Client Side Recording: Lync 2013
Meeting recordings are a core component of Microsoft’s Unified Communications solution. They have a rich legacy in Microsoft’s conferencing products and service offerings and fulfill a key requirement for many companies and individuals.
Generally speaking, recording consists of enabling a meeting participant to capture the information and activity in a meeting in a format that can be played back or shared with others. Crucially, recordings are about getting value from meetings afterthe meetings have concluded.
Lync’s meeting recordings are an entirely client-side feature which enables all participants in a meeting who have permissions to record to do so. All audio, active-speaker’s video, content and Instant Messages are captured in Lync recordings and presented from the perspective of a virtual participant in the meeting. This ensures that Lync recordings are neutral in their presentation and will not typically differ for users recording the same meeting on disparate endpoints.
While Lync recordings strive to be accurate in presenting content, audio, video and IMs exchanged during a meeting, they must not be treated as a compliance or archiving mechanism. Our intention is to provide a shareable, accurate and complete view of the meeting to those recording the meeting – nothing more or less.
Recording Format
With Lync 2013, we wanted to achieve the following goals with recordings:
- Ensure cross-platform and device support
- Become more standards compliant
- Enable we are well setup to take advantage of native hardware support for encoding purposes in the near to medium term future
With these goals in mind, Lync 2013 recordings are now available in the mp4 format. This is different from Lync 2010 where they are available in a Lync-specific .crec format for rich immediate playback and wmv format for distribution. The reasons compelling this change are detailed as follows:
1. Having two disparate formats for Lync 2010 recordings ( .crec and wmv) was confusing and introduced greater complexity than intended. The move to a single format (mp4) ensures ease of use and the elimination of confusion around the utility of one format over the other.
2. MP4 is widely supported on mobile devices, tablets and operating systems. WMV does not enjoy the level of support across platforms that mp4 does. CREC format was only supported on the Windows platform and could only run on Lync 2010.
3. MP4 is largely emerging as the industry standard.
4. The codecs required to support mp4 (.H264 codecs) are expected to receive hardware support for encoding purposes. That would help reduce the time and resources it takes to produce a Lync recording.
5. When compared to the .crec format, mp4s are easily distributable because they are well contained in a single file whereas .crec format requires multiple files to run. MP4s are much easier to upload and share.
Immediate Publishing
In Lync 2010, you had to wait for long while after the recording was stopped for the wmv file to be available for playback. This prevented you from being able to distribute your recordings within a few minutes after the meeting. With Lync 2013, this should no longer be an issue: recording mp4s are available only a few minutes after the recording is stopped. This would enable you to consume and share your recordings within a few minutes after the meeting instead of waiting much longer.
The process of capturing the meeting content, audio, active speaker video and IMs and converting them to mp4 format now happens during the meeting itself. In the best case, meeting recordings are available within the first 5 minutes after the recording is stopped! Previously, this process would begin after the recording was stopped resulting in the publishing (to wmv) process taking about as long as the recording duration itself. This process of mp4 generation during the meeting itself is referred to as ‘immediate publishing’.
Capture and publishing of meeting modalities (audio, video, content, IMs) in to a recording mp4 is CPU-intensive. During the meeting itself, it is undesirable for the recording processes to result in degrading the meeting experience. To prevent this from happening, the publishing process for recording mp4s runs in a low-priority thread which does not aggressively compete for resources with the meeting experience itself. In addition, when the device is operating on battery power, ‘immediate publishing’ is suspended and the publishing process will resume after the device is plugged back in to power. This helps conserve precious resources and power while the device is not plugged in.
The Recording mp4
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The characteristics of the Lync 2013 recording mp4 can be summarized as follows:
- Most recording mp4s are available within a few minutes after the recording is stopped.
- ‘Immediate publishing’ is paused while the device is on battery power. This is to converse battery resources during the meeting because the capture and publishing of the recording material is CPU-intensive.
