SuperTintin

If you want a simple, inexpensive way to record Skype conversations, buy a copy of SuperTintin. That’s probably the shortest review I’ve ever written but it pretty much sums up all you need to know.

OK, just for the sake of completeness, here are a few more details. SuperTintin is a program that can record your audio and video conversations on Skype. It can record both sides of the conversation or just one side, it can optionally record the video from either the remote or the local webcam or from both. Video size and frame-rate are selectable so you can record anything from small ‘picture in picture’ videos to large (up to 960x720 videos). It can start recording automatically whenever you use Skype or it will record when you click its big red ‘Record’ button.

It has a very simple interface – essentially just a little window with Record and Stop buttons and a list of the recorded files that have been saved to disk. To play back one of those files you click its name in the list. I’ve tried it out on several conversations, with and without video, and it just works. The recording quality is excellent and the software is completely straightforward in use. In principle, it is able to record group conference calls too but this is a feature which I haven’t tested.

In the past, I’ve used a program called Pamela (Skype recorders seem to favour odd names!) to record my online conversations. There is a feature-limited free version of Pamela. The commercial editions have all kinds of added extras that you won’t find in SuperTintin (things such as call schedulers, birthday notifications and FTP uploaders to some blogging systems). Pamela is a good, long-established product that also looks nicer than SuperTintin. It has a slick user interface with lots of pretty graphics. By comparison, SuperTintin looks dull and utilitarian. However, the downside is that Pamela is more complicated, ‘fussier’, to use. Personally, I’ve never used any of its added extras. All I want is a quick and easy way to record Skype calls. If you have any doubt about which program is right for you, I’d recommend that you download the trial editions of each. For my own use, SuperTintin does everything I want. I think SuperTintin will be the Skype recorder I’ll be using for the foreseeable future.