Sharing a video clip in your meeting or webinar is easier than ever with the built-in video player for shared content. Video files can be opened within Zoom’s built-in video player and shared, without other participants viewing the playback controls. Sharing your video with the built-in player, instead of as part of a shared screen or application, improves the quality of shared videos, providing a smoother and more stable viewing experience for your viewers.

If you need to share a video from a video sharing website, share your screen and optimize it for video.

This article covers:

• How to share your recorded video in a meeting
• How to use the playback controls
• How video sharing compares to other sharing options

Prerequisites for sharing a recorded video with sound during a meeting

• Zoom desktop client
  • Windows: 5.4.3 or higher
  • macOS: 5.4.3 or higher
• Processor
  • 4-cores or higher
• Network Bandwidth
  • At least 1.5Mbps uplink and downlink for full screen HD
• Supported files
  • MOV or MP4 video file
    Note: Only the H.264 AVC codec for both mov and mp4 videos is supported. 
• Signed-in to your Zoom account 

How to share your recorded video in a meeting

1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client. 
2. Start or join a Zoom meeting.
3. Click Share Screen  located in your meeting controls.
4. Switch to the Advanced tab, and then select Video . 
5. Click Share. 
   Your system file browser will open for you to select the video file to open. 
6. Navigate to and select the video you wish to share, then click Open. 
   The video will now open within Zoom and be visible to attendees. 

Notes:

• When using this feature, Optimize for video clip is automatically enabled, which is generally recommended for sharing videos but also restricts and downscales the resolution to 1080/720 to provide improved framerate. This can be manually disabled, which will allow for higher resolution, but this should only be used in situations where framerate is less important.
• You must be signed in to the desktop client to have this option. 

How to use the playback controls

While sharing the video, you will have some common playback controls, which are not visible to other meeting participants. The sharer will have the following controls: 

• Play/Pause: Start or pause the playback of the video. 
• Elapsed time/total video length: Shows the current elapsed time of video playback, and the total length of the video file. 
• Playback slider: Allows you to skip to other points of the video playback range
• Volume: Allows you to adjust the volume of the video being shared. 
• Fullscreen: Allows you to make the video full-screen for you and viewers. 

How video sharing compares to other sharing options

When using the option to share your desktop or an application, the video resolution is dependent upon CPU usage, screen resolution, graphics card, and OS graphic system capabilities. Additionally, when a video is larger than 1080p, Zoom automatically downgrades the resolution to 1080p (or 720p), in order to optimize the content while minimizing the required bandwidth. Depending on how the video is shared, such as sharing a specific application or sharing only a portion of your screen, it may require additional CPU resources, which can further affect the overall quality of both the video share and the meeting for the user who is sharing.

However, when using the video share option, Zoom encodes the video from the file directly and shares it, effectively bypassing some of the limiting factors with standard content sharing. Allowing the Zoom client to handle the encoding and sharing minimizes CPU usage for the participant who is sharing, which allows for higher frame rates and smoother video playback.