I use FaceTime on a daily basis and have always hated it wouldn’t let me save calls to my Mac in the form of a media file. Surely Apple could have implemented such a feature if they wanted, but they didn’t and I think privacy is a big part of that.
If for whatever reason you need to record FaceTime calls to a Mac, Call Recorder by Ken and Glen Aspeslagh, twin brothers from Massachusetts, has you covered.
The app creates a QuickTime movie file containing an audio track for audio-only calls and a video track for FaceTime video calls. QuickTime is an industry-standard multimedia container, meaning you can play your saved video and audio chats pretty much anywhere, convert the files to other formats in software like iMovie or Adobe After Effects, upload them to YouTube and more.
That’s just scratching the surface.
The handy FaceTime add-on records both sides of the call, side-by-side. And if you’re handing off a cellular call from an iPhone to your Mac, Call Recorder can handle that as well.
Call Recorder couldn’t be simpler: upon installing the app, a recording window gets automatically added to FaceTime on your Mac.
If a call comes in and you’d like to record it, first accept the call and then hit the Record button to start capturing a video or audio to a folder on your computer.
Clicking the gear icon in the Call Recorder window reveals a few handy options available in the settings interface. For starters, you can tell the app to record calls automatically or discard ones shorter than x seconds. Other options include choosing a format for video and setting your destination folder.
Video calls can be recorded in high-definition 720p or in a lower 640-by-360 pixel resolution. The choice between 720p and the lower-res format is dependent on a number of factors such as hardware capabilities of your Mac, network conditions, the speed of your and your contact’s Internet connection and what not.
Call Recorder requires a Mac running OS X 10.8 or newer and FaceTime for Mac. The app costs $29.95 and can be purchased through the Ecamm website. As you may have guessed already, Call Recorder is not available through the Mac App Store because it breaks Apple’s rules pertaining to sandboxed apps.