- All modalities shared in a meeting (audio, video, content, IMs) are automatically captured in the recording generated as a result of ‘immediate publishing’. You can still exclude certain modalities from the recording mp4 by re-publishing the recoding and choosing the modalities to exclude (details in the next section).
- Unlike Lync 2010 recording wmvs, recording mp4s are now of a fixed resolution (800x600)
- The average bitrate for the mp4s is 25 kbps.
- The frame-rate for the mp4s is 10 fps
Republishing a Recording
The Lync Recording Manager is your one-stop-shop for managing your Lync 2013 recordings. You can perform various tasks such as Playing your recording, Browsing to the recording mp4 location, Renaming the recording, Deleting the mp4 and (Re)Publishing the recording.
Publishing a chosen recording will regenerate the recording. This can help under the following circumstances:
1. The previous attempt at generating a recording mp4 results in an error—while not a common occurrence, the mp4 generation process can fail. Under most circumstances, publishing the recording again will help resolve the issues.
2. You want to view the recording mp4 without certain modalities (audio, video, content, IM).
In order to publish the recording again, please follow the steps outlines below:
(i) Open the Lync Recording Manager
(ii) Select the recording mp4 you want to republish
(iii) Click on Publish
(iv) From the Save and Publish dialog, select Options to choose modalities to select/unselect
(v) Choose the modalities you want to choose to publish in the recording mp4
(vi) Click Ok
Note: upon re-publishing the recording, the previous mp4 will be overwritten by the new instance. If you want to generate multiple copies of the same meeting recording please make a copy of each mp4 manually.
Lync Recordings increase your productivity
Lync recordings have been designed to help increase productivity and efficiency of your meeting experiences. We believe you should not have to worry about missing that critical bit of information during the meeting and keep wondering how to recall. You can not only use your Lync recordings for personal purposes but also share the meeting experience with those who were not able to make it or to a wider audience in general. With the introduction of ‘immediate publishing’ and availability of higher quality recording output, you will find the experience more efficient and fulfilling.
Jehangir Amjad
Program Manager, Lync Client
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
nice article thank youAnonymous
January 01, 2003
It should read.... The characteristics of the Lync 2013 recording mp4 can be summarized as follows: Slow Unreadable video Great job Lync team at taking your product from good to terrible.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Just experienced the new resolution or the first time... awful and not useful at 800-600. I had used Lync recording in the past for quick training snapshots.... not good if the recipient can read it.Anonymous
January 09, 2013
Why is there fixed resolution 800x600? We use Lync as online training tool and provide recording to those unable to attend, but I'd really need higher resolution. Almost everyone has 16:9 monitor with at least 1366x768 resolution, so 800x600 looks ... weird. Thanks.Anonymous
January 12, 2013
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January 30, 2013
Another agreement. Please, please, please switch to a 16:9 aspect ratio. We produce training videos from our meetings for a couple hundred thousand workstations all having wide aspect ratio display devices. Being able to control the resolution (HD vs. less) would be nice too, but aspect ratio being wide is more important than anything else since we have to re-edit and publish with 3rd party tool to convert from 4:3 to 16:9 - be nice if you could choose (4:3 vs. 16:9) so as t satisfy all users. Please recognize that 4:3 is legacy at this point.Anonymous
March 12, 2013
While I agree with the other comments, I also am confused why you have removed the ability to set a start time and end time when Re-Publishing the content. As someone who frequently records and publishes meetings, the one thing that I always have to do is the trim the original recording. We start recording a few minutes before the meeting starts and we want to trim that up front wasted time from the recording we archive. This was a FANTASTIC feature of the Lync 2010 client and now it is gone. I had to uninstall the Lync 2013 client after I realized this trim feature was missing. I do appreciate that the meetings are now recorded in MP4 and that they happen almost instantly. Nice work!Anonymous
March 26, 2013
Using the Lync 2010 client our organization routinely recorded conference calls that included screen sharing that last approximately 1 hour. The .wmv file produced usually is in the range of 50 Mb. Since I've started using the 2013 Lync client the same one hour with screen sharing is producing a 260 Mb MP4 file. The file size is now so large it is proving impractical to post to our central SharePoint site. The value of Lync recording has fallen significantly for us.Anonymous
