How to Edit Zoom Recordings for Better Quality (Step-by-Step Guide)

Quick Summary

Learn how to edit Zoom recordings for clear, professional audio using Zoom and Cleanvoice’s AI-powered Studio Sound tool. Remove background noise, remove reverb, filler words, stutters, and harsh breaths, balance volume, and create clear, polished recordings.

Whether for meetings, interviews, or podcasts, Cleanvoice makes editing a matter of minutes. Explore more audio editing tips on our blog.

Struggling to Make Your Zoom Recordings Sound Professional?

Zoom is a go-to platform for recording meetings, podcast shows, or client calls. But poor audio quality is often a downside. Muffled voices, echoey effects, background noise, and uneven volume. These audio issues distract listeners. Repurposing content also becomes difficult.

Many teams spend hours trying to clean up recordings manually, only to end up frustrated and with inconsistent results. That is why you need to edit your Zoom recordings efficiently.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be complicated. In this Cleanvoice guide, we’ll show you how to edit your Zoom recordings for better quality. You’ll also get straightforward tips and best practices to end up with crisp, clear audio every time.

But first…

Why Listen to Us?

At Cleanvoice, we’ve helped over 15,000 podcasters, content teams, and businesses enhance their audio with AI-powered editing tools. Our AI has processed hundreds of thousands of minutes of meeting recordings, addressing issues like muffled voices and background noise.

This experience gives us the insight to show you how to make Zoom recordings sound professional, ensuring every edit improves clarity, flow, and engagement.

What Does It Mean to Edit a Zoom Recording?

Editing a Zoom recording means refining the audio (and sometimes video) after a meeting to improve clarity and flow. This typically includes trimming long silences, removing filler words, removing reverb, fixing uneven volume between speakers, fixing distorted voice, and reducing background noise that Zoom recordings often capture.

For podcasters and content teams, editing goes a step further. It involves enhancing speech and voice, removing stutters and mouth sounds, and generating transcripts or summaries. So recordings are easier to listen to, share, and repurpose. The goal isn’t to change what was said but to make the recording clear, professional, and listener-ready.

Why Edit Your Zoom Recordings?

Improve Audio Quality: Zoom meetings often include muffled voices, filler words, awkward pauses, uneven volume, and background noise. Editing your audio fixes these issues, creating a smooth, professional sound that’s easier for listeners to follow and enhances overall clarity.
Improve Engagement: Removing long silences, stumbles, and awkward pauses improves flow, keeping listeners attentive and ensuring your message lands effectively.
Sound Professional: Poor audio quality can make even the most well-prepared meetings or presentations seem unprofessional. Editing your Zoom recordings ensures clear, polished sound, helping you maintain credibility and leave a positive impression on clients, colleagues, or your audience.
Increase Accessibility: Well-edited audio with clear sound, with subtitles or transcripts, makes your content accessible to a wider audience, including those with hearing challenges or non-native speakers.
Repurpose Content: Editing your Zoom recordings makes them more versatile. Clean, concise audio can be repurposed into shorter clips, podcasts, or even YouTube videos, helping you maximize the value of your content.

Repurpose your podcast with a free tool:

You can use a free audio trimmer to turn your podcast into a short clip. After that, you can use a free audio visualizer to turn it into shareable social media clips, and promote your podcast. For these short videos' captions or subtitles, use the description or summary of your podcast using Cleanvoice.

How to Edit Zoom Recording Using Two Methods (Step-by-Step Guide)

Method 1: How to Edit Your Zoom Recordings with Cleanvoice (Recommended: Easy & Gives Studio-Sound)

Editing your Zoom recordings doesn’t have to be complex, or you don't have to waste hours.

Even if you have recorded your Zoom call from an almost empty room or with no mic. Or if you had multiple guests on your show, and no control over their recording.

With Cleanvoice’s AI audio enhancer, you can turn your messy Zoom recording into a studio-recorded audio or video. In a few clicks.

Visit the Cleanvoice website and click Sign Up for free(at the top right). On the next page, create an account using your email and password, or sign up via Google. No credit card is required.

Step 2: Upload Your Zoom Recording

Once logged in, you’ll see the Cleanvoice dashboard. Here, you can use some of the 30-minutes free credits you receive as a new user. So that you can process and improve your Zoom recordings.

You can upload your file in four ways:

From your device
Paste a link
Google Drive
Record directly

For this walkthrough, select upload from your device.

Before uploading, identify what you want to improve: filler words, long pauses, uneven volume, echo and reverb, breathing sounds, or background noise. Having a clear plan will help you choose the perfect settings. And it will make the audio cleanup process more efficient.

Navigate to your downloaded Zoom recording and select the file to upload to Cleanvoice.

Click "Upload files" to continue.

Step 3: Select an Editing Template

After uploading, Cleanvoice opens the template page, allowing you to choose from multiple options to customize your editing.

By default, our AI audio enhancer already recommends the Clean All & Enhance (Studio Sound) template because it's ideal for most users. This template automatically removes background noise, fillers, silence, distortion, harsh breaths, and reverb in your Zoom meeting recordings.

But if you’re looking for something more specific, you can choose from other templates based on your needs:

Clean Audio (Natural Sound): Removes filler words, noise, and breaths without enhancing the voice. Great for already clear recordings, which need minimal edits.
Enhance Audio for Video: Removes noise and enhances speech, ideal for syncing audio with video.
Clean, Enhance & Summarize: Edits, enhances audio, and generates a transcript, summary, and social content.
Clean & Enhance, but Keep Music: Cleans and enhances audio while preserving intro and outro music.

