The recording feature supports the recording of entire interviews, or individual questions, for personal interviewing. The implementation is similar to audio recording in telephone interviews. Audio recordings are stored as RespondentFiles on the interviewing computer and synchronized to the server where they can later be accessed using the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin Files activity.

The audio file name and location are not saved in the data, which allows audio to be associated with the entire interview or any question type. The file naming convention associates the audio file with both the respondent and question. For more information about the RespondentFiles location and file naming conventions, see Respondent files

Recording is not supported for web interviewing.

The recording feature requires the Microsoft DirectShow API, which means the recording workstation must have Microsoft Windows Media Player installed. By default, Windows Media Player is typically installed except for select Microsoft Windows N editions. For more information on Microsoft Windows N editions, see: What is a Windows 7 N edition?

Recording settings, similar to the existing settings for recording phone interviews, support the recording of personal interviews. The settings can be set either during the project activation process or in the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin Interviewing Options activity (under the Interviewing folder).

When this option is selected, interview level recording is enabled.

When this setting is not selected, the interview is recorded without showing the Recording Approval dialog.

When this option is selected, recording starts as soon as the participant window appears.

This option is only available for projects that include participants. If the project does not use participants, the recording begins when the survey window appears.

When this option is selected, recording starts after the interviewer clicks the Start button in the Participants activity.

This setting applies to sample projects. If the project does not contain any sample data, the recording starts when the survey window appears.

The setting controls the percentage of contacts to record. When set to 100, every interview is recorded; when set to 0 no interviews are recorded.

When an interview is selected for recording, the Recording Approval dialog appears before the survey can begin. As described in the Recording settings table, one of the options could be preselected (by default) or the interviewer must select an option.

When The interviewer must get approval for recording is not selected, the interview is recorded without showing the Recording Approval dialog.

Question level recording is implemented as Label Style properties and is supported for all question types. The style properties can be set in either UNICOM Intelligence Author or UNICOM Intelligence Professional.

The position of the Record/Stop toolbar relative to the question label.

Controls whether the question is recorded and determines the recording method.

No recording; recording controls are not present. (Default)

The recording controls are present. Recording starts automatically as soon as the question appears. When a question is asked more than once, the recording controls are present in both instances. However, the recording must be manually started for the second instance (by clicking the Record button).

The recording controls are present. Recording is under interviewer control by the Start and Stop recording buttons.

Questions must never be recorded; recording controls are not present. This value is reserved for future use (as such, the value is not available in Author or Professional).

In Professional, the scriptwriter can set question level recording through metadata script:

When recording is enabled for a question, the recording controls are presented as follows:

The interviewer can start and stop recording by clicking the appropriate controls:

The recording quality can be set via an UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Offline for Windows configuration file. The file is in:

The default setting is WMProfile_V80_288MonoAudio.

The audio recording feature supports the following Microsoft standard quality profiles:

Higher quality audio files result in larger files sizes, which increases the synchronization time.