Database Info

Audacity releases FREE (!) Audacity Personal DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) for the PPC

There are several sound recorder applications for the Pocket PC (please see the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible for more info.) Now, the previously Palm OS-only Audacity Personal DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) has also been ported to the Pocket PC.
The title is available for all WM2003+ operating systems and is accessible here.
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In this review, I “only” provide a list of pros and cons and compare the title to other PPC sound recorders.
Pros
Filename may contain full date / time (screenshot 1 2 3. Very few other PPC recorders are capable of the same (see the “Additional recording features: Auto recording numbering?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible and my Audio Memory System by Personal Memory Systems review). Currently, as far as non-MP3-recording (but either Speex or Ogg) is concerned, the best Resco is able to include both the date and time in filenames but it’s not so configurable as Audacity Personal DVR.
It can pause/resume (not possible with all recorders; see the “Recording pause/resume?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible) and even append to recordings (even rarer; see the “Append new recording to file?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible)
Alarms can be defined and added with your own recordings (as opposed to the built-in notification / alarm mechanism in Windows Mobile)
Buttons are freely redefinable for all the four types of dialogs / recording states. See here and here (button shortcuts on the Home dialog), here (Idle state), here (Record state) and here (Playback state). Note, however, that the hardware button support is certainly lacking; also see the Cons section on this.
You can start recording with a looooong-press of any (and the same) hardware button (after assigning Audacity to a button first in Settings / Buttons and assigning the same button to the Record functionality in the Home and the Idle dialogs / states and to either Stop or Pause/Resume for the Record and Playback states. (Remember, however, to disable the tutorial at startup by checking in the related checkbox!) Most alternative Pocket PC sound recorders require, in general, TWO button presses to achieve the same (see the “Buttons: One-button recording? Does it need to show the app window?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible.
Free (currently)
Desktop-side file synchronization support
Cons
Exceptionally high CPU usage – much higher than with Notes or anything else only using built-in OS-level codecs (check out the related remarks in the Audio Recording Bible – you WILL see other apps, which are only based on the built-in codecs, consume far less power)! (Some figures: Dell Axim x51v: 25% at 624 MHz; Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720: 60% at 416 MHz.). This, unfortunately, not only means vastly reduced battery life when you make a lot of recording (and even playback! – unfortunately, the CPU usage is very high even when you play back stuff), but also skips in the recording on some devices as is the case for example on the HTC Wizard, even when overclocked to 240 MHz. These problems render the application useless on some models.
Only built-in codecs may be used, unlike with the Palm version (see the codec chart at the bottom of the page). A decent sound reorder should support something better than PCM WAV / GSM; for example, MP3 or Speex.
Doesn’t see CF cards in devices sporting them – an example x51v screenshot is here (the situation is exactly the same on all other devices with a CF slot; for example, the PL720). This also means it won’t be able to make recordings into file stores on pre-WM5 devices (and unlocked Extended ROM’s on PPC PE devices) either – only (mini / micro) SD cards.
It doesn’t handle the two side buttons on the Dell Axim x51v and Pocket Loox 720; there is no support for the HP iPAQ hx4700 side button either (tested on a WM5-upgraded device). On the HTC Wizard, it only handles the Camera, Mail, Wireless and Notes buttons (that is, there is no support for the Explorer button and the two WM5 softbuttons); this means at least you’ll be able to use it in the one-keypress mode if you redefine any of the supported (preferably side) buttons. The button referred to as the “Side button” (the only one to have a record functionality assigned to by default) is not supported on any of these devices; this means you MUST redefine one of the accessible buttons (which will be one of the front buttons on non-PPC PE models and can also be the side buttons on PPC PE models) in order to be able to use it to start / stop recording. The developers, as with many others not having read it, should read on my past tutorials / articles on enumerating the available buttons on a given Pocket PC ( Where does the PPC Registry store button mapping info - a tutorial (alternatives: PPC Magazine, BrightHand; make sure you also follow the link to More Programmers'/Hackers' Stuff, along with some cool Pocket Loox 7xx Hold Button Tips: More on Pocket PC Hardware Buttons for more info.). I’ve discussed this problem with the developers; they have assured me support for all accessible buttons will be implemented really soon.
No built-in screenoff support; all the utility offers is backlight dimming (but NOT locking – now, compare this to how Resco allows for full even button protection!) the screen after 30 seconds (independent of the system setting; that is, you don’t even need to enable screen dimming on the system level at all); see for example the button reassignment list above. Of course, you can still use independent screenoff utilities even assigned to hardware buttons, as long as you don’t re-map these buttons inside Personal DVR to inner functions. The fact that only screen dimming takes place also means the graphics-related excess CPU usage will always be a problem.
On the 624 MHz x51v, it takes seven seconds for the application to start recording when started anew – in no way so fast as Notes (not to talk about its CPU usage) or even most other alternative recorders. In this respect, preferring a two-buttonpress-required, but much faster-to-be-invoked recorder may pay out.

