HELP PLEASE WAY TO FIND OUT IF CALL IS EDITED

Hi Guy

Can anyone help I currently work in compliance and we listen to call recording with conversations between broker and customer and most of them are edited but I can’t get know solid evidence which will stick , do any of you guys know any tricks I can use or to look out for when an running the call through audacity to identify if the call is edited.

Duplicate post deleted, and this topic moved to the Audio Processing forum (your question is not feedback or a review of Audacity).

You are a compliance officer? :confused:

For what purpose? Who might have edited them?
If I had edited them, there would be no way to tell that they had been edited.

If this is for legal purposes, you or your company should seek professional advice.

Hi

I only wanted any advice on how I can identity a call has been edited I know the basics but wanted to find out of there was any parts in audacity what will tell me the call isn’t right

Badly edited audio will often show discontinuities in the waveform, and/or in the spectrogram (see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audio_track_dropdown_menu.html)

Abrupt changes in background noise may be visible in the spectrogram view which ‘may’ indicate an edit point.

Bad edits can often be identified just by listening. Making a duplicate copy (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/edit_menu_copy_paste_and_duplicate.html#duplicate) of a repeated word or phrase, then sliding it under the other instance of that word or phrase (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tools_toolbar.html#timeshift) can allow you visually and aurally compare the two occurrences. Setting the Solo button behaviour to “Simple” (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tracks_preferences.html#behaviors) can be helpful for A/B listening comparison.

That’s quality Steve cheers for that

One more thing I am seeing in calls where the person is saying yes and it looks like someone has copied that yes and used it a few times but changed the waves so there not showing identical.

Is there any other way I can find out if the same word has been used more then once but edited if that makes sense

Sorry Rocks, I’m happy to help you to use Audacity, but I’m really not into this cloak and dagger stuff. If this is a professional matter, you need to get help from a suitably qualified professional. If it’s more of a personal matter, then you might be better just to ask the person in question.

hi steve

Thats fine ,

one last thing for abit of advise if you see a flat line in a call recording could this mean it has been edited, and a responce put in the call to change conversation.

A flat line in a recording just shows that the recording level is very quiet or completely silent. Selecting the region of “flat line” and applying the Amplify effect will reveal whether the section was “low level” or “absolute silence”. “Absolute silence” cannot be amplified (the Amplify effect will show the “New peak level” as “-infinity”).

“Absolute silence” could indicate an edit, or could be a “drop out” in the recording (the recording has dropped some of the data), or corruption in the recorded file, or (in an Audacity project) a missing or corrupt data fragment, or (for a voip recording) network congestion.

“Very low audio” could indicate that no-one is talking, or (for a 'phone call recording) the recording end has been put on hold, or the caller has muted their 'phone, or (for a mobile phone) reception has been lost, or (for a voip recording) network congestion.

There are probably other possibilities - those are just some off the top of my head. As I have repeatedly said, if this is a professional matter, you need professional advice from a suitably qualified professional.

The blue waves will only show you about the loudest 30dB or so of the show. Any quieter than that you have to go to the sound meters which will bounce with sound down to the limit (about -90dB). That Effect > Amplify thing is the other way to show quiet stuff.

It’s going to be impossible to separate equipment and user screwing up from someone actively trying to create theater instead of real life. As he said, If Steve cut this work, you would not be able to tell what he did.

Koz