For this example, let’s use the Clean All & Enhance (Studio Sound) template since it has all you need to make your Zoom recording crisp and clear.

Step 4: Start Processing

Once you select "Start Processing," Cleanvoice's AI starts working on your Zoom meeting recording. This is where our AI audio enhancer does the following:

Balances the volume between speakers so no one sounds too loud or too quiet
Remove background noise, mouth sounds, long silences, and filler words
Removes heavy breaths and harsh reverb
Fixes distortion and audio artifacts. Smoothens or brightens your voice
Keeps all voices synced for a natural flow
Generate a full transcript and meeting summary within minutes

Processing usually takes less than 10 minutes, even for longer Zoom meetings. So, you can quickly review your enhanced recording.

Step 5: Review and Download Your Enhanced Zoom Recording

Once processing is done, you can preview the enhanced version of your Zoom recording with balanced, smooth audio before download.

When satisfied with the edit, click Download Audio to save the file in the same format as the original Zoom recording. You can also select Export Options to view other download settings.

Before-After Results with Cleanvoice

:::

Method 2: How to Edit Your Zoom Recordings in Zoom (Mostly for Trimming Some Audio Parts)

Note:

Zoom’s built-in tools don’t provide advanced audio enhancement.

Editing Zoom recordings directly in the Zoom web portal is a straightforward way to remove unnecessary sections. This method is useful for trimming recordings and making them concise and professional. Here’s how it works step by step.

Open the Zoom web portal on a supported desktop web browser. Mobile browsers do not support trimming, so a desktop is required. Enter your credentials to sign in. Once logged in, you’re ready to access your recordings.

Step 2: Access Cloud Recordings

Click on “My Account” to access the settings panel. Next, find and click on the Recording tab in the navigation menu.

Then, select the Cloud recordings tab. This will show all the recordings saved in your Zoom account.

Before trimming, make sure your Zoom recording is downloaded and ready. Listen through it briefly to check for any obvious issues. This helps you plan which sections need edits.

Step 3: Select the Meeting to Edit

Now, locate the meeting you want to trim. Click on the meeting topic, then click the thumbnail of the recording.

This will open the recording in a new tab where you can see both the video and the audio transcript on the right side of the screen. This view allows you to follow the conversation as you make edits.

Step 4: Start Trimming the Recording

Look for the scissor icon and click it to begin trimming.

You'll see two or more blue sliders appear, which you can move to specify the start and end times for your recording. The areas between the sliders are the parts you’ll keep. To adjust precisely, you can drag the sliders or use the back/forward arrows for finer control.

Step 5: Add or Remove Sections (Optional)

If you need to adjust further, you can add or remove trim sections. Hover over any section you want to trim, and click the plus icon to add a new trimming point. If you want to remove part of the trim, hover over it and click the Remove button to delete that section.

Step 6: Confirm and Save

When you're happy with your selection, click Trim. A confirmation window will pop up, asking you to confirm. Click Trim again to apply the changes.

The recording will be processed, and a notification will display while trimming is in progress. Note that while the trimming happens, the recording will be unavailable to viewers.

Once you've finished editing, your Zoom recording is now ready for sharing. You can confidently send it to others, knowing it’s concise and professional.

The shortcoming of this method (when to avoid this)

While this method handles basic edits like cutting silences or irrelevant sections, it does not remove background noise, stutters, or filler words.

For more advanced audio cleanup and professional enhancement, using AI-powered tools like Cleanvoice provides faster results and superior quality.

Best Practices for Editing Your Zoom Recordings

Archive Raw Recordings: Always store your unedited Zoom files in a separate folder or cloud storage. This preserves the original audio for future reference, allows you to reprocess with new templates or AI tools, and ensures you can recover content if edits introduce mistakes. Archiving originals also helps when creating multiple versions or repurposing content later.
Focus on Key Edits: When using the built-in Zoom trimmer, focus on removing long silences, static, background noise, and stutters to maintain smooth conversational flow. With Cleanvoice AI, much of this work is automatic, saving you time and ensuring a more professional result without manual adjustments.
Use Templates for Consistency: For multiple Zoom recordings, choose a template and stick with it for consistency. If you start with Clean All & Enhance (Studio Sound), using the same template for future recordings ensures uniform audio quality across all your content.
Enhance Audio, Not Just the Voice: The Zoom trimmer only allows you to cut unwanted sections, but Cleanvoice AI goes further. It balances volume levels, removes echoes and harsh breaths, and eliminates noise, so you don’t need to manually adjust every track.
Check Transcripts for Accuracy: Cleanvoice generates detailed transcripts alongside your recordings, which are useful for reference or sharing. After processing, double-check the auto-generated transcript to ensure accuracy, especially if you plan to repurpose content for notes, blogs, or subtitles.
Preview Before Sharing: Always preview your recording after editing to make sure the edits are just right. Cleanvoice’s real-time preview lets you catch any final tweaks before you share your finished recording.

Edit Your Zoom Recordings Better and Faster with Cleanvoice

Zoom recordings are too valuable to share with poor audio quality that leaves listeners struggling to understand your message. Editing your recordings removes these distractions and ensures clear, professional sound.

At Cleanvoice, we make editing your Zoom recordings quick and easy with our AI-powered tools. Enhance your audio, eliminate background noise, and achieve polished, professional sound in no time. Whether you're trimming unnecessary sections, adjusting volume, or cleaning up noise, Cleanvoice makes the entire process effortless, so you can share high-quality recordings every time.