CallGraph.Biz Blog

This update fixes an issue with our last update 1.1.0.0 where the migration to Sqlite DB used to fail in cases where the call record name had Unicode characters in its name and it used to give an Initialization Failed error. With this update, the migration should go through smoothly.

This is a major update of the client. The UI has been completely revamped and moved to the browser. Clicking on the history menu item or the configuration menu item now opens the default browser window. It adds quite a lot of options on searching/sorting/filtering of the call records. Here are few screenshots of it.

The recordings page shows all the records found on the local machine in the main area. Upto 10 records can be listed at a time and pages are shown for navigation. Clicking on the play button launches an inbuilt flash player which plays back the file. Clicking on the show details link reveals all the metadata of the call records (eg. date recorded, size, duration etc.). The rename and edit tags link can be used to edit the details. The upload link queues the files for upload (only if your client is associated). The delete link removes the record from your machine.

The sidebar shows the options for batch file operations, searching, sorting and filtering. Now multiple records can be selected at a time and either deleted or queued for upload. The records can also be sorted in ascending/descending order of time, size and duration. The default is newest. The search dialog can be used to locate a record by name or tags. The filter can be used to narrow down the listing by a specific criteria (the possible ones are duration, size, uploaded, date and recorded by).

The cool thing is that search, filter and sorting and be applied one after the other, in any order. So you can locate a call record by name ‘echo’ recorded on a ‘Sunday’ and ordered by ‘increasing duration’.

The configuration page is an exact replica of the the configuration dialog. It has five tabs, for general options, update settings, recording params, association and advanced. Each of these tabs show a subset of the settings in that particular group.

This is our first step in integrating the desktop client with our web application. Going forward it will be a seamless experience. All the services offered by our web application (sharing, transcribing etc.) will now be delivered through this particular interface.

Apart from the UI change, several bug fixes also went into this release. One of the major bug fix was the issue of connection getting lost between the client and Skype because of which the calls would not get recorded automatically. Now we have added a keep alive mechanism to keep the connection going.

Another major bug fix was the long startup time it used to take if you had a large number of call records stored. That used to happen because of the flat xml file database we used earlier. Now we have moved to sqlite database. So once all your files are migrated, the next startup will be very fast.

Please update now. And please send us your feedback on the UI changes.

Update: Here’s a detailed post on the technology behind the browser based UI. Have a look if you have questions regarding it.

The changelog for version 1.0.6.8 is as follows.

Changes:

A new option, pause recording was added to the popup menu. It gets enabled when a recording is in progress and can be used to temporarily pause the recording during any call. Its functionally equivalent to the pause recording on the toolbar. Thanks to Chris for suggesting this feature.

The toolbar is now displayed whenever the Call Graph system tray icon is clicked.

Upload and download progress functionality was added in this release. The percentages are now displayed on the tooltip of the Call Graph system tray icon as well as the toolbar status when its in progress.

A warning message is displayed if during exit, if a call record upload is in progress.

A bug which prevented records which had apostrophe’s in its name or path from being played was fixed. Thanks to Johnathan for reporting this issue.

Several more minor fixes and changes. Please update now.

What’s Next:

Revamp of the History UI, faster startup if you have large number of call records. Stay tuned.

Thanks for using Call Graph once again and please keep the feedback coming in.

The update we did yesterday unfortunately broke the upload functionality. It was because of the unicode changes we had done. The issue has been fixed with version 1.0.6.7. Please update if you are facing the issue.

Version 1.0.6.6 is out. Here’s a list of changes that went in.

We added support for Unicode in this release. So you can use any characters in your call record names, tags etc. It should also not complain if index.xml files have Umlaut, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese etc. characters in them. This was a much requested feature from our users.

A recommended transcription settings button in the configuration dialog, recordings page. This sets the parameters which we recommend if you want to get your call record transcribed by us. Thanks to Tim for suggesting this feature.

During the association process, if we detect that your firewall is preventing us from accessing the website, we show a warning now. This was preventing some of our users from completing the association process. Similarly for the ‘Check for updates’ operation.

Earlier if Call Graph was running and you tried to start it again from the start menu then we used to show a message saying ‘Another instance is running, aborting’. That has been removed now. It now brings up the toolbar of the already running process.

The toolbar was enhanced and now it has a more descriptive status bar and a button for the configuration dialog. The status bar has links to be blog for common problems that are encountered and tips on how to resolve them.

There was a bug in the ‘Run at startup’ option which prevented Call Graph from being started during computer boot up. That has been fixed now. Thanks to Mathew for pointing it out.

It also contains numerous other bug fixes.

What’s Next:

Faster startup, better history UI, tighter integration with the web service etc. Stay tuned.

As usual, feedback is welcome. Send us a mail or leave a comment if you want.

Our weekly update of the recording client is out, version 1.0.6.5. Apart from the several bug fixes, it also contains a new feature: the recording toolbar.

