my wife is currently studying abroad in england and i am here in the states. she is on a brand new macbook pro, and i am on a slightly older macbook pro with 2.16ghz dual core with 1gb ram. i am on broadband with an upload speed of 15 and a download speed of 5. we are both using the mac built-in web cam. When we first started skype, the video quality was pretty good, but over the past couple of days it has degraded. here is the log from our last call.

Call Debug Info:
ObjID: 131
Codec: SILK_V3
Jitter: 24
Sample rates: e-24000, d-24000
Packet loss: 1.5% (29)
Send packet loss: 1.4%/1.6%
Recv packet loss: 0.0%/0.0%
Roundtrip: 170ms
NBM: audio 5000 / 20 ms video 6000 corr 4%
SessionOut: RELAY_UDP (5588 packets)
SessionIn: RELAY_UDP (5632 packets)
Relays: 4
UDP status local:Good remote:Bad
CPU usage: 48.0% 88.6% hicc:0
Video send:FPS 15 (cam:16 bw:15 cpu:28(21) rcv:40(0)) cmp 6 cpu 52 640x480 PS 0 51 Kbit
Video recv:FPS 0.0(14.0) 640x480 BW:58.0 FPSrep 62(62) Codec: VP71

the only thing i can think of is that when we first started talking, she was the only person in her dorm, but now everyone has moved in and the quality has gone down hill. is it her connection that is the problem? if so is there anything i can do? i'd really like to get a high quality video call.

in that log it says for video recv: 0.0, but i know it got up to 14 fps.

both of us have all recent updates

you say you have an upload of 15 and download of 5...
I do assume you mean speed in to you is 15mbit and sent from you is 5, as I have never heard of asyncronius lines having bigger outgoing speed than incoming.

In your case, if all at your wife's dorm is using the same interenet connection, that would indeed create a bottleneck at her end.

At such dorms people usually download bittorrent files and other files almost constantly. And even if they have a 10mbit line OUT and IN it would still get shrunked.

I'd say you need to both use small videos. If you who got a good line send big images to her, she cant recieve them fast enough, so I suggest you as small as possible, with same size in both ends, and test your way up in size.

Remember, audio also takes space. Often more than the image, so you might want to try and adjust your audio quality down aswell.

Toffy

I am also having a similar problem. My girlfriend is able to see me perfectly, however the picture I am seeing is extremely pixelated. This problem has developed in the last few weeks, and video quality was very good for both of us before.

We both have our own broadband connections, both at 10mb download and 512k upload.

Can anybody help?

But how do you decrease the audio quality and use small video in order to use less bandwidth?

Dorothy