Verdict
As with many other direct Palm (and Symbian – see for example Lonely Cat Games’ products like ProfiMail and LGC Jukebox) ports (see for example my review of mVoice 5 by MotionApps, which suffers from exactly the same problem – that is, a title that has been one of the best on the Palm can’t really be compared to the commercial alternatives on the Pocket PC), this application isn’t really a match for current top-of-the-line, commercial (!) Pocket PC sound recorders like Resco – the Pocket PC platform is just far stronger, software-wise, than Palm.
However, given that it’s free (and I’m comparing it to commercial titles like Resco Audio Recorder), I still recommend it, particularly if you’re looking for a one (as opposed to most alternative Pocket PC recorders which almost all require two (consequent) presses) button-press application if you can live with the (current) limitations and problems (no CF, no support for side buttons of non-Phone devices, very high CPU usage, lack of screenoff, long activation time when it needs to be loaded etc.). Hope the problems will soon be ironed out in subsequent versions.
UPDATE (02/03/2007): PPCT frontpage

Updated review posted.

BREAKING NEWS: Infamous, top Linux multimedia player MPlayer is being ported to WM!

MPlayer is one of the most popular Linux/Unix media player. Now, thanks to XDA-Developers forum member amitv_17, the porting to Windows Mobile has started.
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(the main screen on a VGA Pocket PC; as can be seen, the View menu doesn’t contain much; the Tools menu results in an immediate exit)
(176*220 screenshot; as can be seen, on the MS Smartphone platform, the left softkey’s Exit, as is expected)
Availability, compatibility, installation
It’s available HERE, in the official XDA-Devs thread (mirror HERE) and is, of course, a free download. It seems to be compatible with most WM5 and WM6 Pocket PC’s and Smartphones. It seems it’s incompatible with pre-WM5 operating systems (tested this on my WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210).
Unzip the contents of the file to anywhere on your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. Start it by executing mplayer.exe. Then, you can select local file or stream playback. Both are pretty straightforward; in the latter case, make sure you enter the direct RTSP URL as can be seen in HERE, not for example HTTP one. Let me know if you don’t know how you can get for example .RM RSTP URL’s from a HTTP .RAM file.
Supported formats
It’s, theoretically, compatible with several sound and video formats (see their list at the above Wikipedia page). In practice, playback is still hampered by the, in cases, VERY bad performance and compatibility.
In addition to my H.264 (video) playback tests, I’ve made pretty thorough CPU usage tests with the most important audio formats it supports. The following figures have all been measured on a Dell Axim x51v running at 624 MHz. As can clearly be seen (particularly if you take the MP3 playback CPU usage into account), the results aren’t particularly good – alternative (better) players all have lower CPU usage. See THIS for more information. Note that 11% at 624 MHz translates to 33% at 208 MHz – the forced CPU frequency in the tests used in the linked document.
Flac: 5%
M4A (AAC): 16%
Ogg: 30%
MP3: 11%
WMA: - (incompatible)
(I’ve used my standardized audio test files – they’re the same I’ll use in my forthcoming Multimedia Bible.)
Note that while the MP3 playback “only” requires about 11% CPU time at 624 MHz, it still has severe problems when running in the background: it stutters when there’s some additional CPU usage (for example, you open a menu or anything). That is, it’s basically useless when not run in the foreground, with nothing else running.
Video playback is much-much worse and practically useless, unless you try to watch really low-quality, low-resolution and low-bitspeed videos. TCPMP or, even better, CorePlayer (the latter is an undisputed king of video playback on all mobile platforms) are way better.
Finally, RealAudio steaming (one of the best features of even the current, initial MPlayer release) is a CPU hog too and is pretty useless on slower models (read: you must overclock your ~200 MHz TI OMAP CPU’s if you want to listen to RealAudio radio stations).
