VoIP Now

With all the recent free VoIP services available, like Babble.net, Skype, Sightspeed, and Jajah, there are obviously a growing number of VoIP users, and thus an increased interest call recording. In fact, it’s a common question on various VoIP forum websites.

Enterprise audio file storage issues aside, there are some relatively simple methods to record VoIP calls. The method to use does depend on whether your VoIP is hardware- or software-based, as well as which service you’re using. Some software clients have recording built in; others require a plugin or even a separate standalone program. For example, IPcelerate has a product called IPstudio for recording VoIP calls, but it must be integrated into their IPsession platform. [via FierceVoIP]

Tom Keating of TMC has written frequently about recording VoIP calls, including using HotRecorder, and also provides links to forum discussions and other articles. HotRecorder has a free trial for software that supposedly works with all VoIP soft clients (according to Tom’s article), and they push the podcasting, online journalism, and business angles on their website.

I tried out the free version of HotRecorder, and it’s a compact little setup that latches on to your Skype window. If you move the window around, HotRecorder does too. I tried out a call to my father, who had never heard of VoIP or Skype before yesterday, and who I’ve been trying to get to install it. He hasn’t yet, so I just used Skype’s current free PC-to-PSTN calling promo (in Canada and the US) and rang him up, just after activating HotRecorder. [Apparently, this is wrong: activate recording after establishing a VoIP connection.]

While HotRecorder appears to work fine, my cheapo $1 mic might be causing my voice to be “weak” and “unclear”, according to my father. After saving the conversation in HotRecorder, I played it back. The freebie version has an annoying feature: one person’s voice is on the left channel of playback, and the other person is on the right. But other than that, it worked like a charm.

Extrapolating my experience, if I had a better microphone, real broadband access (instead of my cellular Wi-Fi), and the inexpensive paid version of HotRecorder, this would definitely be a tool I’d use for podcasts. So I went ahead and bought a copy. (See below.)

Their website says HotRecorder works with Skype, Google Talk, AIM, Net2Phone®, Yahoo! Messenger, Firefly and other VoIP apps. I’ll have to try it out with Gizmo Project. (Sightspeed already has audio and video recording capability builtin.) See Tom’s article or the HotRecorder website for more details.

The freebie version has ads, and you cannot change the call quality or other options. Recordings are also only 2 minutes max. But you can take advantage of the goofy array of “emotisounds”, including cheering crowds, wolf whistles, and more.

All conversations are stored in their proprietary .ELP-format recordings. (Fans of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, maybe?) There’s a separate audio converter program, in beta, for conversion to a variety of audio file formats, which are currently just WAV, MP3 and the open standard OGG/ Vorbis. You get this converter when you pay for a full version of Hotrecorder, so freebie users are stuck with .ELP files, which appear to take up half the space of MP3.

The features that I think will be the most beneficial to podcasters who do a lot of VoIP interviews, and anyone who does a lot of business calling, is the ability to tag conversations with keywords and later search for them. (I wonder how long it’ll be before The Jerky Boys or someone else uses Skype and HotRecorder to create a searchable crank-call podcast.)

Being pumped about this tool, I actually just went and paid for a serial number via Paypal. But after changing some of the options around and trying to re-play the conversation with my father, I got an access violation error message. Hmm. Will have to look into this.

An alternative to HotRecorder is Callcorder, although I don’t know much about it. Other discussions about VoIP recording are available at the Vonage-Forum. And since HotRecorder does not currently work with Mac (or Unix), Ted Wallingford has an article at MacVoIP about a piece of recording software called Cain and Abel.

For enterprise solutions, there’s CallRex Professional from TelRex. Although at “as low as $259 per phone”, it seems a bit costly, but I could be mistaken. There’s also the Unix-based PBXpress Call Recording VoIP PBX (which by the way supports e-911 through a backup PSTN connection).

For homegrown hardware-based methods, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome suggests routing microphones and PC audio output through channel mixers, and back into the PC. In fact, that’s the way I would have done it, until I came across software solutions. Chris also links up to a similar VoIP recording article by Jake Luddington.