Podcasting and the Frustration that is Vista
While my newsletter for this week may only be tangentially related to Eclipse, it was what I really felt like writing about and I think that it's a lot more interesting than the topic I was going to choose. (you didn't really want me to run through a belated announcement for Eclipse 3.3 M6, did you?) Some of you may have either guessed, or caught the news on the wind that EclipseZone will be doing another podcast series surrounding the upcoming Eclipse release in June. This will be similar in intent to the Callisto podcast series expertly performed last year by Riyad Kalla in that I will interview the leads for many of the projects which will be part of the Europa release train. However, we'll be shooting for a slightly shorter format (we thought that an hour was too long), as well as a more evenly spaced schedule (we're shooting for a new release once every two weeks). Mark your calendars everyone, the first podcast comes out May 1st! (thus ends the Eclipse-related content in this newsletter…) We've already picked the leads we want to go with for the first couple podcasts, and I'm starting recording with them very shortly. However, the obvious technical aspects to such a project should immediately jump out at any of you who've never done podcasting before. In a nutshell, I'm supposed to be recording interviews with individuals spread out across the globe (at least one of them literally half-way around). So the big question is: how is it done? Well, the answer is Skype. I make a call (either Skype-to-Skype or using Skype Out) to the individual I'm supposed to be interviewing, and then I record the call locally into a two-track audio project (one for me, one for the interviewee). This doesn't seem so hard until you consider that Skype works directly at the audio device level, so either I use a patch cable and a second computer (run a line from the audio out on one computer to the audio in on another), or I use some sort of weird Skype-hack plugin. (actually, Mac provides a third option which would be Audio Hijack, but I'm temporarily out of a mac, so that's not in consideration). Now, the weird Skype-hack thingy is actually called HotRecord. It's a pretty slick little utility that's designed to do exactly this - record Skype calls into separate audio tracks. The one catch is that it only works on Windows XP. Being the suave, techno-geek that I am, I'm of course using Windows Vista as my primary OS. This presents a problem for a number of applications, but Skype really seems to have the hardest time with it (other than Trillian, which crashes constantly). Getting Skype to play nice with Vista is like trying to get GNUCash to install nicely on your grandmother's Macintosh. Eventually, "nice" ceases to be an applicable adverb. Anyway, HotRecord works (as far as I can tell) by using Skype's remote application control API, which basically allows third party applications to "extend" Skype by controlling a running instance. This is all well and good, and really how HotRecord should be doing its dirty work, except that Skype on Vista doesn't like this. It probably trips some weird, UAC access control because any time I try to fire up HotRecord, Skype crashes. It's done the same for any number of other, third party solutions similar to HotRecord. Each time I started the recording process in the recording utility, Skype unceremoniously abdicated my task bar. Needless to say, things were looking quite grim. I considered using my friend's MacBook, but I'd rather go that route only as a last resort. I was getting to the point of futzing with patch cables and device ports when I realized that there was a very simple solution to the whole mess: don't use Vista. This isn't the first time Windows Vista - or indeed, any Windows version - has proven itself "not all it's cracked up to be" (to coin a phrase). So I have taken to keeping a few spare virtual machine images lying around for just such occasions. Normally I use them for testing of my applications on older or obscure operating systems, but now seemed to be a good time to perform a slightly different form of test. I installed HotRecorder and Skype 3.1 (just released a week ago) onto my XP VM and pulled the trigger on my only friend who listens to me: Skype Test Call. And of course, HotRecorder promptly crashed. It seems the app is a little out-dated and doesn't work right with Skype 3.1 (possibly not even 3.0). So, it was back to the drawing board. It was in this, my darkest hour that Matt used this amazing tool known as "Google" and discovered a third option: Pamela. Pamela is designed specifically for recording Skype calls and supports some pretty neat features like automatically warning your callers about the recording (mandatory in some countries), automatic answering (for voice mail) and recording a stereo mix (separate channels for each side). This last feature is particularly useful and is something I've been looking for in a Skype recorder. Anyway, long story short, Pamela is designed to work not only on Vista, but with the latest versions of Skype too. It saves the files natively in the WAV format and can export to MP3 as well (though, I'll probably do that in Audacity after editing). So, problem solved. The really embarrassing bit of this whole saga is that if you look under Tools -> Do More in Skype, you'll find Pamela linked directly from the application. It will even download (and install) the app for you automatically. So, if I had just RTFM rather than trying to hack my own solution together, I might have saved myself a weekend's worth of headache. The moral of the story: look for the simple solution. Literally if I had looked through Skype a bit more, I would have found Pamela. Now, in my defense I couldn't find Pamela mentioned anywhere on the Skype website in conjunction with recording. I also didn't find it mentioned anywhere else on the web under the same terms. Still, that won't win me back a weekend of head-banging. So, take my mistakes to heart, dear reader, and hopefully you'll be able to avoid the ice-pack.
Until Next Time,
Daniel Spiewak
daniel@dzone.com
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