HD Skype Podcasting Solution with Tricaster

Over the past 10 years, I have been very successful in incorporating Skype into my various podcasts. Earlier this year I upgraded my windows based 2 channel SD Skype solution to one that is HD Mac-based. I have depicted the solution I am currently using. Be aware that my end goal was to always have the guest appear full screen in my video production and not just filmed on the monitor. For those shows that want to simply focus a camera on the monitor, you can eliminate a large portion of this design.

I have a two-channel solution, so you would need to double the gear shown here to have two people participate. You can easily utilize a different video ingestion system. I happen to use a Tricaster TC1 for my studio.  Some content creators use a Video capture card from Blackmagic design to ingest the Skype video into their system for use with something like Wirecast.

Feel free to copy the design or improve upon it. If you do improve upon the design be sure to leave a comment on what you did to improve the design.

Gear as Shown:
Mac Mini (Base Model)($599.00)
EBTECH Hum Eliminator ($80.00)
Mackie Mixer (Any Mixer with Mix Minus will work)
Atlona HDMI Distribution Amplifier ($299.00)
HP Monitor ($265.00)
Black Magic Design HDMI to SDI Converter ($295.00)
Tricaster 860 or Other Video Ingest Card / System
(New) Magwell SDI – USB Video Capture Dongle

Note: When the Internet connection is slow, and I have two guests sharing the same Internet connection sometimes the Skype Video reverts to SD this is Skype’s way of throttling to keep the video quality up. I  only push SD video back to the guest to preserve bandwidth.

Example of HD Skype Video Recorded on Master Recording.

Update: January 2020 the easiest solution today is using a Rodecaster to integrate with Skype if you are doing Audio only. You can still record your interview with the Video on and just capture the Audio recording.