Let me present you a list of the strengths and weaknesses of the current version:
The good
a HUGE arsenal of codecs and communications protocols already available; in this respect, it’s even better than CorePlayer (which, as of now, doesn’t support RTSP, albeit it will really soon be added)!
supports even RealAudio / RealVideo, unlike CorePlayer / TCPMP / ANY other Windows Mobile player (other than RealOne’s own player, of course). Note that the CoreCodec folks have announced (before the port of MPlayer) that they would never add RealOne support to CorePlayer because it's a proprietary format.
alternative HTTP tunneling with RTSP; working just GREAT with RealAudio streams! In this respect, it’s even better than RealPlayer on Symbian S60v3 FP1 (for example, the one that comes with the Nokia N95), because not even the latter supports HTTP RealOne audio/video streaming, “only” for MPEG4 video streaming (unlike HTC’s own and, in this respect, really incapable Streaming Media on Windows Mobile – see THIS for more info).
supports real (UDP-based) RTSP, which means better bandwidth utilization than with HTTP tunneling. Of course, it also means you must have direct access or a capable Wi-Fi network. This will only later (hopefully still this year) be added to CorePlayer (see THIS recent announcement if interested)
supports both (most) Pocket PC and MS Smartphone models (unfortunately, WM5+ only)
given that it’s the first version, pretty much promising
The bad
HUGE CPU usage when playing back streamed audio! For example, on the 195 MHz HTC Wizard, the CPU used for about 100% while playing back streamed, while on the 520 MHz XScale HTC Universal, running at 520 Mhz, about 97%, as can also be seen in THIS screenshot. On the 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v, it was “only” 72%. This means it’ll chew through your battery VERY fast and you won’t be able to use additional goodies like A2DP encoding at the same time without introducing MAJOR skipping. Note that this CPU usage is independent of the networking protocol used: with both UDP/RTSP and HTTP, the CPU usage is equally high. (Tested by trying to play back THIS Finnish stream (direct RM link: rtsp://ra.yle.fi/live/radiopeili.rm ).)
bad MP3 playback, very sensitive to CPU usage peaks – the same problem as with NoteM and unlike ANY other MP3 player for Windows Mobile
no WMA support
very-very rudimentary interface (albeit the D-pad and the Smartphone dialpads work for control)
streaming MPEG4 videos doesn’t work (as opposed to RealAudio); screenshots (trying to play back the stream rtsp://rtsp.youtube.com/youtube/videos/_CUFEnZeeYw/video.3gp?warned=1 ): 1 2 3 4 5 6
local (as opposed to streamed) MPEG4 videos do work. They are, however, very choppily played back; on VGA devices, only part of the screen is used as can be seen in THIS screenshot. The CPU usage is pretty bad too: on the x51v, playing back a 640*480 30 fps 2.6 Mbps H.264 video (taken on the Nokia N95 in high quality TV mode) took 80% CPU time (and still produced between 1 and 5 fps video, the video absolutely lagging compared to audio). CorePlayer 1.1.1, on the same PPC, played back the video without any frame drop and excellent high-resolution VGA – using the CPU only at 60%.
Verdict
It’s certainly nice to welcome Mplayer on Windows Mobile. While it’s a far cry away from established media players, particularly video playback-wise (in which it’s (still?) orders of magnitude worse than both TCPMP and, particularly, CorePlayer),
hope the developer develops it further and/or
he joins the CoreCodec team or sells / gives them the RealOne decoders so that CorePlayer, finally, receives support for these, particularly in streaming, widely used formats (can you hear me, CoreCodec team?! Now, it’s time to add RealOne support to CorePlayer! We DO need HTTP-based access to streamed content, which the official RealOne player is incapable of!) and
currently (as long as you don’t use a hard-to-configure Virtual Private Network) it’s your only way to play back RealAudio-based radio stations (if you can live with the enormous CPU usage, that is)
Finally, please consider donating the developer (donation link in the original XDA-Devs thread) so that he will continue working on the port.

