Zoom local recording conversion speeds

[VadimK]

What determines the speed of conversion of local recordings. I regularly record and convert meetings on 5-7 computers at a time. I have various computers with various specs, but it seems like higher spec doesnt always convert faster. Which computer specs and settings determine the speed of the local recording conversion? For example I have a 5 year old dual core Lenovo thinkpad with 16 gb ram and 7th generation i5 which processes faster then an 11th gen i7 with 32 gb ram?

Trying to figure this out as I buy machines specifically for this purpose

[RN]

Hey @VadimK, when converting the local recording are the two meetings that are being converted the exact same in terms of length of the meeting, shared content during the meeting, quality (HD), etc.?

I'm unaware of the specs required of the converting process for local recordings however, as long as your system meets our requirements to run Zoom I don't think the speed of the converting process should differ much. Did you notice a huge difference in the time of the converting process of your local recording?

Assuming its based of the number of processes your computer is running whether it be applications open in the background or not which would determine the conversion process time (I think). You can monitor the consumption of Zoom for your CPU in Task Manager. Also, the possibility of the length of your meeting -- which usually is double the time to processing.

I can do some more digging to find you a more accurate answer! 

[VadimK]

I record the same length of content at the same time on many computers and there are drastic differences between them but the two lenovo T14s with i7/32 gb ram are by far the slowest even though they have some of the best specs, and I don't run anything else on them except for the zoom.

For example, my 3 or 4 years old Lenovo thinkpad t590 with a slower older processor and half the ram can convert a 1 hour zoom in about 20 minutes and the t14s would take 35 for the same thing.

And then I have a 2014 macbook pro with very low specs that does it even faster.

My main PC with i9/64gb ram etc... Can convert a 1 hour recording in just a few minutes.

All zoom accounts have the exact same settings and are doing the exact same things. I would love to find out how to speed up the slower machines, as it greatly affects my workflow.

[HennoT]

Check the Task Manager for which resource is in use the most while you transcode.  I suspect the CPU but maybe it's GPU. And I also suspect that there are one or two single thread processss doing the processing, so it doesn't matter how many cores the CPU has, what matters is how fast is one core. That you can verify from Passmark's website by looking single thread score.

[joanno]

This year the local conversion of Zoom videos has become incredibly slow.  I'm using the same machine in my classroom to record and then convert my recording.  It used to finish before my next class 30 minutes later.  It often no longer does.  I have to copy the unconverted videos to my laptop to convert later.  I have an XPS 15 9530 with 64 GB of memory, Intel i9-13900H Processor with 14 cores, 3.7 TB disk space available, and NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB.  What used to convert in few minutes, now can take 20 minutes or more.  I don't get this new slowness.

I can confirm that Zoom is running one thread.  It is using 370.7 MB of memory.  57% of my memory is free.  It is using about 10-16% of my CPU and writing about 0.1 MB per second to disk.  Is the conversion being throttled somehow?  If there is some parameter I can change to give the converter more resources, I'd like to know what it is.

[HennoT]

Did you have a monitor upgrade with higher resolution or someone sharing their screen has a hi-res screen?

[joanno]

I'm doing the recording at school where the monitor resolution has remained the same.  The display on the XPS 15 is higher resolution.  I check the monitor resolution at school if that would help.

I took some measurements today as the XPS converted the videos taken at school:

Two double click files to convert with sizes 629,827 KB and 1,458 KB produced a converted video of size 161,526 KB in 36 minutes.

Two double click files to convert with sizes 726,177 KB and 1,671 KB produced a converted video of size 180,683 KB in 31 minutes.