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Conference Recorder 2 - Record iChat audio/video chats Pick of the Week
iChat Recorder image The macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]
[This is the Pick of the Week for the week of May 1st]

First, let me say that the lame icon at top right is not the program's official icon. It's a quickie I put together, as the program itself is simply an Apple installer package. So don't write about how poor the icon is :).

A lot of my job relies on iChat -- with Macworld staffers spread around the country, it's a primary method of communication for many of us. As such, I've long had iChat's logging feature enabled (to the tune of 5,000+ archived chats), as I often need to revisit something that's been discussed. While this works well, both audio and video chats have become more prevalent in the last year or so. If I knew about the discussion ahead of time, and felt it important enough, I would set up Snapz Pro X to capture the audio and video for possible future use. But that was a pain, and meant that I couldn't move the iChat window around on the screen (since I was capturing a fixed region), nor activate a window that would cover the iChat window.

Enter Conference Recorder 2, from eCamm Network. This cool little tool integrates directly with iChat, allowing you to record audio and video chats (though you'll only get the audio from a more-than-two-person video chat). Dan Frakes covered it in detail in this Mac Gems writeup. As seen in Dan's story, Conference Recorder 2 puts a small "record" palette below every iChat window (or optionally in a window of its own). Click the Record button, and the audio and video are captured in MPEG4 format. There's also a bundled conversion application that will convert to MP3, for easier use in podcasts.

I don't see the need to record every video or audio chat I participate in, but it's nice to know that it's now literally as simple as a click of the mouse to do so.
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Conference Recorder 2 - Record iChat audio/video chats
Authored by: PCheese on May 10, '06 10:48:48AM

You may also want to consider Garageband's iChat conference recording capabilities (audio only, though it will grab still frames in podcast mode). Garageband will split each person's audio into individual tracks.



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Conference Recorder 2 - Record iChat audio/video chats
Authored by: steresi on May 10, '06 12:57:09PM

Is this something new to GarageBand 3? I'm using GarageBand 2 and can't see where to activate iChat recording.

Scott



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Conference Recorder 2 - Record iChat audio/video chats
Authored by: PCheese on May 11, '06 09:50:58AM
Right, recording is available in Garageband 3 (iLife '06) only.

Bakari, what do you mean by it not holding up? Did it display an error message? Intel or PowerPC mini, and which model? You might want to open Activity Monitor and check what else might be using up system resources (maybe Dashboard). How many people were in the conference? I wonder if it's the hard drive speed, but if so the same issue should happen on laptops.

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Conference Recorder 2 - Record iChat audio/video chats
Authored by: Bakari on May 10, '06 03:14:28PM

I tried to use Garabageband and iChat for a podcast production and it failed on me more than once. I turned off all applications and gave it all it required, but it just wouldn't hold up. I really wanted it to work. I'm using a MacMini with 1 gig of ram.

If anyone could tell me what I'm doing wrong I would appreciate it.



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