Known Issue: Multiple short recordings for my Zoom meeting

Issue/Question

• Some Zoom users, upon reviewing their recordings for a meeting, may find a series of extra short videos related to that meeting before the full length recording appears.

Environment

• Oregon State
  • Zoom

Cause

Two settings in Zoom combine to cause this behavior:

1. A meeting is configured to allow participants to join before the host. This is not recommended as it allows for behavior such as "Zoombombing"
2. A meeting is configured to automatically start recording.

Combined, these two settings will produce a new recording for every participant that joins a meeting before the host. Each recording will last from the moment the paricipant joins until the host joins. All Zoom recordings go to the host who originally established the meeting and so, with caps of 300 participants or more, a host can get hundreds of recordings.

The host's full length recording will only begin when they have joined the meeting.

As each of these recordings is short, they will process and reach the user's media collection before the full length recording reaches the host, so it's possible that a host will only see the short recordings in their collection and be left to wonder why they didn't get their full length recording. The full length recording will reach the host once it is done processing.

Resolution

As a security precaution, it is recommended that Join before host: be set to OFF in the host's settings. This will prevent the creation of the superfluous videos.

If the host already has superfluous videos, they can be discarded.