In whatever product, site, application, extension, etc., with which you are the most comfortable (and/or mandated to use), if you also have a Microsoft 365 account --whether through your company or personally --it is easy to get actual useful information from a meeting.
This is a quick post to walk through a few scenarios to make this a reality, with updates later as needed (or as updated by Microsoft itself and its underlying platform).
Find out what platform will host the meeting.
This is most straightforward with a Microsoft Teams meeting, but I'll start with a mid-range type, like Google Meet.
Recording with Google Meet
Google Meet has its own version of recording a meeting, so use that existing functionality to generate the meeting recording. This is easy and doesn't require anything covert --unless you don't want anyone else to know that you are recording... If that is the case, I'll cover that too.
Google Meet recording feature is not free. It is a premium feature for the following Google Workspace editions:
Essentials
Business standard
Business plus
Enterprise starter
Enterprise essentials
Enterprise standard
Enterprise plus
Education plus
Teaching and learning upgrade
Workspace individual subscriber
We will assume that you have access to this functionality. So, here are the steps to get the video file of the meeting.
During the meeting/session, click on the three-dot menu you should see at the bottom-center of the screen.
Click on "Record Meeting" available at the top of the pop-up menu.
Tap on "Start Recording" form the white panel available on the right side of the screen.
You will see a dialog box asking you to get consent from the other participants of the meeting. (Side note, Georgia is a one-person consent state, meaning that if you live there, you can record the meeting without consent. Check your state first to ensure that you are allowed to record and/or if consent is required.)
Everyone knows that you are recording and no one cares/objects. Wonderful.
After you receive their consent, click "Start."
A red "REC" button at the top-left of the screen indicates the meeting is being recorded.
To stop the video recording, click "Stop recording" on the right-side panel.
A pop-up asking if you want to stop the recording will appear. Click "Stop Recording."
You've recorded via Google Meet and you have access to the generated recorded file.
Google Meet recordings are stored in Google Drive. Once you stop the recording on Google Meet, you will receive a message that tells you the recording will be saved in Google Drive. The specific Google Meet recording location is the My Drive > Meet Recordings folder. Depending on the size of the file, it may take some time for it to appear in the drive.
You will receive an email with a link to the recording once it has been processed and is ready. An email with a link to the recording will also be sent to the host of the meeting.
Once processed and present in the appropriate folder, navigate to the location, right-click the video recording file, and click "Download."
You have the file now. What to do with it?
Gathering information (via Microsoft 365)
Since this is about using capabilities that you already have, while there are multiple add-ins, extensions, free trials of utilities, etc., to work with video files and Google Meet, we want to get all of our information together and use as many provided features as possible --and in a centralized location. For now, and for me, that's Microsoft 365.
NOTE: For Google Meet "fun," check out the new stuff (like applying a SnapChat filter) here.
NOTE: If you have Zoom meetings enabled instead, go here.
Upload file
While you can put the files anywhere, for organization, a folder structure inside of Microsoft Stream allows you to get benefits specific to the location and product that Microsoft expects for video manipulations.
You can create channels and teams to support anything, but let's assume that you've got that settled. We'll start with going to Microsoft Stream.
Navigate to office.com and login with your account. (This is just the easiest way to get to your productivity apps.)
Click the "App Launcher" grid icon in the top left. The Apps sub menu will expand. Select the "Stream" icon and title. (If you don't see the title, click "All apps" to select from the entire product suite.) This will typically launch a new tab.
On the Stream home dashboard, you will see a file listing below any content that is "Recommended."
On the top left of this section, click "Upload." Navigate to the recorded file of the meeting and upload it. Depending on the size of the file, this can take a little time. (Once the file is uploaded, you can delete it from your local drive to free up your space.)
Create some metadata
If the screen did not automatically refresh on the recording itself, click on the file in the home page listing to navigate to the embedded viewer. (If you click on it this way, it will typically open another tab.)
At the bottom of the viewer, you will see the title of the meeting or file and several attributes: date, expiration, number of views, owner, and path.
Click on the expiration attribute and choose to either change the expiration date or remove it all together. (If you set the file to "No expiration," since this is saved in Microsoft 365, the organization-level retention policies will be applied in conjunction with any retention labels with which this file may be associated, which is ideal if you are in an actual business environment.)
