Audacity and Skype

[cebord2001]

Hello,

You all were very helpful with my last project. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Have you heard of people using Audacity to record Skype calls? I am doing some interviews over Skype.

Thank you.

C.

[kozikowski]

Have you heard of people using Audacity to record Skype calls?

Not successfully, no. Skype takes over the computer sound channels and Audacity gets left trampled and squashed in the dust.

Pamela Business or Pamela Professional (not the other two) and I think Total Recorder will do it, too.

https://www.pamela.biz/shop/pamela_for_skype
http://www.highcriteria.com/

Possibly others.

You should avoid products that don't split the two directions, near and far into different channels. You can always put them back together after applying effects and cleaning to either or both sides, but you can never split them up in post production if they're delivered already mixed.

Koz

[steve]

You all were very helpful with my last project. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

You're welcome. Which project was that?

Have you heard of people using Audacity to record Skype calls?

I've heard of people trying to do so.
If they want to record both sides of the conversation at the same time on the same computer, they fail.

The easiest way to record both sides of a Skype conversation is to use specialist Skype recording software such as "Pamela".

An alternative method is for each party in the Skype conversation to record their side of the conversion, then to edit the two recordings together at a later date. This method is possible, but can be difficult as Skype does not play nicely with other programs unless they have been specifically designed to work with Skype (which is not the case with Audacity).

[kline2001]

Hi Steve and Koz,

I looked up Pamela, and it says the recorder is about 20 dollars. I'll get it, if you think it works well for recording 1to 2 hours.
Someone also suggested using the recorder on Word2007 with the notes app.
Also garageband.

Any comments on those?

You asked about the last project: I interviewed people about a pastor at my parent's church who died, and then pieced together clips of the interview using Audacity, put it on CD and gave it to the people I interviewed. It was fun, and I like the final product. The only problem had nothing to do with Audacity, but rather too much background noise in one of the interviews.

So you all at Audacity were helpful, even with my newbie questions that you prob. get often.

This project is just interviews that will be transcribed, so I am guessing now that I won't need Audacity - just a way to record the interviews I do over Skype. The sound quality just needs to be good enough to transcribe.

It would be nice to have a good quality recording that splits "the two directions, near and far into different channels" just in case. I am not sure how to tell if a product does this - Does the Pamela recorder?

Thank you.

C.

[kozikowski]

I looked up Pamela, and it says the recorder is about 20 dollars.

Pamela Business and Professional only. Basic and Call Recorder only run for a short time and are leaders for the other two products.
Koz

[kozikowski]

This is a page that compares the four products, but I can't get it to tell me about the split conversation thing.

http://www.pamela.biz/en/products/

Koz