Skype shut down in May

A

Amisa

Administrator
Staff member
Vizrt is committed to providing the latest and best tools for remote contribution to assist our users in storytelling. So, we want to be transparent about how we will continue to do that with Microsoft announcing they will retire Skype in May 2025.

Also, we are aware of the challenges this poses in light of our dedicated multi-channel video calling product, Talkshow VS4000 being end of lifed in January 2025, which will not receive any further development.

If users are using Skype as the primary basis of their remote contribution production, we encourage you to look to TriCaster to manage that element of your production. Since the introduction of Live Call Connect with TriCaster 2 Elite in 2020, TriCaster users have been able to seamlessly bring in remote callers from anywhere in the world.

The Live Call Connect feature continues to grow and improve as communication technologies evolve. With TriCaster's latest release, 8-4-250224, made available this week, Live Call Connect's Zoom integration is much improved with an enhanced workflow, video quality, per caller audio and a much simpler setup. Live Call Connect also supports many other conferencing applications, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Messenger, WhatsApp, Voov Meeting, Discord, and more.
In addition, with TriCaster Mini S release 8-4-250303, Zoom and Teams NDI workflow has been added to the software. This is available in the trial, subscription, and perpetual version of the software.

Watch this space as we continue to improve this feature in the coming weeks and strive to offer many alternatives to Skype.
Please contact us at [email protected] with any questions you have, and we will do our best to address your concerns.
 
We have the Tricaster MiniX and have been using the SkypeTX native channel in the Tricaster and connecting through the SkypeTX Quicklink software on our laptop. This has made 2-way live calls a piece of cake to produce a multicamera video podcast with a studio host and remote guest. But now, with Skype going dark, we are now striving to create workarounds by attempting to make an NDI source out of Teams on our laptop and then trying to get that Teams network feed into our Tricaster. The workaround is quite complicated and requires a crazy amount of configuring - of which we have not yet been fully successful.

Surely there is a better way. Do we need to stay tuned or is this our only hope to continue using Tricaster for live call connecting with Tricaster MiniX?

We produce multiple, weekly video podcasts and this has negatively affected everything for us in that regard.
 
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What version of Microsoft Teams are you using? The business version has native NDI output (which does need to be enabled by your Teams admins). This should make it pretty easy to setup. The free version of Teams doesn't have this feature.

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Amisa said:
I will get back to you about this ASAP, RimmellPro.
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I hope Tricaster has a solution soon. Our team is ready to bail on Tricaster and use Ecamm instead for all our podcasts. I am trying to hold the line that there is a solution, but right now, that is not looking promising.
 
If you have the NDI output enabled in Teams, then you would see NDI feeds for each caller appear once you join a meeting. You shouldn't need to use an NDI camera app (not sure what the is exactly).

Do you see the Production tools feature inside Teams (the image I show above)?
 
kanep said:
If you have the NDI output enabled in Teams, then you would see NDI feeds for each caller appear once you join a meeting. You shouldn't need to use an NDI camera app (not sure what the is exactly).

Do you see the Production tools feature inside Teams (the image I show above)?
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Thanks for your help! Actually as I checked with the team, the problem for us is not getting Teams into Tricaster anymore, the problem is getting our 1080 camera (Tricaster program video and audio) back into Teams so that the remote caller can see/hear our studio. The way they temporarily achieved that was to use the NDI Webcam app that enables you to use any NDI video and audio signal on your network as a webcam source... So far this has been the only way to get the signal back to Teams- but- it is not working well. Here is what Vizrt sent us:
USING TRICASTER WITH MS TEAMS- Video - (Brings Tricaster into Teams w/audio)
CONNECT MS TEAMS TO YOUR SHOW- Video - (Brings callers into Tricaster)
 
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What isn't working well about it?

A few settings you might try to adjust in NDI Webcam (from the default) to see if it helps.
  • Audio: Change from All Channels to Channels 1, 2
  • Audio: Change from Automatic Levels to one of the set levels (+6dB or +10dB is usually good in most cases).
  • Video: Change from Automatic to a fix webcam resolution (be aware that some application might like this left on Automatic or 720p or lower resolutions).
 
kanep said:
What isn't working well about it?

A few settings you might try to adjust in NDI Webcam (from the default) to see if it helps.
  • Audio: Change from "All Channels" to "Channels 1, 2"
  • Audio: Change from Automatic Levels to one of the set levels (probably +6dB or +10dB is good in most cases).
  • Video: Change from Automatic to a fix webcam resolution (be aware that some application might like this left on Automatic or 720p or lower resolutions).
Click to expand...
Thank you for that added info. We will try those setting adjustments. What we are seeing when we use the NDI Webcam back to the Teams caller, is a massive latency from our native 1080p. The latency is so bad that the video is freeze-framing and unusably stuttering. So we've had to dial it down to 480p which clears the problem, but who wants to see that!? :(
 
Latency thru the Teams call? Or in the video showing up in the NDI Webcam preview window? The system running Teams is connected to the network via 1Gb Ethernet? (Not Wifi?)
 
Thanks all for the help! It turns out we were experiencing a malfunction of the laptop ethernet port which was not holding the signal and causing LAN to swap over to WIFI, which is where the latency came in. We traded out the laptop and now we are solid.

Second, there were a couple items that needed adjustment in Tricaster (Vizrt remoted into our machine and made the adjustments).

We now have an 8-step checklist (mostly just to double-check the settings) and Teams is working properly. If anyone needs that checklist for a Tricaster MiniX, feel free to let me know.
 
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