Skype Journal: mp-3 from Skype Voice Mail
March 5, 2005 06:43 PMKevin Tofel wanted to use his Skype Voice Mail recordings in a Podcast. The problem is it is not easy to do. In fact I'm certain I made the first Podcast using a SkypeVM with Buzz Bruggerman who simply raved about it on my VM. Great feedback I wanted to share. Capturing the audio from a Skype VM is a fiddle. I played around with solutions like Kevin's and then sent it straight to my iPod. So if you have a burning need here are Kevin's instructions.While I've not tried them out, earlier experimentation with Audacity suggests this should work just fine. They detailed with nice screen shots. So Kevin if you want to consider turning out some more Tips and Tricks for the Skype Journal I'd be happy.
One of the reasons I want some voicemail capability in Skype is to use the messages for my podcasts. What a great way to get questions & comments that can be played back in a podcast for the listeners. At least that's the theory! In practice, it's not as cut and dry as that, simply because the voicemail audio is not saved as a usable file on your local machine. Once you play a voicemail in Skype, it does save locally; however it is saved in a .DAT file that I haven't been able to play back outside of the Skype client.
kct's digital world
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What's going on here with the storage of Skype's VM messages? Are they encrypted and compressed? That would actually be good in terms of security[1], although it's obviously bad for us in terms of getting at them and re-purposing them.
[1]On a PC that boots with no password and auto-starts Skype. Security? Right!
Posted by: Julian Bond at March 7, 2005 12:08 AM
Thanks for the ping and kind words on my Skype VM to MP3 story.
Re: the encyrption & compression question in the previous comment. The messages are stored locally AFTER you play them through the Skype client. The file format is .dat and they are not encrypted on your local machine. For additional info, check out: http://www.skype.com/help/guides/voicemail.html
Thanks!
kct
Posted by: Kevin C. Tofel at March 9, 2005 11:02 AM
I just sent in instructions on how to get the raw pcm data decompressed. the voicemails are mearly raw iLBC streams. theres a free decompression utility at http://www.ilbcfreeware.org/software.html and like i said specific command lines are in the post i made for tips and tricks.
Posted by: Hutch at July 31, 2005 5:03 AM
I read all info regarding the ways how to record Skype's voicemail... And you know what? THERE'S A SIMPLE - VERY SIMPLE WAY!!!
Did is what I did:
1 - Double-Click on the little speaker located on you Windows System Tray (yellow for w2k and earlier; black for WinXP);
2 - Click on Options and then Properties;
3 - Select Recording, make sure ALL boxes are checked, and press OK;
4 - Select WAVE, set the level at around halfway, and close this window;
5 - Open the Windows Sound Recorder program (yes, that lame soft that comes with every single version of Windows: sndrec32.exe);
6 - Click the record button - RED - and play the VoiceMail on Skype. Let it record the message. After it's over, press stop.
7 - Click on File and Save As. Before saving the actual file, click the Change button to alter the Format to mp3, i.e. MPEG Layer-3. 56kBits/s is ok;
8 - Name the file *.mp3.
VOI-LÁ
Posted by: Carlos at October 26, 2005 1:32 PM
Posted by: dionyseus at December 6, 2005 9:17 PM