Why decode to then turn around and re-encode?
replies(3):
Since they don't have API access to all these platforms, the best they can do to capture the A/V streams is simply to join the meeting in a headless browser on a server, then capture the browser's output and re-encode it.
To my knowledge, Zoom’s web client uses a custom codec delivered inside a WASM blob. How would you capture that video data to forward it to your recording system? How do you decode it later?
Even if the incoming streams are in a standard format, compositing the meeting as a post-processing operation from raw recorded tracks isn’t simple. Video call participants have gaps and network issues and layer changes, you can’t assume much anything about the samples as you would with typical video files. (Coincidentally this is exactly what I’m working on right now at my job.)
Hardware decoding works best when you have a single stable high bitrate stream with predictable keyframes — something like a 4K video player.
Video meetings are not like that. You may have a dozen participant streams, and most of them are suffering from packet loss. Lots of decoder context switching and messy samples is not ideal for typical hardware decoders.