Still no luck on recording a Skype call using one (Windows 2000) machine. I had three potential options and so far, they’re a no go. First, I tried a beta copy of Replay Telerecorder from Applian Technologies, but go no where with that. A response to my plea for help to Applian says the company is having trouble working with Skype on getting access to the application’s APIs and is dropping Telerecorder development for the time being. Strike One!
Next on the list of things to try was Hot Recorder, which a number of message boards said worked like a charm. HotRecorder encodes into its own audio format, but the company has created an export tool for the premium version ($14.95) capable of creating WAV and Ogg Vorbis files. But, I learned after downloading and attempting to install, it only runs on Windows XP and 2003. I’ve got 2000 on my two work machine. To be fair, I did test the free version of HotRecorder on a XP machine and it seemed to work pretty well. There was some fuzzy audio, but that could be attributed to Skype and network congestion. Strike 2! (Though on a foul ball…)
Finally, I worked with James Prudente, the author of MixCast Live, to try and get MCL to record my Skype calls, which many have also been able to do. For some reason, the MCL-Skype combo does not work on my laptop. Strike 3, despite James’ best efforts. I will say though I plan to hold on to MixCast Live for other podcast production purposes. It’s pretty cool.
Now, there could be another option down the road. Adam Curry is alpha/beta testing when he calls CastBlaster. He was able to bring in a Skype user easily. We’ll have to see when/if a public beta comes available if it works on Win2k (Adam was using a Tablet PC running XP.) If you’ve got a solution that works, drop me a line!
