A technical problem: is everybody's skype/webcam working well all the time?

[underthewater]

Not sure if it's skype's problem, my internet's problem or my webcam's problem, but when I tried skype video chat with my boyfriend for the first time today, the quality of the video was bad, me on his screen was always delayed (like a couple of minutes late sometimes and several seconds late some other times). Sometimes I couldn't see him, sometimes he's a picture on my screen, but he's never delayed (his voice matched his lips' moving). So I wonder if it's some problem of my side.

I probably shouldn't complain about the quality of the video as I only spent 8 pounds on the webcam (I never used webcam before), but we could barely have a chat before someone's video stopped working. Is it the common case so I should just bear it or is there actually some technical problem here?

[Silviar]

That's an issue of someone's internet being in heavy use. Did you have downloads, or perhaps a really small pipeline?

[maielle]

The problem can be anywhere. Do you have a slow internet connection in general? What kind of connection do you have?
Can be also if you have a very old computer. You could also try updating the drivers of the webcam.

Can be also because of Skype. Have you tested the camera with some other program? Me and my SO have pretty fast internet connections and fairly good computers, but sometimes either mine or his picture can be lagging. And quite often his modem restarts and his connection goes down for a while.. Pretty annoying. He just got the connection to his new flat recently and now I'm trying to make him call the customer service and complain about it. ;P

[NaNi]

My Skype quality is always different. Sometimes the webcam quality is really good and sometimes it's really bad with lots of pixels and you can't see anything. Sometimes it's also stuck on one frame and won't go away until you turn your video chat off.

[LadyMarchHare]

I know my webcam's a piece of crap. I have to adjust the focus manually, have on a bazillion lights in the daytime so it doesn't lag too bad, and several times during Skype sessions my cam will freeze and I'll have to restart it. My SO's had DSL all the times we've cammed and it's never been slow, but he has a decent computer as do I. A couple of times Skype has refused to let a call go through on his end but it lets me call him, but we've never had major issues.

[nicole]

skype can be a pain sometimes, we've had several problems with it, one point it used to make this really lous screachy noise, but we discovered it was because my SO didn't realise his laptop already had a microphone, so skype was using the microphone right on top of his fan... wonderful design!

and then the video lags if he's got a torrent on, so that might be it? I don't think it's the web cam, you said you spend 8 pounds? I spend 40 pounds and we have the same problem sometimes, it's probably the internet connection, I know my wireless sucks, so I can't wait to get to uni and have some decent broadband lol

[underthewater]

Thanks everyone! Well, I will see if it works better during daytime of weekdays when the usage in my building is not high. It's really annoying when we were asking "can you hear me" at least 20% of the time:< And it's so weird that most of the time I could see him with no problem (no lagging) but he almost never did. My computer is a relatively new Thinkpad and his is from "e-machine".

But honestly speaking, I was so excited when I saw his unclear face on my screen for the first time after he left, and I could help but touch his face on my screen

[garnet]

Skype was awful for us. We eventually moved to the gmail gtalk video chats, which were much better. Still free, but actually worked.

[farrahjean]

we had to swich to the msn/yahoo voice chat and video chat because skype was taking up so much of his net usage... and it never liked me.. I always got kicked off..

[Michelle]

My internet started to get really slow in the recent past. I've been using speedtest.net to test the speed every now and then (it's a reputable and trusted site). My speed is supposed to be 3Mb/sec but sometimes it is only half that and video quality starts to suck. Thankfully it is doing a lot better than it did a couple weeks ago. What's your connection speed?

if it is around 3 Mb/sec or more, then it is probably skype causing the issues.

[noodle]

For me and my SO its mostly the internet being slow or messin up. But I think that sometimes it's skypes problem. Sometimes it'd work perfectly and then once we start our webcams it would crash. Its annoyin as hell >_>

[Bluestars]

We use gmail video chat because we had too many problems on Skpye. Yes, there are times on it where it will lag or freeze up, but that is mostly because our internet can be slow