April 04, 2013
How the heck do you save the recording as a .wmv file? This was so easy in 2010. Now I can't even find an option to do this anymore. Does the Lync team not like the Windows Media team?Anonymous
April 24, 2013
I can see the need to keep up to innovations but moving from wmv to mp4 is crating huge issues for users. I am looking to uninstall Lync 2013 and go back to Lync 2010 until I can save mtg in wmv for distribution. Mp4 format is not distributable w/ the size it generates. If you have a solution, please let us know.Anonymous
June 11, 2013
This move is a complete failing on the product, while most of Lync 2013 shines, this feature is useless in it's current state now, there is no point in recording a presentation when you cannot read the text, why this has been changed, and why it was allowed to roll out is beyond me.Anonymous
August 08, 2013
Just discovered this terrible feature. When recording program sharing from my wide screen, no-one can read anything on the recorded session as the shared content now has been letterboxed with white banners top and bottom. Just terrible. I echo Tomas' comments.Anonymous
September 03, 2013
I can appreciate the fast conversion after the recording has been stopped and the MP4 format, but I think the Lync Recording of the previous version was one of the best things I've seen. If meetings are sometimes boring, a recorded meeting is approximately three times so boring. With the Lync Recording it was easy to jump between spoken comments, slides and other share media. Now all you can do is fastforward and hope that you won't miss anything important.Anonymous
October 19, 2013
I just recorded a presentation this past Friday on Lync 2013, and the low resolution makes it almost useless. The video framerate, resolution, and bitrate should be configurable.Anonymous
October 30, 2013
This is a huge step backwards! The crec format was interactive, and I could jump to specific people, etc. The shading was also much higher quality. with the new mp4 format, shared screens are not readable. I love most of the features of 2013, but due to the limitation I wall most likely have to switch back to 2010 for meetings...Anonymous
November 11, 2013
What a disappointment. Have to switch back to 2010 because of how blurry and large the recording files are. Kind of mind boggling this was released functioning this way and still no CU to date addressing it. Can we get a reply from the team on this???Anonymous
November 14, 2013
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November 25, 2013
The low resolution of 800x600 makes the recording feature nearly useless now. Big disappointment.Anonymous
December 03, 2013
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December 29, 2013
Pingback from Improving Quality of Meeting Recordings - Information Store - ExchangeBlog - TechNetKlubAnonymous
January 29, 2014
Having lost the feature to set a start time and stop time for a publish operation will complicate and slow-down the operations to clean a record... This feature was great in 2010.Anonymous
March 31, 2014
Lync - utterly useless programme. Can't even edit the recording. Another Lync failing.Anonymous
May 01, 2014
Chiming in with some of the others - I like the mp4 format, but I need to CONVERT some recordings to WMV for upload to an older streaming media server. Can you at least recommend a third-party product, if Microsoft can't do it internally?Anonymous
July 08, 2014
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August 28, 2014
Is there a way to re-publish as a Windows Media File? I have some folks that are not upgraded to 2013 yet and are unable to open the mp4 file.Anonymous
September 26, 2014
I need to disable the option Browse and Publish in the Lync recording manager....Can you please guide me through it.Anonymous
October 09, 2014
Why is it not possible to record calls between two persons? Why does it have to be a conference call (or some kind of screen sharing) for recording facility to get enabled?Anonymous
December 19, 2014
Thanks for the post.Anonymous
January 15, 2015
This is an awesome addition to Office 365 tenants and Office 365 Education customers and is in the processAnonymous
January 30, 2015
How do I record a Lync web meeting with audio through the phone instead of VOiP?Anonymous
March 27, 2015
Thanks for sharing this blog,but this feature is useless. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.killermobile.totalrecall>recording appAnonymous
August 07, 2015
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August 07, 2015
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I have stopped my recordings and none take 5 minutes or less to process. Not only that I cannot hit publish.....everything is non functional. HELP!Anonymous
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