How to turn Zoom recordings into short clips

Step 1: export the recording as a file

Whether you recorded to the Zoom cloud or locally, you'll end up with an MP4 (cloud recordings can be downloaded from your Zoom account; local recordings save to your machine after the call). That MP4 is all you need — you don't have to re-record or transcribe anything yourself.

The same approach works for Google Meet, Teams, and most call recorders: get the video file out, and the rest is the same.

Step 2: let AI find the moments

The slow way is scrubbing the timeline for the decisions, soundbites, and aha moments. The fast way is to let a tool transcribe the call and rank every segment, so the highlights surface instead of you hunting for them.

Upload the MP4 to Nova and it transcribes the call, scores each moment, and shows you a shortlist — so you skip the intros, the silences, and the 'can everyone see my screen?' and go straight to what's worth clipping.

Step 3: reframe and caption for the feed

Gallery-view calls are the wrong shape for socials and the wrong framing — a grid of boxes reads as nothing on a phone. Nova's active-speaker tracking follows whoever's talking and reframes them into a clean vertical 9:16 clip, then burns in word-by-word captions so it lands on muted LinkedIn and social feeds.

From there you can trim, brand, and export — or send an EDL/FCPXML timeline to your editor for a final polish. A long internal call becomes a stack of external-ready clips in minutes.

A note on consent

Call recordings often include other people. Only clip and publish moments you have the right to share — internal decisions, customer quotes used with permission, your own talking points. When in doubt, keep identifying moments out and lead with your own contribution. See Nova's privacy and security docs for how uploads are handled and deleted.