RogiLife.Com

The song du jour (or at least the song right now) playing here at the Rogi Castle:

Turn it up…

The song of the minute here at the Rogi Castle. Turn it up.

Recently I have started using Skype again, as I now have several hours a week of foreign languages lessons and I do them directly with the languages teacher ‘live’ via Skype. (This is a great method for learning languages incidentally, and I have more to say about that in another post).

I was looking today for a way to record the hour-long Skype conversations, so I could replay them if I needed to remind myself about specific language techniques, or uses, and so on, that came up during any of the lessons. Having not used Skype for a while I was surprised to see that it still has no call recorder built-in, but, well, it doesn’t (at least not on my Mac version) so it was a case of searching for third party software.

I found this; Ecamm Network’s Call Recorder. It’s Mac-only, which is fine by me as I’m Mac-only too, and I used the trial version of this software today for the first time.

It works well. I set it to automatically record all calls longer then five seconds (the default time) at ‘low’ quality, and waited to see if it did it’s thing as it was supposed to.

It did. Perfectly.

I ended up, after a one hour Skype conversation – audio only, though it records video too, so it says, though I haven’t tried that – with a 115Mb .mov file [update: 22Mb after using the supplied 'Convert For Internet' software] containing a flawless recording. I’m not sure why that setting is called ‘low quality’ as it does not sound low quality, it’s extremely clear. Next time I’ll set it to high quality and see what the difference is (other than a presumably significantly bigger .mov file).

The free (fully functional) trial lasts for seven days and then the software is $14.95USD to buy. Assuming that it always works as well as it did today, that’s a bargain, and my 15 bucks will be heading Ecamm’s way in a few days.

If you want to record Skype (and video) calls, and are on a Mac, check it out. Ecamm Network Call Recorder.  FAQ.

Update: I hadn’t noticed this function when I wrote the above;

Call Recorder makes it easy convert your QuickTime movies into MP3 files. Simply drag a recorded QuickTime movie to the “Convert to MP3″ icon and it will create an instant MP3 file out of your movie, which can then be emailed or posted to a website.

So that functionality also now goes onto the ‘things to try’ list.

A sixty second sound recording made this morning of the rush hour at 8am, on a normally extremely busy commuter route in the Algarve, during the ongoing fuel strikes.

As neither petrol nor diesel are available here in the Algarve today very few cars or trucks are able to move, and just to add to the chaos caused by the lack of fuel, the breakdown and pickup services are also out on strike in support of the truckers, so even those people who do have petrol or diesel in their vehicles are hesitant drive them.

All this makes for a nice peaceful morning, but at quite some price.

Update 10am: The Portuguese fuel strike is over.