Why is local recording of own camera of poor quality?

[Vana]

I use Zoom to present online lectures to audiences of 20-80 people. The lectures are a mix of me speaking to the camera and presenting slides to the audience. I record the Zoom sessions locally using Zoom's built-in recording feature.

The image quality of the recordings during the sections when I am speaking to the camera is far inferior to the actual image quality of the camera. I have followed all of the tutorials on how to set the settings in Zoom for highest recording quality, but there is still a huge difference between the HD camera I am using and the recorded result. The sections where I am sharing slides tends to be of high quality, it is only the camera sections that have low quality.

The problem is the same whether I run Zoom on a lower-spec PC or one with a higher spec CPU and a good GPU.

However, if I start a meeting and perform the exact same steps without inviting any participants, the recording is of high quality. Why is this? If the recording is performed locally, surely the connection bandwidth and the number of participants connected should not affect the camera image quality of a locally connected camera?

[eduzoom2]

wow they ignored all questions - same issue posted several times, no answer, no a single moderator around. Is there a support community manager handling this forum at all? 

why spend half a million USD in a Khoros platform with no one to manage it?

[ericelc]

I have a feeling that, even when recording locally, zoom is actually recording the video signal that it is uploaded to  their servers, instead of directly recording the original video signal that is being generated by the webcam/computer. This would be perfectly fine if this is how they did it when cloud recording, but it seems that the process is almost the same, the key differences being; where the files are being saved, i.e. their servers or your computer; and the number of different views that are recorded.

I would love if zoom would provide some feedback about this.