Riverside: Studio-Quality Recording for Nonprofits

Create a free account at riverside.com and do a solo test recording. Check your audio and video quality, explore the interface, and get comfortable with the recording controls.

Pro tip: Use headphones to prevent echo, and test your microphone settings. Even a basic USB microphone dramatically improves results over a laptop's built-in mic.

Invite a colleague or board member for a 10-15 minute test conversation. Send them the guest link and record a casual discussion—maybe a "get to know the team" segment or preview of an upcoming program.

Pro tip: Notice how guest experience works—they need no software installation. After recording, check how the separate tracks captured each person's audio independently.

Open your recording and try the text-based editor. Delete a sentence from the transcript and watch it cut from the video. Try the AI features: remove filler words, apply Magic Audio, see how much cleanup happens automatically.

Pro tip: Read through the transcript to find the best moments—this is faster than scrubbing through video. Highlight key quotes that could work as clips.

Use Magic Clips to let AI identify shareable moments. Review the suggested clips, customize if needed, and export a few to see how they'd look on social media. Compare to your manual selections.

Pro tip: Magic Clips works better with conversational content that has clear moments of insight or emotion. Dry, technical content may need more manual selection.

Riverside does not offer a specific nonprofit discount. The free plan provides 2 hours of multi-track recording (one-time), 720p video with watermarks. For professional use, the Pro plan costs $24/month when billed annually, providing 15 hours of recording per month, 4K video, no watermarks, and full access to AI features like transcription and Magic Clips.

Riverside records audio and video locally on each participant's device, then uploads the high-quality files to the cloud. This means even if someone has a poor internet connection with lag or dropouts during the call, their recording still captures crisp, uncompressed 4K video and 48kHz audio. Each participant gets their own separate track, making editing easier.

Text-based editing lets you edit your recording by editing the transcript. Simply delete words or sentences in the text, and the corresponding video or audio is automatically trimmed. This makes editing accessible to anyone who can use a word processor—no video editing skills required. You can also use AI features to automatically remove filler words, pauses, and technical interruptions.

Riverside is designed specifically for high-quality recording while Zoom is optimized for video calls. Riverside records locally in up to 4K resolution with separate tracks for each participant, while Zoom records from the compressed stream. Riverside also includes AI transcription, text-based editing, and Magic Clips for content repurposing—features Zoom doesn't offer.

Yes, with the Live plan ($34/month annually) or higher, Riverside can simultaneously livestream to YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Twitch, and custom RTMP destinations. This multistreaming feature lets nonprofits reach audiences across all platforms at once without managing multiple streaming tools.

Riverside claims 99% transcription accuracy in 100+ languages, though real-world accuracy is typically 95% or higher with clear audio and minimal background noise. The AI handles speaker identification, and you can edit transcripts directly in the platform. Transcription is included in all paid plans.