How to Record Skype Calls

Skype is probably the most widely used Internet Phone service for conducting telephonic interviews, panel discussions, conference calls, recording podcasts or plain voice chatting. To date over 190 million people have downloaded the Skype program.

Though Skype doesn’t provide native support for recording voice conversations yet, you can easily record Skype Call Sessions using third-party add-ons or hardware devices or even with software that already exists on your computer. The Skype Phone calls are recorded to regular audio files like MP3, WAV or Windows Media which can edited and shared with friends like regular media files.

How to record Skype Calls ?
Let’s look at some of the more popular Skype add-ons and resources here for recording Skype Calls.

Recording Skype Calls on a Mac

If you are a Mac User, Audio Hijack or WireTrap Pro are probably the best options to record Skype Calls or Skypecast.

Using a technique called Hijacking, Audio Hijack Pro will allow you to record any application’s audio including Skype, podcasts, vidcasts, DVDs or sound from streaming internet audio-video. While Audio Hijack only records the audio, Audio Hijack Pro comes with effects to enhance the audio. Supports audio recording for Skype Voice Chats and iChat. [$16/$32] [Download]

WireTrap Pro is from the developers of Snapz Pro, which is a very popular screencasting app on Mac. Like Audio Hijack, Wire Trap can record audio from any running applications, as well as from any microphone, line-in, headset or radioSHARK. WireTap Pro will save your digital recordings in the either .mp3, AAC, QuickTime, and AIFF file formats. [$19.00] [Download]

Ecamm Call Recorder is an add-on for Skype which automatically transforms your Skype calls into QuickTime movies. Call Recorder can be used for recording remote lessons, interviews and podcasts. Calls are saved as QuickTime movies with the local and remote side of the conversation on different tracks. [$12.95] [Download]

Hardware Options for Recording Skype Call Sessions

The AU-600 Skype Gateway which allows you to make/receive Skype calls from your existing corded, cordless or cellular phone can also be used to record Skype conversation. You can choose to either record all calls automatically, or you can begin and stop recording during a call, directly from your phone’s keypad. Call recordings are saved as .wav files on your computer. Requires Windows. [$53.95]

Flash Phone F3K is another Skype device from Mplat that has a flash memory card and a USB sound card. The device can be plugged to the USB port of any machine and let you make VoIP calls using Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger but not Yahoo! Messenger. FlashPhone comes with Voice recorder and an answering machine. Also see FlashPhone F1K for Skype [$24.90]

Other alternatives to recording Skype Calls

Build your own Skype Recorder

A PDF document titled “Skype + Podcast Recorder = SkypeCaster” has instructions to building your own Skype recording studio using Windows Sound Recorder and Virtual Audio Cable, a Windows WDM multimedia driver. The author uses this to record Podcasts using Skype. You can also use this approach with Audacity or Adobe Audition for recording and editing the quality of voice. VAC needs no audio card; it is a “virtual audio card” itself. You need two instances of Skype running on the same computer. See screenshots. [Skype Journal]

Another Do-It-Yourself approach to record Skype Conversations is explained by TDavid. It requires two computers (Skype Recorder and Skype Client), one has Skype running and the other one with line-in capability. Connect one end of male computer to LINE-IN on second computer and attach to the speaker out on the computer that is running Skype. Now on the second computer, set record properties to LINE-IN. How to record a Skype conversation

Tips on recording Skype Conversation:

» Let the other parties know that you are recording them and obtain their permission to record. This is a law in some states.

» Skype will save the voicemail locally after you’ve played it but it uses some odd format. To convert the skype dat sound file to MP3 or WAV, use HotRecorder mentioned above.