Recording online meetings and interviews

Pear note can make a great tool for taking notes on meetings or interviews that occur in the physical world. That said, with a few other tools it can be used for meetings and interviews that occur in the online world as well. One of the most common tools for conducting online meetings and interviews is Skype, so I’ll use it as the example here (though you can probably translate these instructions to other apps as well). To record a Skype conversation, do the following:

  1. Download Soundflower and install it (along with the Soundflowerbed app that comes with it)
  2. Download LineIn and install it
  3. Start Soundflowerbed, and select Built-in Output (or whatever output you’d like to listen to the conversation on)
  4. Start LineIn, and select your microphone (e.g. Built-in Mic) as the input and Soundflower (2ch) as the output, then press Pass Thru
  5. Open Pear Note Preferences, select Recording, and select Soundflower (2ch) as the audio device
  6. Open Skype Preferences, select Audio, and select Soundflower (2ch) as the audio output and your microphone (e.g. Built-in Mic) as the audio input
  7. Hit record in Pear Note and make your Skype call

Note that you’ll hear yourself as well as the other person while recording. If you’d rather not hear yourself, you can modify which channels are sent from LineIn through the Advanced interface and then customize which channels are being monitored in Soundflowerbed. This will eliminate hearing yourself during recording. Your voice will still be recorded in Pear Note, you just won’t hear it live.

3 Responses to “Recording online meetings and interviews”

  1. Robin Harris says:

    I work remotely and use Skype. IMHO you are missing a huge market – of which I am one – who uses Skype for concalls and would like to have my notes sync’d with my recording of the call.

    The workflow you outline above may work, but there is no way this works for someone who is busy moving from meeting to meeting. So, sadly, I won’t be buying Pear Note, even though it might do what I want.

  2. Mike Russell says:

    Use Loopback ($99) from Rogue Amoeba. It’ll take about an hour to learn and configure (very straightforward). Then, you just have to set your recording device in Pear Note’s preferences once. https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/