BREAKING NEWS: Infamous, top Linux multimedia player MPlayer is being ported to WM!

MPlayer is one of the most popular Linux/Unix media player. Now, thanks to XDA-Developers forum member amitv_17, the porting to Windows Mobile has started.
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(the main screen on a VGA Pocket PC; as can be seen, the View menu doesn’t contain much; the Tools menu results in an immediate exit)
(176*220 screenshot; as can be seen, on the MS Smartphone platform, the left softkey’s Exit, as is expected)
Availability, compatibility, installation
It’s available HERE, in the official XDA-Devs thread (mirror HERE) and is, of course, a free download. It seems to be compatible with most WM5 and WM6 Pocket PC’s and Smartphones. It seems it’s incompatible with pre-WM5 operating systems (tested this on my WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210).
Unzip the contents of the file to anywhere on your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. Start it by executing mplayer.exe. Then, you can select local file or stream playback. Both are pretty straightforward; in the latter case, make sure you enter the direct RTSP URL as can be seen in HERE, not for example HTTP one. Let me know if you don’t know how you can get for example .RM RSTP URL’s from a HTTP .RAM file.
Supported formats
It’s, theoretically, compatible with several sound and video formats (see their list at the above Wikipedia page). In practice, playback is still hampered by the, in cases, VERY bad performance and compatibility.
In addition to my H.264 (video) playback tests, I’ve made pretty thorough CPU usage tests with the most important audio formats it supports. The following figures have all been measured on a Dell Axim x51v running at 624 MHz. As can clearly be seen (particularly if you take the MP3 playback CPU usage into account), the results aren’t particularly good – alternative (better) players all have lower CPU usage. See THIS for more information. Note that 11% at 624 MHz translates to 33% at 208 MHz – the forced CPU frequency in the tests used in the linked document.
Flac: 5%
M4A (AAC): 16%
Ogg: 30%
MP3: 11%
WMA: - (incompatible)
(I’ve used my standardized audio test files – they’re the same I’ll use in my forthcoming Multimedia Bible.)
Note that while the MP3 playback “only” requires about 11% CPU time at 624 MHz, it still has severe problems when running in the background: it stutters when there’s some additional CPU usage (for example, you open a menu or anything). That is, it’s basically useless when not run in the foreground, with nothing else running.
Video playback is much-much worse and practically useless, unless you try to watch really low-quality, low-resolution and low-bitspeed videos. TCPMP or, even better, CorePlayer (the latter is an undisputed king of video playback on all mobile platforms) are way better.
Finally, RealAudio steaming (one of the best features of even the current, initial MPlayer release) is a CPU hog too and is pretty useless on slower models (read: you must overclock your ~200 MHz TI OMAP CPU’s if you want to listen to RealAudio radio stations).
Let me present you a list of the strengths and weaknesses of the current version:
The good
a HUGE arsenal of codecs and communications protocols already available; in this respect, it’s even better than CorePlayer (which, as of now, doesn’t support RTSP, albeit it will really soon be added)!
supports even RealAudio / RealVideo, unlike CorePlayer / TCPMP / ANY other Windows Mobile player (other than RealOne’s own player, of course). Note that the CoreCodec folks have announced (before the port of MPlayer) that they would never add RealOne support to CorePlayer because it's a proprietary format.
