recording skype audio for interviews

ok, here's a reply to a question about recording skype audio. I got it working on the mac with the ecamm call recorder software. I'll try the pc software one day too.

the notes are a little incoherent but I'll know what I'm talking about at least even if nobody else does and this is just a reminder for me.. perhaps it's time to start doing short/casual interviews/chats again..have been thinking about it..

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ok I tried it out and can't get it to work properly in skype. I think I'm confused with recordings as most of my recordings were with normal phone interviews and I used one of those dick smith phone condensors plugged into my along with my mic mixer which then was plugged into the line in on my laptop and recorded in soundforge or audacity. (I used to have soundforge years ago but then had to rebuild the pc and went to audacity as I lost the sf installer & audacity was free & worked well)

I did a search. on a mac, I came across ecamm call recorder which is about $20 but works for 7days trial to test with first. http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder

I just tried it now calling the Skype Echo / Sound Test Service
http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_...

this worked ok - my mic levels were really low but I think that's just this machine (still getting used to the audio on the mac - I seem to have one less input than I used to on a pc and don't have the wave mixer selection input). this app saves as a quicktime movie - there is also a conversion app to convert the QT file to mp3 (drag & drop) or u can do the normal export to wav/aiff in QT then open in itunes and save the file as mp3 to convert manually. it's actually handy to have it as a quicktime audio track as u can just paste in a video track / images over the top and the videoblog post is done for you (so u could have a videoblog post & podcast if u wanted to - though it's easy to do this manually also..)

http://www.echochamberproject.com/recordingskype has some instructions also - it was a fluke this page came up in the google results as I've helped out with transcribing one of Kent's interviews for his project so it's weird to see a google result for a generic search on a page u already use.

I tried it on the pc over the weekend but the audio stopped recording whenever I would speak so it was like only one worked at a time and they couldn't share the audio source. maybe skype did this on purpose so people wouldn't record calls/privacy issues. not sure.

these links might help - I haven't tried them but they sound like they will work:

http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2004/12/skype_podcast_r.php

http://www.henshall.com/docs/Skype%20Recording%20WinXp%2012202004.pdf

http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=12788&postdays=0&postorder=asc&st...

i-Sound WMA mp3 Recorder
http://www.mp3-wma-recorder.com/

if u had 2 pcs u could feed the one making the skype call's audio out into the second one's audio in and record on the second machine. if u don't have a second machine, use a minidisc or other external recorder, then re-encode/re-record it back in (if not already in mp3/wav) - it's a messy & time consuming method but should still work.

let me know if u find a more elegant solution. I'd pay the $20 I think for the ease of using the software - it'll cost more in time & hassle to do it the longer way round & u might find it's more trouble than it's worth and end up not doing it (if u're anything like me! go for the easy solution)

http://del.icio.us/AliaK/skype -> I'm collating links here also for urls & info