Camtasia Studio Advantages

For more information, see http://www.personnex.com/camtasia.html.

Regarding the capabilities of Camtasia Studio, there are several that make it an ideal training development tool. I am listing only the ones I feel are most important. For a complete list of features, see http://www.camtasia.com.

Recording Video
There are a few noteworthy recording options in the most recent versions of Camtasia Studio. The product has always been able to do basic captures of movement on your computer screen. For those new to screen video recording, this can be a valuable tool in capturing your movements around a program or web site. For example, you can start the recorder, fill in a database form with example data, save and submit the data, all the while recording your voice to explain the choices you are making, finally stopping the recorder when you have finished. How cool is that as a way to show new users how to navigate and use your software?

Another example of the recording options is the use of the PowerPoint plug-in to record your presentation while adding vocal annotations. The really cool thing here is that you can make use of the extensive set of animation features in PowerPoint to liven up your presentation. This is extremely useful in creating and presenting all sorts of training, including lecture style, software training interspersed with slides, presentations conveying or selling concepts, and presenting how-to information. For more information, see PowerPoint Captures below.

Editing Video
The ability to edit captured video is one of the central features in Camtasia Studio. Editing has been available since Version 1 and has been strengthened considerably in more recent versions, including Versions 5 and 6. Post-capture timeline editing capabilities include the basics, such as cutting and copying frames, extending video and audio, and inserting other media. Users can also edit individual clips, edit the audio track, place markers and titles, add post-capture narration, record and insert more video and audio, enhance the audio, zoom and pan the video, add callouts, transitions, captions, Flash quizzes and surveys, and use Picture-in-Picture. All of these enhancements are available post-capture, in the editing timeline. The production output from the timeline content is a new edited video file which can be saved in a vast number of formats and compressions, including both SWF and FLV Flash, WMV, MOV, AVI, iPod video, RM CAMV (a superior proprietary compression for RealPlayer Encoding) or Animated GIF. Audio output can be saved as iTunes or MP3.

PowerPoint Captures
Recent versions of Camtasia Studio incorporate the best way to produce presentations: the ability to capture and enhance Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. Converting PowerPoint to video is very intuitive, allowing the recording of all PowerPoint actions, plus audio, from either the Camtasia Studio interface or from PowerPoint using the installed plug-in. After capture, all of the timeline editing functions mentioned above come into play, allowing a high level of creativity. A static PowerPoint presentation "comes alive" in the Camtasia Studio-produced Flash output.

Flash Quizzes and Surveys
After creating some content, many trainers would love to throw in a little quiz at the end to see if you were paying attention. In addition, many content creators would like to survey users on the presentation. Camtasia Studio has a wonderful and intuitive feature allowing the creation of both quizzes and surveys, including multiple choice, true/false, or word questions and answers. Video creators may have responses emailed to them or reported to a Learning Management System (LMS) for extensive record-keeping on respondents' progress. These features were available when Camtasia Studio incorporated Flash as one of the target output choices. Camtasia Studio now has an impressive range of Flash interactive features.

Price
Camtasia Studio is bargain priced when compared to other products such as Adobe Captivate. While Captivate has limited user assistance resources and lacks a user manual or help file, Camtasia Studio has an impressive suite of user assistance. Having authored the help documentation for Camtasia Studio through Version 3, I am proud to say that the folks at TechSmith have done a excellent job of maintaining, upgrading, and expanding that content. And all of this user assistance for Camtasia Studio comes at a price significantly lower that that charged for Captivate or other similar training creation products.

Conclusion
For training professionals, sales teams, web program developers, user assistance professionals, hobbyists and enthusiasts, you cannot beat the features in Camtasia Studio. For those who would like to explore this tool for your own training, sales, or web-blog efforts, check out my service offerings at: http://www.personnex.com/camtasia.html.