alternative HTTP tunneling with RTSP; working just GREAT with RealAudio streams! In this respect, it’s even better than RealPlayer on Symbian S60v3 FP1 (for example, the one that comes with the Nokia N95), because not even the latter supports HTTP RealOne audio/video streaming, “only” for MPEG4 video streaming (unlike HTC’s own and, in this respect, really incapable Streaming Media on Windows Mobile – see THIS for more info).
supports real (UDP-based) RTSP, which means better bandwidth utilization than with HTTP tunneling. Of course, it also means you must have direct access or a capable Wi-Fi network. This will only later (hopefully still this year) be added to CorePlayer (see THIS recent announcement if interested)
supports both (most) Pocket PC and MS Smartphone models (unfortunately, WM5+ only)
given that it’s the first version, pretty much promising
The bad
HUGE CPU usage when playing back streamed audio! For example, on the 195 MHz HTC Wizard, the CPU used for about 100% while playing back streamed, while on the 520 MHz XScale HTC Universal, running at 520 Mhz, about 97%, as can also be seen in THIS screenshot. On the 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v, it was “only” 72%. This means it’ll chew through your battery VERY fast and you won’t be able to use additional goodies like A2DP encoding at the same time without introducing MAJOR skipping. Note that this CPU usage is independent of the networking protocol used: with both UDP/RTSP and HTTP, the CPU usage is equally high. (Tested by trying to play back THIS Finnish stream (direct RM link: rtsp://ra.yle.fi/live/radiopeili.rm ).)
bad MP3 playback, very sensitive to CPU usage peaks – the same problem as with NoteM and unlike ANY other MP3 player for Windows Mobile
no WMA support
very-very rudimentary interface (albeit the D-pad and the Smartphone dialpads work for control)
streaming MPEG4 videos doesn’t work (as opposed to RealAudio); screenshots (trying to play back the stream rtsp://rtsp.youtube.com/youtube/videos/_CUFEnZeeYw/video.3gp?warned=1 ): 1 2 3 4 5 6
local (as opposed to streamed) MPEG4 videos do work. They are, however, very choppily played back; on VGA devices, only part of the screen is used as can be seen in THIS screenshot. The CPU usage is pretty bad too: on the x51v, playing back a 640*480 30 fps 2.6 Mbps H.264 video (taken on the Nokia N95 in high quality TV mode) took 80% CPU time (and still produced between 1 and 5 fps video, the video absolutely lagging compared to audio). CorePlayer 1.1.1, on the same PPC, played back the video without any frame drop and excellent high-resolution VGA – using the CPU only at 60%.
Verdict
It’s certainly nice to welcome Mplayer on Windows Mobile. While it’s a far cry away from established media players, particularly video playback-wise (in which it’s (still?) orders of magnitude worse than both TCPMP and, particularly, CorePlayer),
hope the developer develops it further and/or
he joins the CoreCodec team or sells / gives them the RealOne decoders so that CorePlayer, finally, receives support for these, particularly in streaming, widely used formats (can you hear me, CoreCodec team?! Now, it’s time to add RealOne support to CorePlayer! We DO need HTTP-based access to streamed content, which the official RealOne player is incapable of!) and
currently (as long as you don’t use a hard-to-configure Virtual Private Network) it’s your only way to play back RealAudio-based radio stations (if you can live with the enormous CPU usage, that is)
Finally, please consider donating the developer (donation link in the original XDA-Devs thread) so that he will continue working on the port.

This is great news and is definitely something to keep an eye on! I've always been a big fan of MPlayer as it plays pretty much anything you throw at it. I even run it on my Windows boxes.

Menneisyys said:
Finally, please consider donating the developer (donation link in the original XDA-Devs thread) so that he will continue working on the port.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where can i download the source code ?

