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mouser:
i have to admit camtasia is pretty damn sweet..
going to have to run more tests on various features.

nudone:
ah yes, i see your point about removing frames making the cursor not match up - that is a very good reason for being able to edit movements  after you've done the recording.

i'm pleased you've still got camtasia in the list of four. i would have to say, though, that the final quality of the output screencast movie and it's related file size ought to be a priority deciding factor on what is 'best' regardless of how it was made.

i shall do a few longer, more colour intensive and animated screencasts to compare camtasia's swf output alongside the others to see if the small sizes were a fluke.

the truth is, i've been downloading and watching video tutorials for years (downloaded from www.lynda.com and vtc.com on a 56k modem) and non of these are created using flash. they are usually quicktime at 5 frames per second and seem the standard way of doing things to me. so that is perhaps why i don't share the same bias against video encoded screencasts.

there is also the ability to resize video to a lower resolution to reduce the final file size even further (i know this blurs the image but sometimes the result is more than good enough).

i've been back to test captivate and i'm not impressed with the file size output. it also seems to be a little slower in doing the compression.

i've also found a way of doing free xvid screencasts with sound using free utils which i'll mention after your conclusive review on monday.

mouser, if i need to persuade you about xvid screencasting or using camtasia to produce swf output all i can say is: so far they have produced the smallest file sizes with little detriment to the quality of output. i think quicktime and wmv are a waste of time as they take far to long to encode - xvid encodes fast enough for me to find it usable and, like i say, the image quality is more than good enough.

believe me the xvid results i'm talking about aren't blocky pixellated rubbish.

there is a perhaps a flaw in all of my testing though and that is i've been doing things within a 800x600 area - but i would have thought this about right for most things (i'll do some 1024x768 tests to be sure).

if the final winning screencaster can produce swf files smaller than xvid then i'll be a happy bunny whoever it is made by. if it can't then i won't really be able see the point of the flash based screencasters other than they can produce 'streaming swf output' so you can begin watching as you download. okay, i agree, i'm an idiot - that is a very good reason for using swf over xvid.

i've lost the plot. i'll let the judge and the rest of jury decide.

i'm now going to investigate 'viewlet cam'...

mouser:
well i think you and i basically started out in the same place which is:
we expected the apps designed for flash capture to produce MUCH SMALLER files and MUCH BETTER quality.

when the reality seems to be that the full motion flash capture apps and video capture apps (camtasia) are producing very similar results in terms of size and quality.

the surprise is that the flash capture apps are producing flash files that are so large, and that camtasia is able to produce flash files that are so small; the result is very little difference.

there are some advantages and disadvantages to having the files in the different formats.
a strong advantage of capturing video is:
you can capture in very high quality, and downsample and resize, etc for final output depending on target.
the flash capture apps dont capture at a high enough rate to make truely super smooth output the way camtasia can.
the flash capture apps have more flexibility in doing things like interactive stuff, changing mouse position, etc.

the other thing that these experiments make clear is that there really is still a use for these manual click-to-capture-screen tools (like wink), because the difference in file size can be 100k vs. 2mb.

this is clearly going to be a nail-biter of a review..
im still doing some more detailed tests of advanced features.  i need to play with these apps more.

viewletcam is also impressing me.

nudone:
well spotted mouser. it appears we have a late contender.

viewlet cam appears to be just the right kind of screencaster. straight forward to use and not extortionate in price.

it did crash once but i won't hold that against it.

maybe this is the 'one'.

mouser:
this is really a tough one..

we may have to do a split award or something..
different winners for different purposes..

camtasia needs to get some recognition for being the only one of the bunch that can truely claim to do high speed smooth desktop capture, while at the same time doing an excellent job of producing flash output.

but for those who like to do a lot of annotation and interactive stuff, or who want to be able to do small captures by manually taking screenshots, then the flash based tools may be more appropriate...

im going to experiment more by creating more real movies with annotations and captions and see.

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