As you, my dear friends, know, I’m a computer moron. I have a television interview lined up within the next couple of weeks. This is from South Africa. I have Skype set up, and my Taiwan feed is very fast. The problem is: the interviewer in SA seems not to be able to use it because it’s ridiculously slow from her side. Do you fine people have any workable solutions or alternatives for this technically challenged lad?
Hi jimmi,
Just wanted to clarify: is the TV interview going to be live or are they planning on making it pre-recorded? Also if their downlink is sufficiently fast, you could ask if they could shut off video from their side. You won’t be able to see them, but it may free up enough to make it workable. If the connection is very marginal, however, Murphy’s Law will definitely apply and it will with certainty and precision timing, flake out at the worst moment… 
So, it would definitely be worth testing just to be confident.
Cheers.
Why are they interviewing you???
Thanks, mabagal. I’d prefer the interview to be live in order to assure that my cynicism and snarkiness won’t be edited out ex post facto. Do you think a better solution would be to record it here and send the thing over as a DVD?
Jump a jet. That’s what God made them for. Impress your prospect too. “I just flew in from Taiwan to meet you.”
Damn Jimi I thought this was going to be a thread about the correct etiquette for cybersex…
You don’t need to send a DVD. You should be able to record a video on your pc and compress it and send it as an mp4 file as an email attachment.
jimi, if you need “live interview” but with video, my suggestion would be to do an audio-only call over Skype while simultaneously screen recording yourself with your computer’s front camera. The reason to do the call over Skype is it makes it so you don’t have to record the audio separately and synch it later. Then send that as an mp4 or equivalent file over e-mail or Dropbox to them.
Hi Jimi,
I skype the folks back home in SA quite often, and have noticed the following,
- When they (person in SA) puts the video on, the call quality drops badly. If you can live with one way video, you should be ok.
- Avoid skype during SA business hours, from what i understand, most SA ISP’s assign skype calls low priority during business hours.
Good luck with the interview!
Maybe try Google+ hangouts instead of Skype. I get somewhat better connections with that than with Skype, but your mileage may vary.
If it’s such a hassle using Skype, why not just do the interview over the phone and email them a pic?
Internet in sa is shit, even broadband, so unless they can get themselves to a really good connection you might as well use the normal phone.