Record Interviews on Skypet

A cheap way to get a phone interview is to use Skype and to record the session digitally.

Recording Skype calls and conferences can be a cheap way to get an interview that sounds reasonably good, without having to travel to meet the person face to face. This hack covers methods for recording Skype calls on both Macintosh and Windows.

Recording Skype on Macintosh

To set up this hack, you will need the following:

Skype (http://skype.com/)

This is the Skype application, which you probably already have.

Audio Hijack Pro (http://rogueamoeba.com/)

Audio Hijack Pro [Hack #50] is an excellent audio recording application for the Macintosh that can record from any input source as well as any open application. After installing Audio Hijack Pro, you also need to install the Instant Hijack option using the Install Extras… option on the Audio Hijack Pro menu.

Soundflower (http://www.cycling74.com/products/soundflower.html)

This is a virtual audio driver for routing audio between applications.

USB headset

I use a USB headset [Hack #12] for recording, but you can just as easily use your studio microphone and the headphone port on a Mac.

What initially stymied me, and what I was unable to convey for quite a while correctly to the fine people at Rogue Amoeba tech support, was that I wanted to accomplish two separate goals:

  • Mix the input from the USB headset’s microphone with the output from the Skype application and record it to a file.

  • Monitor the output from Skype in the USB ...

Get Podcasting Hacks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.