Problem: I recorded a Skype interview with Ecamm Call Recorder. It saves the audio only recording in .MOV. I then import that into Audacity to do some edits.
The audio shows up as 4 channels (2 for me, 2 for the interviewee). I then export it into a WAV (or AIFF) with 4 channels. I can do this because I went to Preferences > Import/Export > Use custom mix.
But when the export is done (I’ve tried with WAV and AIFF) it just plays my end of the interview.
This worked beautifully yesterday, but today it doesn’t. I even tried recording another call with Skype just to test things out, and I got the same result. Everything sounds good in Audacity with 4 channels, but when I export it, the other side of the conversation disappears, even though it worked yesterday.
Here’s a screenshot. It seems the channels are connected correctly, but just in case I’m wrong.
The reason I’m exporting as 4 channels is because I send the interview to my audio guy who levels the sound and such, so I could export as 2 channels as well, but I’m trying to not touch the file as much as possible.
Your audio guy might prefer mono or stereo tracks - I would. Ask him.
You can export specific tracks by muting the ones that you don’t want in the exported mix.
Because Skype is mono, the two “your voice” tracks should be identical so you can just delete one of them.
(look and listen carefully to ensure that they are identical - they should be).
The same for “their voice”.
When you have 2 tracks, click on the name of the upper track, and from the drop down menu select “Make Stereo Track”.
If you have two stereo tracks one above the other, select one of them by clicking just above the MUTE button and Tracks > Stereo Track to Mono.
After you do that to the second track, select the top one and using the pulldown menu to the left of the track, Make Stereo Track. I believe that’s how Pamela for Windows works. You’re on the left and the far side is on the right. Totally standard stereo sound file except for the content.
I’m with you. I always deliver stereo tracks no matter what the content, but I’m only delivering two channels – single voice.
Do you like your Skype software? Macs tended to get left out of the software capture rush. There’s all sorts of options for Windows.
I also have a windows computer, so I use Pamela there for recording, and I have to say that in this case I prefer Pamela over the Ecamm call recorder for mac.
However, in general, I’m enjoying my mac more than Windows thanks to software like Alfred and TextExpander.
It could be argued that you should call the client and find out what they want. The stereo WAV file thing is in case you can’t call the client. That’s the product least likely to cause problems.
We had a sound pro do a sound shoot here many moons ago. One of the performers had a sound guy he liked. I went on-call in case they needed anything.
It went very, very well, except I believe he left us with a ProTools Project and an MP3. No WAV files. Nobody could open the ProTools show, so we, against our better judgement were forced into the MP3. Which worked.
