Hi Team,
I have a problem which I’m hoping you can help me with. It’s related to low bit rates obtained from Skype call recordings.
I am preparting to launch an interview-based podcast, and occasionally some interviews are done over Skype. Information about my setup is as follows:
- OS: Windows 10 Home
- Call Recorder: Pamela For Skype (Professional license purchased)
- Audio Editor: Audacity 2.1.3
I recorded the Skype call using Pamela, and then edited in Audacity and exported from Audacity to an mp3 (using the standard settings):
- Bit Rate Mode: Preset
- Quality: Standard 170~210Kbps
- Variable Speed: Fast
- Channel Mode: Joint Stereo
What I noticed is that the outputted mp3 file has a bit rate which is much lower than expected. I am no expert in this area, but my undersatnding is that we want something at least around 128kbps wherever possible. In this context, I have 2 situations I’d like to ask about:
- Recorded the Skype call to an mp3 file in Pamela
- After editing and exporting from Audacity, this resulted in an mp3 file with a bit rate of 84kbps (according to the Details tab after right clicking → properties of the file in Windows)
- this is fair enough, as it was my fault for recording to the lossy mp3 format in the first place.
- Having said that - are you aware of any simple ways of getting the quality of the call recording higher?
e.g.: I tried to export the file from Audacity by bumping up the Quality setting to Extreme 220-260kbps and this increased the bit rate of the output file to 164kbps. However I have no idea whether this is a good thing to do.
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- Recorded the Skype call to a wav file in Pamela
- Interestingly, after recording the Skype call to a wav file using Pamela, and editing and exporting from Audacity (using the standard 170~210kbps settings), although slightly better than the above, this still produced sub 100kbps bit rates (92kbps).
- I was wondering if this was normal? Do people just publish files of this level of quality (for Skype recordings) or am I missing a signficant step somewhere?
Any advice would be much appreciated! I’m learning as I go along, and the ride has been fun (and frustrating at times) thus far!
Many thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Daniel.