This toolbar appears when a incoming/outgoing Skype call is detected and gives you ability to start/stop/pause the recording and view your call record history. It also displays the current status of recording, whether the recording is ongoing or paused or finished. The pause functionality is new in this release. During the call you can use this button to completely skip parts of the conversation from the recording.

The time when the window opens can be configured from the settings dialog. By default it shows up whenever a call is detected. In case you do not want this then check the box next to ‘Show toolbar when recording’ option.

A corresponding popup menu item also has been added. Click on it so see the toolbar at any point of time.

This is the beginning of a series of changes that we have planned to our client. Next up is ability to keep on recording beyond the call finishes. Eg. in cases when call is dropped or when are doing a redial. All of these will be implemented via this particular toolbar.

If you have some suggestion in mind then do send it across. It helps us in filling in the voids in our software.

Our weekly update of the Call Graph Skype call recording plugin is out. The version number is 1.0.6.2. You can get the update by right clicking on the Call Graph and choosing ‘Check for updates’ from the popup menu. Here are all the changes which went into this release.

The index file location was moved from the recording directory to the Application Data directory. This change completes the bug fix which was started in the last release. Now the fatal error dude to index file load failure should not happen. If suppose the recording directory is not available when recording is being started (eg. the case when its on a network share) then a recording start failed notification will be shown. One of our users was facing this particular issue and altered us on it. Thanks for doing so.

We added two additional configurations in this release as well, both in the ‘Advanced’ panel of the Configuration dialog.  The first one is for discarding call records which are less than a certain length. Several of our users had asked for this option. The default value is 5 seconds. So all records below 5 seconds will be now discarded and you’ll get a notification saying that the recording was canceled. It can be increased upto 5 minutes (300 seconds).

The second option was for setting the encoding buffer size. The encoding buffer is a temporary store for the voice data before it gets encoded as mp3 or wav. The rate at which this buffer is consumed depends upon several factors: the amount of ram available, the CPU speed, the sample rate of your recording etc. So the hardcoded value of 10 MB sometimes used to be too short in some cases. Which used to manifest itself as breaks in the recorded file. If your records have breaks in them then please increase this value to something like twice or thrice the default value of 10 MB.

Looking forward to your feedback and thanks again for using Call Graph.

Update: We made a stupid typo in this release: ‘Encoing’ instead of ‘Encoding’. Thanks to David for pointing it out. We’ve fixed it in version 1.0.6.3.

We made some minor UI changes today to CRIMS: registration process and pagination.

The registration process has been made a bit more standard now. Earlier you had to provide your email and we used to send a link, which used to lead to the profile creation page. Now, you can create a profile and then verify your email later on whenever you wish. You can log in and view your account, but then cannot do much. We need your email address so that the notifications are sent whenever you add machines or upload call records. So for those you would have to verify your email.

The pagination of the Call Record history page was also made more standard. Instead of displaying all the page numbers in at the bottom of the page, which used to be a long list if you had more than 50, 60 records, we now display only around 9 pages. First three, three from the middle or your current page, and three of the last pages.

Another minor change was in the search box. Now its more intuitive and prompts you to enter your search term.

Happy call graphing!

We just released version 1.0.6.1 version of Call Graph, the free Skype call recording application. To upgrade, please right click on the Call Graph task bar icon and choose ‘Check for updates’. Here’s a brief description of the changes that went into it.

Sometimes during initialization Call Graph used to give an fatal error and abort. It used to happen when the call recording directory was removed. Call Graph stores the indexes in that directory, without which it cannot startup. So if you delete or move this directory, it used to give this fatal error. We have partly fixed this problem by recreating the directory again if it does not exist. We’ll be working more on it in our future releases.

Another change was that upload complete notification is not shown anymore if you have disabled notifications. This was a bug we introduced in the previous release. Thanks to one of our users for pointing it out.

The display duration of the sliding window notification has been increased to 10 seconds from 5. Several of our users had mentioned that it disappears too fast. Let us know if this is good enough. If not we’ll increase it further. Or introduce a configuration option for it.

A new feature was also added: Echo Cancellation. Several of our users have complained of a large echo in their calls and recordings when they use the in built mic and speaker (on laptops) or some other device. So we have added an echo canceler in Call Graph. You can read up more about Acoustic Echo Cancellation on Wikipidea. This feature is turned off by default and is accessible from the ‘Advanced’ tab of the configuration dialog.

Its an experimental feature right now. Might work on some machines and not in others. Software echo cancellation is not perfect solution. Its better to have hardware echo cancellation if you have it on your PC. Check the settings on your audio driver for that. It also CPU intensive task and and an additional processing step. Depending upon your PC configuration you might get varied results. We’ll keep on testing and improving it in future releases.

We’d suggest that you use a headset for high quality recordings. It keeps the noise down to the minimum and produces very good results.

Please update your client and keep the feedback coming.