Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a_ym-cfKro

Thanks to TalkTechTutorials.

YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stlWYhxMrsg

Thanks to HakerzTM.

You can also record your video tutorials get free upgrades to premium accounts!

If an error is detected in connection between Skype and Call Graph during the recording, then the recording is stopped prematurely and a notification is displayed to that effect. Here’s how you can resolve the issue.

• Check if you have any other Skype plugin installed which is causing a conflict. Try disabling them and record a test call to see if it works. Generally if you have another recording plugin, it will conflict. You’ll have to choose between the other plugin and Call Graph.
• Check if your firewall is blocking the connnection between Skype and Call Graph. Try adding an exception rule for Call Graph.

If you require help in resolving it then please contact us or leave a comment here.

The echo/lag issues with Call Graph has been resolved in version 1.3.0.0. Please upgrade now.

If you get this notification then your recorded conversation will be garbled and filled with breaks. Try the following setps to resolve the issue.

• Try setting the mp3 encoding parameters to 16KHz sampling rate and 64 kpbs bit rate.
• Switch to wav file encoding instead of mp3.
• Check how much CPU time is being consumed by CG when recording. If its more than 20% then close some applications on your PC and try again.

This is usually an indication of a more serious issue on your setup. Leave a comment or get in touch with us here in case you need more help.

For high quality voice recordings of your Skype conversation, please use the following settings

• Recording Mode: Stereo – 2 channels
• Sampling Rate: 16000 Hz
• Bit Rate: 128 kbps
• Echo Cancellation: OFF

The first three can be configured from the ‘Recording’ tab of the configuration dialog. The last two are in the ‘Advanced’ Tab.

Tips:

• First and foremost, use a headset instead of the inbuilt speaker and mic. It helps to keep the background noise to the minimum and reduces the possibility of any echo during the call.
• If you get an echo then drop the call and try again. If possible, record a test call first and play it back to make sure things are fine.
• For SkypeOut and Conference calls, ensure that the call quality is good enough before you start the recording. Make a few test calls before the actual one if possible.
• Close all other applications which might use your internet bandwidth during that period. Usual browsing should not interfere but downloads or uploads (or BitTorrent) severely hampers the call quality.
• If possible, reboot your machine once before you start on the call. It clears up the memory and performs better.
• Finally, keep an eye on the status displayed at the bottom of the Toolbar as well during the call. It should be showing ‘Recording in progress’. If not restart the call and the recording.

Explanation:

Technically speaking, these settings are optimal for our system. The Speech Recognition engine that we use works in the wideband mode (16 kHz) and the 128 kbps bit rate preserves the optimal voice quality in the mp3 files. Encoding in two track mode enables us to split up each of the track separately and process them.

If you have more questions then feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

If you face any problems with Call Graph, then the first thing that we ask you for is the log file. Here’s how to get yours.

Step 1: Right click on the Call Graph task bar icon.

The CG icon is the brown ‘C’ icon on task bar of your computer. If you cannot see it then Call Graph is not running. Please start it from the program menu.

Step 2: Choose ‘Configuration’ from the popup menu. The following dialog box will come up.

Step 3: Click on the ‘Open log file’ link.

A notepad will open up with all the contents of the log file. Copy and paste everything on the mail.

Thats it. Please dont hesitate to contact us if you face any issue.

Call Graph needs to connect to the Skype API so as the get the voice data. Skype should automatically ask you now to authorize Call Graph and once you’ve permitted it, you are all set. But sometimes that never happens. Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to authorize CG to connect to Skype.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Step 1: Go to Skype – > Tools -> Options

Step 2: Click on ‘Advanced’ tab on your left navigation bar.

Step 3: Click on that ‘Manage other programs access to Skype’ link at the bottom of this window.

Step 4: Click on the ‘Change’ button. If you do not see Call Graph listed there, then try restarting both Call Graph and Skype. If that doesn’t work too, restart your PC.

Step 5: Authorize Call Graph to connect to Skype and click on the OK button. The Call Graph task bar icon should show a green tick mark. The toolbar status should have message ‘Ready to record’.

If you get a message from Skype “Another application (CallGraph.exe) is attempting to access Skype, but we are unable to respond. Please try to restart application.” then please try restarting both Skype and CallGraph. To restart CallGraph, right click on the CallGraph system tray icon and choose exit from the popup menu.

If you do not get any message from Skype then try making a call to echo123 from Skype.

If you have authorized CallGraph and still can hear only one side of the conversation in the recorded file, then it might be a problem with your stereo file playback settings. Please try recording in the mono mode. The setting is in configuration -> recording tab.

Leave a comment or get in touch with us if you need any help.

We also provide online storage, sharing, transcription and collaboration services along with the free Skype call recording client. To use these services, the Call Graph client has to be linked to an account on Call Graph. Once the association is done the files can be uploaded. The automatic upload option causes file upload start immideately after the recording finishes (it is paused if another Skype call is detected to prevent any degradation of call quality). The ‘Associated Clients’ page lists all the associated clients from where they can be managed.

