Zcorder: Voice and System Sound Recording Come (via Homebrew) to the Pre 51

Just as video recording came to the Pre (via the homebrew Precorder app) well before Palm officially released its official version, now voice and audio recording have arrived unofficially as well, also from the webOS Internals team, via Zcorder.

Just publicly released as a beta on the webOS Internals feeds for WOSQI and Preware, Zcorder (formerly and confusingly also called Precorder, when it was in alpha testing form) allows the user to capture sound from either the Pre’s microphone or via “media capture,” recording the sound playing from another Pre application. The “vox” mode (for voice activation) triggers the microphone only when sound is detected. The user may configure the stream, bit rates and quality of the recordings, which are saved as MP3s in the /media/internal/recordings directory. Zcorder's recordings may be played either via the Pre’s onboard Music app (they show as Unknown artist/album tracks), and/or copied from the device in USB mode or other file transfer methods like the newest version of ZumoDrive. Zcorder also offers a play button which will play the most recently recorded sound file as if it were streaming music.

ZSoc, the primary developer behind Zcorder, has shared the following technical details with Jason Robitaille: “The 'Media Capture' mode can do many things, but it's primary purpose is to make/cut ringtones from your existing music files, or from another source like a youtube video. So it's a voice recorder + audio out capture recorder. Audio out/media stream/output stream/monitor stream/ however you want to word it. The verbiage in the app is "Media Capture." Voice activation (where it starts recording automatically when noice in the area is greater than a certain decibel) is coming soon. ie: press record, leave it in a room somewhere and it'll only record when it hears things and be paused otherwise.” According to ZSoc (aka forum member Prenosticator), “ZSoc did most of the labor, and PuffTheMagic is the genius behind the basic structure of the service. In long, everyone in webOS Internals had something to do with it.”
 

While most developers await Palm’s inclusion of microphone and camera access in a future update to the SDK (expected in the fall), the webOS Internals team has leapfrogged the official version with a functional, usable app that adds a critical missing feature to the Pre. Thanks, all!