Thought I found the solution to my Skype recording woes this morning: Skylook. It’s a plug-in for Outlook that records Skype calls and chats, saving them in an Outlook folder for easy access. But (a big BUT). I was working from home this morning, meaning Outlook was connected to our Exchange Server through a VPN. When the connection to Exchange flaked, which it is prone to do, Skylook and Skype both froze in the middle of a call.
Thankfully it was a test call and not with someone I was interviewing. I’ve e-mailed the Skylook team to see if there’s a way to save the recordings to a local folder rather than one on the server. Hopefully, there is. I did manage to record one test call to the Skype Echo service and the quality was excellent. I heard some feedback in my headphones during part of the successful test call, but it was not present in the recording, which is important when you’re planning to use the recording for a podcast. I tried a backup plan (actually plan C after the phone tap I had with me didn’t work well with my home setup) of recording through SoundForge Audio Studio 8.0, but that test resulted in my whole machine freezing (and nearly being tossed out a third floor window.) I think it’s easier to land a person on the moon than record a skype call. The goal is to be able use Skype for all my podcast recording no matter where I am without the need for a cumbersome phone tap and external mixer. No luck yet… 05/11/06 update: The Skylook development team responded to my query about changing the default folder. With the current version you cannot, but it’s something they’re working on for a future release.