More than one client can also be linked to an account on Call Graph. This option is especially useful for teams. All the files can be automatically uploaded to the centralized online account from where it can be monitored. Moreover a separate association password can be specified, different from the account password. The association password restricts access only to associating a client and uploading files from it. The account password can be used to access the files and manage them. So association password can be circulated within the group safely.

If you have more questions or need support please contact us.

So what after the recording. You are obviously recording the call with some purpose. Our web serivce, CRIMS which stands for Call Recording Indexing and Management, provides you with several options once you are done with the recording. I’ll briefly go over the things you can do with CRIMS in this article.

Registering:

You need to register for our web service to use it. Registration is free and straightforward. Provide your mail id to us and we’ll send you a link. Click on the link and we’ll ask you to fill out a form. And you are done.

Several of our users have reported that they are not getting the mails at all. It happens because a lot of mail clients (especially Hotmail) treats such mails as spam. Hence check your spam folder if you do not get the mail. You can always request for a new mail from the register page as well.

Setting up the Account:

This web service works with our Skype call recorder only. So before you can do anything with it, you need to associate and verify your client installation. If you haven’t already installed the client, then its the right time to do so. Get it from here.

On your computer, right click on the Call Graph task bar icon, choose ‘Configuration’, go to the ‘Association’ page and enter your username and password that you used to create your account. Click on the ‘Associate’ button. You should get a notification saying that your machine has been added and it needs to be approved before calls can be uploaded. The approval has to be done from the Machines page.

If you want all your calls records to be automatically uploaded to your account then make sure that ‘Automatically upload a copy to my account’ option on the associations page. The upload happens independently of call recording in the background. So you can carry on with your work and record more calls if you want.

Uploading:

Now that your account is set up, you can start uploading calls. Start a call with ‘echo123′ and record it. If you have opted to upload calls manually, open the Call Graph history dialog (right click on the CG Task bar icon and choose ‘History’) and click on the upload link below the file name. Otherwise the upload starts as soon as the call recording completes.

The client will notify you when the upload finishes. After that login to your account. You should see something like this.

Call Recording History:

This is your call record history page. This is the first page you are shown when you log in to your account and is the starting point if you want to do something with your record. There are two parts to this page: the left hand menu and the history table. The menu lists down the other pages that you can go to. We’ll get to that in a short while.

In the call record history there are two main parts: the details column and the management column. The details column displays the details of your call record. When was it recorded, by whom, when was it uploaded, was it shared with someone and so on.  It also has an embedded flash player. Click on the play button and you should be able to listen to your record.

The management column gives you a set of actions that you can do with your record. Few of them are self explanatory. You can rename the file, edit the tags or delete it in the same way you can do in the client. You can also download it back if you want. Helpful if you are recording calls from several machines.

Note that when you delete the file its completely removed for our system. There is no way to get it back. You can do a ‘reupload’ if you still have it in your client though.

As with the client, this page also displays your call records in reverse chronological order, the latest one first.

Sharing:

If you want to share it with someone, maybe the person you recorded the call with, click on the share link. It will ask you for the email id and instructions of how to access the record will be sent to your contact.

Once you share a record, a new field will start appearing your your details column stating with whom was the record shared with. There will be a new option in the management column as well to unshare the call record. If you mistakenly shared your record, click on unshare and all the shares will be revoked.

Note that the contact you have shared your call with can only play it back. Since you are the owner of this record, only you have can delete, share, transcribe etc.

Transcribe:

If you want a text transcript for your call then click on the transcribe link. We provide transcripts for calls which pass our quality checks. The parameters for quality check include voice quality, your language setting (must be American English for now) and duration (> 5 minutes).

Once the screening is passed you will be notified of it. You can click on the transcribe link and place an order for the transcript from there.

As we go along we will add support for many more languages and accents. This post has a some details of our transcription process if you are interested to know more.

Search:

One of the most interesting feature of our web service is Search. We can do contextual searches. When your call records are being screened we generate a list of keywords which can be used to identify your call record. These keywords added to the tag list of your call record. So now you can actually search for a call with a word which might have occurred during the call itself.

A search bar is present at the top of the history page. Type in your search term and press enter. It should take you to a the ‘Search Results’ page where all records matching your search terms will be listed.

As with the client, we also add the your contact’s name by default to the tag list. So if you want to list all the call records with a particular contact of yours, just search for it and it will display the timeline.

The search is also very basic currently since we lack good language and grammar databases. But as we keep on improving the system, it should start getting more and more useful.

What Else:

You can add more machines to your account if you want from the machines page. As many as you want!

You can also mail us directly from the support page if you want to ask us something.

You can also change your password, or your language setting or delete your account from the settings page. if you click on delete, we delete all the records and personal data you have provided us with. We retain nothing!

Note that if you do not want your call records to be screened then you can set your language setting to ‘Other’.

What’s Next:

As you would have noticed, the UI is very simple and basic. Very Web 1.0′ish. But we are working on a major upgrade to it and things will be much better soon. So keep tuned.

If you havent signed up already then please do it now. Click here. We are offering all these services for free in the beta phase. So give it a try and let us know what you think of it!