Call Recordings

Call Recording Overview

Businesses today must communicate with customers quickly, clearly, and reliably. A modern business phone system should include call recording to support quality assurance, compliance, training, and dispute resolution.

Once call recording is enabled, you can access recorded calls to review conversations and identify who called and when. Automatic call recording helps organizations:

• Maintain high service quality

• Train and evaluate new agents

• Investigate disputes or incidents

• Meet regulatory and compliance requirements

Discover how PortSIP PBX can help improve your business communications.

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Call Recording Management

The Tenant Administrator can manage and access call recordings by navigating to:

Data Analytics > Call Recordings

From this page:

• All recording files are listed.

• Double-click a recording to download or play the file.

• Click the Action button to open the menu and navigate directly to the CDR of the associated call.

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Call Recording Control Levels

PortSIP PBX allows call recording to be controlled at two levels: User Level and Tenant Level.

User Level Call Recording

To enable or disable call recording for an individual user:

1. Navigate to Call Manager > Users.

2. Double-click the user you want to modify.

3. Open the Extension tab.

4. Enable or disable:

   • Record Audio Calls

   • Record Video Calls

Behavior

• If Record Audio Calls is enabled, the user’s calls are recorded as WAV files, even for video calls.

• If Record Video Calls is enabled, video calls are recorded as MP4 files.

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Tenant Level Call Recording

The Tenant Administrator can enable or disable call recording for all users within a tenant.

1. Navigate to Company from the left menu.

2. Open the General page.

3. Under the Options section, enable or disable:

   • Enable extension audio recording

   • Enable extension video recording

Behavior

• Audio recording generates WAV files (even for video calls).

• Video recording generates MP4 files for video calls.

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Automatically Stop Recording for Calls Between External Numbers

In some countries, privacy and security regulations prohibit recording calls made between two external numbers.

Example Scenario

• A client calls the contact center via a trunk.

• An agent answers and recording begins.

• The agent transfers the call to an external mobile number.

• At this point, the call is between two external numbers and recording must stop.

Configuration

To comply with these regulations:

1. Log in as System Administrator.

2. Navigate to Advanced > Settings.

3. Open the General page.

4. Disable Record the call between external numbers.

Once disabled, PortSIP PBX automatically stops recording when a call transitions to two external endpoints.

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Pause and Resume Call Recording

PortSIP PBX supports pausing and resuming call recording during an active call.

Using Feature Access Codes (FAC)

• Dial *48 to pause call recording

• Dial *49 to resume call recording

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Pause/Resume Recording via SIP MESSAGE (Out-of-Dialog)

Client apps or IP phones can pause or resume recording by sending an out-of-dialog SIP MESSAGE to the PBX.

MESSAGE sip:[e-mail] SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.168.0.16:5568;branch=z9hG4bK-524287-1---a67ad51a25df052f;rport
Max-Forwards: 70
To: <sip:[e-mail]>
From: <sip:[e-mail]>;tag=fa2d6f1d
Call-ID: SFNH1yZ5c4LrG70_Tlyxgg..
CSeq: 3 MESSAGE
Allow: INVITE, ACK, CANCEL, OPTIONS, BYE, REFER, NOTIFY, MESSAGE, REGISTER, SUBSCRIBE, INFO, PUBLISH
Content-Type: application/x-media-control+json
Proxy-Authorization: Digest username="101",realm="test.io",nonce="13323933303:c8b6b255488669affb8a3e657188569a",uri="sip:[e-mail]",response="da014b313dde19ff29c82043404af10f",algorithm=MD5
User-Agent: abcd
Allow-Events: hold, talk, conference, dialog
Content-Length: 21

{ "operation" : "pause-audio-recording", "session_id" : "5984923794364"}

Notes

• The message body must be JSON.

• Content-Type must be application/x-media-control+json.

• operation specifies the action (pause or resume).

• session_id is obtained from the X-Session-Id header in the SIP INVITE or 200 OK.

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Pause/Resume Recording via SIP MESSAGE (In-Dialog)

You can also use an in-dialog SIP MESSAGE:

MESSAGE sip:[e-mail] SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 192.168.0.16:5568;branch=z9hG4bK-524287-1---a67ad51a25df052f;rport
Max-Forwards: 70
To: <sip:[e-mail]>
From: <sip:[e-mail]>;tag=fa2d6f1d
Call-ID: SFNH1yZ5c4LrG70_Tlyxgg..
CSeq: 3 MESSAGE
Allow: INVITE, ACK, CANCEL, OPTIONS, BYE, REFER, NOTIFY, MESSAGE, REGISTER, SUBSCRIBE, INFO, PUBLISH
Content-Type: application/x-media-control
Proxy-Authorization: Digest username="101",realm="test.io",nonce="13323933303:c8b6b255488669affb8a3e657188569a",uri="sip:[e-mail]",response="da014b313dde19ff29c82043404af10f",algorithm=MD5
User-Agent: abcd
Allow-Events: hold, talk, conference, dialog
Content-Length: 21

pause-audio-recording

Supported Commands

• pause-audio-recording

• pause-video-recording

• resume-audio-recording

• resume-video-recording

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Call Recording File Format

By default, PortSIP PBX records calls in WAV format, which provides high audio quality but consumes more disk space.

PortSIP PBX also supports MP3 and AMR formats.

Change Recording Format

1. Open the configuration file:

   • Linux: /var/lib/portsip/pbx/system.ini

   • Windows: C:/ProgramData/PortSIP/pbx/system.ini

2. In the [mediaserver] section, locate:

   recorder_file_format

3. Set the value:

   • 1 – WAV (default)

   • 2 – AMR

   • 3 – MP3

4. Save the file.

Restart Media Server

• Windows: Restart PortSIP Media Server from Windows Services.

• Linux:

  cd /opt/portsip && /bin/sh pbx_ctl.sh restart -s portsip.mediaserver

⚠️ Recording in AMR or MP3 reduces disk usage but may impact audio quality and performance.

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Recording File Size Calculation

Approximate recording sizes per minute:

• WAV: ~1 MB per minute (uncompressed, best quality)

• AMR: ~100 KB per minute (not playable in browsers)

• MP3: ~256 KB per minute (browser-playable)

Choose the format that best balances storage requirements, performance, and audio quality for your deployment.