RMVB plug-in released for Windows Media Player Mobile & Intel Xscale

Ever wanted to play your RMVB videos without converting them? Now, you’re taken a little bit closer to the solution – a RVMB plug-in has just been released for Windows Media Player Mobile, which makes it possible to play RMVB videos on Windows Mobile devices.
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No, don’t think everything is OK now. The plug-in, while it’s indeed compatible with RMVB videos, won’t play back the currently available, high(er)-res videos without severe slowdowns. As it’s only “old” RM videos that are, generally, encoded at low (say, QVGA at max) resolutions and RMVB files are, generally, encoded with the width of at least 576 pixels, you will encounter very choppy (2…5 fps even on the fastest devices) playback. Therefore, you might want to forget playing back this format entirely and transcode them into either MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX / XviD) or, if your handset is powerful enough, MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264 / AVC) for seamless playback in either TCPMP or CorePlayer. Please see THIS for more info on these target formats and THIS for more info on RMVB-compliant transcoder tools.
Furthermore, it only runs on devices using the Intel Xscale PXA-27x CPU’s. This itself rules out most of current models based on other CPU’s like the TI OMAP (I’ve tested the plug-in on my HTC Wizard; it exits at once upon activation), Qualcomm 7200 (HTC Kaiser, Touch Dual etc.) or Samsung (Trinity etc.). That is, you can only run it on some scarce or somewhat outdated models like the HTC Athena (x7500), the HTC Universal, the Dell Axim x50/x51 series, the previous-generation HP iPAQ’s etc.
Note that it isn’t even compatible with the previous, PXA generations (25x, 26x). I’ve tested the plug-in on my PXA-255-based HP iPAQ 2210; after activation, it started to endlessly buffer. I, however, don’t know how it behaves on the latest-and-greatest, Marvel PXA-3x0 Xscale generation.
Should you still want to watch them on your handset but would still like to stay compatible with the earlier .RM videos and sound files, you’ll want to (re)install the official Windows Mobile RealAudio player (available for download HERE as a convenient – you won’t encounter install problems – CAB file) after installing this title. This is because the plug-in also associates itself with these file extensions. There isn’t much point in its doing so because it’s not able to play back any non-RMVB file. If you don’t want to reinstall, you can just restore the .RM and .RAM file extension associations by importing THIS Registry import file I’ve created for your convenience.
Nevertheless, should you still want to give it a try, it’s available HERE for download.
I’ve tested the plug-in with several publicly available test movies and sound files, all available in the official Mplayer test sample archive. In the following compatibility chart, I list my compatibility test results with the plug-in run on two (!) devices (the Dell Axim x51v running the official A12 WM5 AKU2.3 ROM and the HTC Universal running WM6). In addition, I’ve also tested the original RealOne player running on the x51v, the RealOne player coming with the Nokia N95 and, finally, RealAlternative running on desktop Windows. As it has turned out, the latter is pretty much compatible with everything I’ve thrown it at – this means you will want to stick to it, should you want to avoid installing RealOne’s bloatware on your desktop Windows computer.
(If you want to follow the clickable links, see THIS).

i need help
when play rmvb
the windows media player auto close,
my xda's os is wm6

i need help too
i download the rmvb file in my phone that i bt download from internet, after it load 70% buffer in memory, it auto closed out, is anything i did wrong? i just install the Q8_real.cab only

Multiplatform review: new, heavily enhanced version of LivePVR call recorder etc. out