On the right side, you will see the file metadata/video settings section. (This may be defaulted to collapsed, but you only need to click the icon to have it expand.) In this view, I have expanded the panel and each collapsible section.
On this panel, you can choose an image as the thumbnail for display or take the default image of the initial screenshot.
The "About" section is a toggle to auto-generate or edit "About" information for this video when it is shown in search results or listings. (I *think* this setting is included in searchable content from any other location.)
Transcript and captions, in this view, is toggled "On" and a file was already created. In the "new" view, though, this would be toggled to "Off" and the "Upload" button would instead say "Generate." You should toggle this value to "On" and have the file automatically generated for you. (This may take a while, but you can leave the page as it is generating the file. We will get back to this later.)
"Chapters" gives you a way to create some stopping points in the meeting. For instance, if this had tied to an agenda or was a loooonnnnggggg meeting, you can create chapters at certain breakpoints for easier navigation. If it is not toggled, set this to "On." (You can create and edit the chapters at any time.)
"Comments" controls whether or not you want to allow people to comment on this video. If you do allow for comments, these also become part of search results, and the larger Microsoft Search capabilities.
"Noise suppression" is new, and I haven't really noticed anything with it yet. HOWEVER, Microsoft did announce the new feature around noise suppression at Ignite earlier this month, and it is my thought that this setting will begin to make an impact as it is rolled out across products. I think that for now, this is a forward-looking feature flag. I usually check this box.
Those steps can be executed, edited, or modified at any point after the file is uploaded. The only thing of note in the timing is that Microsoft Search does take a moment to index the file and metadata after updating. It is still almost immediate, but the more content is created, the more this may *matter*.
Additionally, some of these settings can be defaulted at the organization level. If you are the administrator of a business subscription, you should investigate those permissions and accessibility around the default behavior, modifications to the default behavior, viewing, and/or restricting updates or visibility to these settings.
So why did we do all of this, aside from being COMPLETELY anal and a control freak? That is where Microsoft 365 --most specifically Microsoft Search, Viva Insights, and SharePoint come in.... I'll go there in a moment...
Editing the transcript
Once the transcript is generated, it will look like this (and be available to download).
For instance, I'd like to know who is talking at what point. So, I can edit that directly in this view (which is something that was also launched at Ignite). If I hover over the entry, it will allow me to edit.
So, that is done, like below.
You can see how that would get tedious though. Plus, I don't like that there is this giant paragraph thing going on, which is related to the stop-points in the file itself. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do about that from this editor. I will have to download the file and edit it there.
The downloaded file is in VTT format (which is a certain structure to text) and can be edited as long as the format is kept. You can upload it again after any changes and it will replace the existing file.
The top line of each caption is a GUID, and that is new, but not necessary for the overall file format. This is a new construct created by Microsoft in the latest version to connect these multiple entries into a single paragraph, previously not possible.
I'm going to remove the GUID from the first two complete entries...
And upload the modified VTT file...
For the record, when you do this, the previous VTT file is also retained.
This is a *feature* in the sense of being able to support multiple languages in transcripts. HOWEVER, this is a nuanced defect (according to me) in that there is not verification that you have selected a different language. The one that I created and uploaded is "English." If you know about globalization, then you know that is only one aspect of a language file. There is the country and then the locale, i.e., FR-fr (French in France) versus FR-ca (French in Canada). In this case, when I uploaded the file, I don't get to choose the extended information...
Obviously, for themselves, Microsoft does default the server information and its setting to the correct values respectively but does not provide the same option when uploading a file.
It will also let me continue to upload the same file and the same language selection. It just duplicates them on the server.
It also lets more than one of them be enabled or "On." I assume that it takes the first one in the case of multiples, and maybe takes the most specific language version if possible and exists, i.e., would choose "English (United States)" over "English" but that is not tested.
Now that there are multiple transcripts though, the new window has a combo box for selection.
With all of them shown...
So, again, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. One person's defect is another person's feature.
Back to the original point though, when I choose my own "English" uploaded version, having removed those GUIDs, the resulting view online in the transcript now no longer has the paragraphs and instead shows the normal 2-line limit and scale for a strictly formatted VTT file. (Backwards-compatibility, anyone?)
Comments