Recording Audio for Remote Presenters - What are YOU doing?

[brianosmi]

I recently received a PM from a forum member asking about recording audio over a phone line connection. I know I've been part of these conversations before but wanted to see if there was any fresh perspective in the community on the topic. New technology arrives every day that can make certain aspects of our job/work better and easier.

Recording audio over the phone is something we try NOT to do, if we can avoid it, but the reality is that sometimes it is necessary to save travel $$ and record over the phone. The reason we generally try to avoid recording over the phone is because it is impossible to get the same quality of recording over the phone as what you can record in person.

With that being said, there are some options. As far as hardware, WebEx recommends the following equipment for recording audio over the phone, and we have several of these (the TMP-636S model) and they work great: Webinar Recording by DynaMetric® GoToDynaMetric Now - 800-525-6925. Use one of these in conjunction with some software like Audacity and you can record any phone conversation you want, just be sure to stay away from criminal activity!

Alternatives to a traditional phone line, such as Skype, do exist and can sometimes produce audio better than a telephone (but sometimes not, depends on internet connection and the equipment your person on the other end of the line has). I'm not sure if Skype has a built-in recording option, but if not there are several low-cost and free options available for recording sounds on your computer, such as (again) Audacity.

Finally, there are increasingly more creative options available that would allow someone to record audio (and even video) on their own local machines, and then make those recordings available to you, the course developer to do with as you please. One example that comes to mind is Screenr.

So, with that being said, what are YOU doing when you have remote presenters, what tools are you using, methods, etc., that may be of benefit to others in similar situations?

[GerryWaz]

Hey, Brian!

Some of our folks are using PowerPoint itself and PowerPoin's record in screen show mode option.

A remote presenter will do this with some guidelines we've developed and they then send the PPT to the developer. They then publish the PPT to HTML to get the separate WAV files for each slide.

Then the developer will either bring the WAVs into their Presenter PPT file or else first process them with something like Levelator or Audacity and then import into the PPT via Presenter.

[GerryWaz]

And just remembered, we did this one once or twice with our corporate web meeting tool (Global Crossing).

When a session is recorded it outputs to Flash, one SWF per slide (with audio). We extracted the audio as WAVs from the SWFs using the SWF to MP3 Converter tool. Processed again using Levelator or Audacity and imported into Presenter.

Not the best audio sometimes but passable for some internal training.

[KJWeir]

Hey Forums...

The company I work at has been using Microsoft Enterprise Communicator, which will allow voice to be recorded, but we are now standardizing on Skype.

For an internal network including WAN connections this is the way to go. We already use tools like Audacity (individual contributors) and Adobe Soundbooth for our bigger jobs. Skype will allow us to record the conversation directly, and edit as we go.

I do make a huge recommendation though. Make sure that if the person you are conversing with doesn't have one... they need a GOOD microphone. Don't use the electret microphone built into a laptop or a cheap $12 headset. We are using Plantronic headsets with DSP, or and is my preference Blue Snowball or Snowflake (I own a Snowball myself)

If you have a choice get the best quality recording you can (44KHz) and you can always "sample down" to a lower quality for size if you need to.

Recording from a phone is roughly 14KHz which is less than FM radio but better than AM radio (FM is 22KHz)

Best of luck to everyone

Ken W.
Trainer, Articulate user

[brianosmi]

Gerry, great idea on using PPT to record the audio - wouldn't have thought about that.

Ken, thanks for verifying that Skype does have the ability to directly record the conversation, and excellent point about microphone quality. Having the right equipment is key to a good recording (among many other things), and is one reason we have avoided this option in the past.

[GerryWaz]

Originally Posted by brianosmi

Gerry, great idea on using PPT to record the audio - wouldn't have thought about that.

Hey, Brian!

Below is something we presented to our 3M users last December on this, both using our web meeting service and doing in PowerPoint.

With the web meeting service, I remembered it wrong. The SWFs are just images of slides. The audio is in one huge MP3 that we had to split up. Can be "ughs-ey" for the faint of heart.

With the PowerPoint record slide show narration, there are certain settings to use, which is in the attachment below.

Believe I got those from a Gabe posting here, back in the early days of the forums.

If I was going to do the PowerPoint thing, I might consider have my preso as individual PPTs first, each one being a single slide to narrate in slide show mode. Then I'd combine as one large preso when done.

That's because of the way the PowerPoint record slide show narration works--you can never go back and forth on the slides (will overwrite any previous audio) and getting things right in consecutive slide order can be a big challenge.

Makes me appreciate the Articulate audio recorder so much more.

[DavidAnderson]

Hey guys - I asked a good buddy of mine who does this professionally. Here's his reply:

I now use Skype and Call Recorder. Skype Out - which costs a few bucks enables you to call regular phones. Call Recorder places each side of the call in separate channels. Very useful if one side is noisy or too low. It's great. I run the send from my mixer to my Mac Book Pro through the line-in for my side of the call and the other participant either uses Skype or I call them directly. The sound quality is excellent if you have a good network connection.

Call Recorder for Skype - The Skype Audio/Video Call Recording Solution for Mac - Ecamm Network

[brianosmi]

Originally Posted by David Anderson

Hey guys - I asked a good buddy of mine who does this professionally. Here's his reply:

Now that is sweet! Love how it records to two separate channels...

Just went to the Call Recorder website and found this in it's FAQs:

Q: Is there a Windows version available?
A: Check out Call Burner, MX Skype Recorder or Pamela for Windows-based Skype recording.

[GerryWaz]

Interesting . . .

[gfriese]

I have used Callburner - especially for podcast recording. Great tool, easy to use, and can be used for free if two or more callers have a call burner account. Start the recording before adding other non-callburner user callers.

I have also used my Google Voice number to record audio Incoming calls can be recorded. The result is an audio file that can be downloaded or embedded.