Despite the negativity it often receives, Microsoft’s Skype platform is one of the few pieces of software that makes it easy to host video calls from nearly any platform. While FaceTime is popular with iOS users, it’s limited to the Apple ecosystem and Google keeps launching new video apps which can difficult to align all parties with the correct application.

And yes, apps like Discord and even Slack offer the functionality too but Skype has streamlined the experience over the years to create a product that works, most of the time. And there is good news too as the company is adding more features to the video portion of the service, the ability to record calls.

Announced late on a Friday, because that’s apparently the best time to announce new features for your communications platform, Skype will soon provide clean feeds of all group-call participants to third-party software that supports NewTek NDI. While that protocol may not sound familiar, apps like Xsplit, Vmix, and Wirecast are named as supporting the feed.

Microsoft is calling this feature Skype for Content Creators and once I get my hands on the functionality, I’ll be curious to see if it is able to improve our podcasting process with First Ring Daily.

I do have a few concerns that are not addressed in the post, as it says this is for Skype for Desktop app; I interpret this to mean that it does not work with the Store app. Secondly, what is the quality level of the output? One issue we currently have with Skype is that it spins a roulette wheel when determining the video and audio quality with each call despite the connections never changing and I wonder if this uncertainty of quality will carry-over to the video feeds.

This is a big step in the right direction for Skype, while it may not be used for everyone, anyone who podcasts will be quite excited about this as currently, it can be a cumbersome process to host a multi-person podcast with audio and video feeds. Once I play around with this feature, I’ll provide a follow-up post about how to best utilize these new feeds.

Tagged with Skype