Video Debugging on Skype for Mac Isn't Adequate
Yesterday, I did a call with Jim Courtney from Skype Journal. The intent was to eventually test this with the Logitech Pro 9000 that Skype’s PR folks sent me. However, I had called him from my MacBook, which I had previously tried to test with Dan York and his MacBook.
Jim was reading off the Technical Call Detail on his end of the connection. It said that both he and I were sending high quality Skype video. It even showed an indication of this on his client:
On my end of the connection, there was no such indication, even in the technical call information. I got frame rates, but nothing about the size of the video. Jim took a screenshot of me on his end:
Certainly looks good, anyway. One of the pictures I snapped off my end of the connection was when Jim was showing me Dan York’s business card. This showed off not only the video quality but the fact the camera has pretty good auto-focus as well.
So was I sending and receiving high quality video on Skype from my Mac or not? (Running 2.7.0.49, if you’re curious) The debugging information didn’t even show me that information. I can only surmise by the video quality that it was better, but I don’t feel good about that. I also had to manually stretch the window to 640×480. Even so, the video looked pretty good.
I am going to try this on a Windows PC and report the results, particularly with respect to SightSpeed.
See article.