording. But this time I just want to "top and tail" it – cut the start and end off to make the recording start just as the speaker starts and end when the meeting finished:

I've set the cursor to the point I want the recording to start and then clicked the "Set start point" option in the Editing chunk of the ribbon. The data before my cursor position will be removed from the recording. Note that this is non-destructive – the original file will remain the same even after all my editing. I can then do the same for the "Set end point. If you make a mistake, click the Undo button and nothing is lost.

When your recording is as you want it, you need to save it. There are two save options in Movie Maker. Save Project and Save Movie. Save Project is in the File Menu:

Use "Save Project" to save details of all the changes you have made in your editing session. Later you can open the Project and continue editing. The Project file can only be opened in Movie Maker.

"Save Movie" produces the final Movie file that you can send to other people or share on YouTube etc.

To save the movie, go to the Home ribbon and click the down arrow just below the "Save movie" option, or choose File Save Movie:

There are many options you can try, or you can choose Create custom setting:

All the options are beyond the scope of this short article, but if you are interested, drop me a comment and I may add more details in a future article. If you want to experiment with settings to see how they affect the final video, one good tip is to base settings on existing files. To find out what settings are used in various video files, use Windows Explorer to look at the properties of the original recording or other video file. Right click on the file in Windows Explorer and choose the Properties option:

Now click the Details tab and you will see the Video and Audio details:

Note for example that Lync recordings are recorded at 10 frames per second. Normal video is recorded at 25 frames per second (or 29 frames per second in the US), so it would be worth setting the Frame Rate (Frames Per Second) setting in the Move Maker Custom Settings dialog to 10 frames per second. Anything more just increases the size of the file but does not increase quality.

If you want to see what settings a particular Save Movie option in Movie Maker is using, hover your mouse pointer over the option and a pop-up panel will show the settings:

For this example, I've chosen my preferred movie type (I chose "For Computer"). Now I get the choice of saving the file as an MPEG4 file or a Windows Media Video file (WMV). MP4 is rapidly becoming the file type of choice, but many people still use WMV, so the choice is yours.

The new recording file will be saved in the folder you chose. Once it has been saved, which may take some time (be patient – Movie Maker is doing a lot of work here!), you can check the size and quality of the file.

If you are experimenting to find the best file size vs quality I would recommend taking a recording and making a test version of the file trimmed to about 5 minutes. Then you can save the file in different formats to see which one you like the best. Saving a 5 minute file will be much quicker than saving the complete recording. Once you hit on your preferred format, you can then save the full recorded meeting project in that format.