Recording in-person meetings with Krisp – Workarounds
This article explains techniques for using Krisp to record in-person meetings, despite the tool being primarily designed for virtual conferencing. It presents three main approaches: creating a virtual bridge through a conferencing app, using your laptop as a meeting observer, or connecting dedicated audio hardware. The article covers implementation steps for each method, best practices, post-meeting processing, limitations, and privacy considerations.
Why record in-person meetings?
Recording in-person meetings creates an accurate record of discussions and decisions. It allows absent team members to catch up, provides material for detailed notes, ensures accountability for action items, and serves as a reference for future meetings on similar topics.
Understanding Krisp's primary design
Krisp is an AI meeting assistant designed for virtual meetings on platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. It offers AI noise cancellation, meeting transcription, AI-powered summarization, and secure cloud storage. While not directly supporting in-person meeting recording, creative approaches can adapt Krisp's capabilities for face-to-face conversations.
Workaround 1: Create a virtual bridge
You can transform your in-person meeting into a format Krisp processes by creating a virtual bridge.
Set up a meeting in your preferred conferencing app. Connect a conference microphone or use your laptop's built-in mic to capture room audio. Configure Krisp Microphone and Krisp Speaker as your audio devices in the app. Join the virtual meeting alone or have participants join with audio muted. Start recording through Krisp and conduct your meeting normally.
This approach works well for small to medium rooms where a single microphone captures everyone clearly.
Workaround 2: The laptop as observer method
This simpler approach treats your laptop as a meeting participant that observes and records.
Place your laptop in the center of the meeting table. Start a new meeting in any conferencing platform. Configure Krisp as both microphone and speaker. Start Krisp's recording feature and conduct your meeting, speaking clearly to ensure all participants are captured.
A product manager could place their laptop at the center of a design review, with Krisp capturing the entire conversation for absent team members.
Workaround 3: Dedicated audio hardware connection
For higher audio quality, connect dedicated audio equipment to your computer.
You'll need a conference room microphone (preferably omnidirectional), an audio interface or adapter for computer connection, and a laptop with Krisp installed.
Link your conference microphone to your laptop via the audio interface. Set the external microphone as your input device. Create a meeting in your conferencing app. Configure Krisp as your audio processor. Start recording and check audio levels before your actual meeting begins.
This setup serves larger conference rooms or situations where audio clarity is critical, such as board meetings or client presentations.
Best practices for in-person meeting recording
Always test your setup before the actual meeting. Inform participants that the meeting is being recorded. Position microphones strategically to capture all speakers. Ask participants to speak one at a time and project their voices. Have participants identify themselves before speaking. Consider a system for indicating when someone wants to speak.
Post-meeting processing
After recording, find your transcript and recording on the My Meetings page. Review the AI-generated transcript for accuracy. Use Krisp's AI to create meeting summaries. Identify and assign tasks from the discussion. Distribute relevant information to all stakeholders.
Krisp provides 5GB of secure, encrypted cloud storage for recordings.
Potential limitations
Room acoustics and participant distance affect audio quality. Krisp may struggle to identify different speakers in a room. In-person meetings often have more ambient noise than online meetings. These workarounds require additional preparation time.
Example scenario: Quarterly planning meeting
During a quarterly planning meeting with department heads, the marketing director could place a laptop in the center of the table, create a Zoom meeting configured with Krisp, start recording before discussions begin, conduct the planning session normally, then use Krisp to generate a detailed summary with action items, and share the recording, transcript, and summary with all department members.
This ensures everyone stays aligned on quarterly goals, even those who couldn't attend.
Privacy and legal considerations
Always inform participants that the meeting is being recorded. Comply with local recording laws, which vary by location. Establish clear guidelines about sharing recordings. Ensure recordings are stored securely.