It was two and a half years ago that I’ve reviewed the initial version of LivePVR.
With the recent upgrade to version 3.0, a great deal of new functionality has been added to the newly-announced “Pro” and “Enterprise” versions, adding for example online backup (which is pretty much comparable to PMRecorder’s online backup support) and voicemail / answering machine capabilities. (The latter is pretty useful and has always been supported by other apps on the Symbian S60 operating system; and, lately, on Windows Mobile too – see iSecretary; also see THIS for more info.)
In this article, I only discuss call recording capabilities, stability and reliability, which is a central issue under Symbian S60 (and, to a lesser degree, Windows Mobile, where there already are three excellent apps to record calls: Resco Audio Recorder, VITO AudioNotes and the free (!) PMRecorder, making the demand for a call recorder smaller). Also note that, on Windows Mobile, call recording has lately been enabled; see my article Windows Mobile Revolution: call recording supported on almost ALL handsets! for more info. Finally, please check out THIS for the additional capabilities of the Pro / Enterprise versions. As I’m not really interested in them (as opposed to call recording, which is very important to me), I didn’t waste time on thoroughly testing these features (testing call recording on S60 and the two Windows Mobile platforms, using three versions, took me a lot ot time).
First and foremost, you need to remember that there are two sources of different LivePVR versions. Softtrends’ own homepage only has the old 2.08 (Symbian) / 2.90 (WM) versions, while the new livepvrplus.com page has the new one. Nevertheless, if you’re a WM user and want to give the trial version a try, you’ll want to prefer the former (old) version – the new (3.0) one has messed up recording. (Once auto-started upon a call, it won’t stop by itself. You’ll need to manually stop recording and, then, exit and restart the program entirely so that it becomes able to record new calls and play back old recordings.) Note that this doesn’t apply to Symbian S60, where the new version works flawlessly.
Purchasing, price
If you only need call recording (again, you will only want to purchase the current version if you’re on Symbian S60 – the Windows Mobile port of the new, 3.0 version is, currently, buggy, making call recording almost useless), I recommend the Standard version, which only costs $9.99. You can pay by PayPal and immediately receive a non-IMEI-dependent registration number.
As a rule of thumb, if you’re on Windows Mobile:
If you are looking for an app that you’d use its automatic call recording capabilities, do NOT install the current (3.00) version. Use the alternative call recorders instead; most importantly, Resco Audio Recorder, VITO AudioNotes or PMRecorder.
If you’re on Symbian S60:
Heavily recommended over the alternative titles (VITO AudioNotes, ALON MP3 Dictaphone), as long as the beeping isn’t an issue:
- Compared to ALON MP3 Dictaphone 2.87 (see review HERE),
a. it doesn’t crash when recording to a memory card (ALON crashes about once every five calls when using AMR);
b. while the ALON app can also record into MP3’s (when used as a standalone voice recorder, NOT recommended for phone call recording, where the native AMR is the best format to record into on S60), it continuously crashes even when recording to the internal memory. That is, its MP3 capabilities are pretty useless in practice; this means the lacking MP3 recording capabilities of LivePVR aren’t that big an issue. (And, if you do need them, get VITO AudioNotes for standalone (!) MP3 recording.)
c. Also, LivePVR auto-starts itself (if you do enable this under Options / Prefereces / Autostart On Device Boot) upon bootup, unlike the ALON app. (Still speaking of the menu settings, also make sure you go to Options / Settings / Recording Settings under the call recording icon (that is, NOT the main screen with the 3+ main icons!) and switch “PhoneCall features” to “Enabled” to enable automatic recordings. It’s also here that you can switch between the two (WAV and AMR) formats for recording; I recommend the latter.)
d. The definite problem: the ALON app surpresses the beep at the third/ fourth second. Not so with LivePVR – at least not on the v30 Nokia N95.
- Compared to VITO AudioNotes, it doesn’t have problems with cutting at the end – just remember to press the red button on the recording handheld about 1 second later that you stop speaking. It also supports boot-time loading and doesn’t seem to get killed upon “out of memory” situations, unlike AudioNotes (and like the ALON app). I’ve tested the latter quite a lot and (so far) couldn’t make the system (Nokia N95 running the v30 firmware) terminate LivePVR, which is definitely a good thing.
A chart of the OS compatibility of the currently available, tested versions (as you can see, I didn’t bother with the Pro 3.0 version; I assumed it has exactly the same call recording module as the Standard / Enterprise version and, therefore, doesn’t run on Windows Mobile:
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Why I Secretary can’t mute the microphone of my xperia x1 and why the caller can’t hear my answer message
How can I fix this using registry or any tweak tool for windows mobile 6.1
thanks