Which is better for three-way video conversations: Skype or Google Hangouts?

Thirith

For our podcast, we're thinking of the possibility of involving a guest every now and then. So far we've only ever had two speakers - me and my friend - so we just used Skype audio chat to talk while recording locally via Audacity. With three people, it'll be more important to have video as well so we can signal when one of us has something to say.

For three-way video conversations, which is the best (free) option? Is it Skype? Google Hangouts? Or something else yet again? I'm not too worried about video quality; the thing that's most important is latency. The more of a delay there is, the more difficult the conversation will be.

Any tips would be much appreciated. Cheers!

Astaereth

I like Hangouts because it makes it easy to save a back-up copy of the video that gets archived on your Youtube account. It’s not perfect (Hangouts will autofade audio if people talk over each other, which sounds bad on a podcast) but if somebody forgets to hit record on Audacity or the files get corrupted you’ll be glad you have it. I also think Hangouts is generally a lot smoother than Skype video.

On the other hand, Hangouts is shutting down after next year and replaced with a business-aimed Hangouts Meet, so who knows what will happen there.

Thirith

Thanks, that is very helpful. Your podcasts involve three people, do I remember that correctly? Do you have any tips on how best to manage this?

zepherin

I’ve used both personally and professionally. Skype has the advantage for showing someone’s screen to everyone, hangouts is way smoother for 3,4, 12 way conversations. So unless you are showing all of your guests the screen you are working off of, I would definitely go with hangouts. Hangouts meet I’m excited about, but that’s because I feel it doesn’t do a few things as well as Skype and that keeps my current company from swapping over.