News and Reviews > Best ScreenCaster

Another possibility - WME

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Jimdoria:
Hi, guys!

Great review. Thanks very much. I've watched this category myself over the years, and it's always good to keep up to date with what's current now.

My company is using a screencasting tool called Firefly for some of its training stuff. It's pretty high end, but has some interesting abilities, like being able to simulate applications. It actually captures menu choices, drop-down choices, etc. and caches them even when they are not chosen/displayed during recording, so during the demo you can turn the controls over to the viewer/user and let them play with a simulated version of the app you are demoing. Pretty unique.

But the other thing I didn't see mentioned and wanted to point out was that there is a tool for capturing fluid movies that gives hgh-quality output and is free - Windows Media Encoder. The latest version of WME include a "screen codec" with capabilities similar to Camtasia's proprietary codec, and you can use the encoder app to capture screen movies with audio narration.

There are no bells or whistles - no editing and no annotation/graphics. But the output is very good and the price is right as well. Makes a good alternative to Wink if you are in the "free or nothing" crowd (unless you're also in the Mac or Linux crowd!)  :)

tsaint:
Jim,
could you give a link to Firefly please?
thanks
tony

Jimdoria:
You can check out the Firefly features list at the following page:
http://www.knowledgeplanet.com/products/firefly.asp?pagen=1

There are other related pages at their site, but this gives the most concise and informative sum-up of what the app can do.

tsaint:
thanks Jim,
it sounds pretty impressive - I suppose the price is too! (probably out of a school's league)

bmm:
A year ago I read something about $10,000 for a Firefly license, so yes it is definetly in another category than ordinary ScreenCaster software. Other software in the same category as Firefly are SoftSim, OnDemand and InfoPak.

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