Compare to Camtasia

May 282012

Can anyone tell me the advantages and disadvantages as
compared to Camtasia 4.

Do the Videos come out cleaner…maybe because Captivate is
related to Flash (both Adobe products)?

Can you create a long presentation and/or make chapters of
different projects?

Thanks

J Michael
|||
Welcome to the Captivate User Community, J Michael,

I wouldn’t presume to make comparisons for you – but you can
make your own. Download Captivate 3

at
this link
and try it out for yourself.

I’m not being unhelpful, but for me to offer you my
observations is to assume that we both are looking for the same
features in software – and Captivate and Camtasia are different
enough as it is, without the “personal perspective” tinting the
glasses we see through.

Best of luck to you!!
|||
Larry:

Thanks for the chat. Since it sounds like you use both maybe
I could rephrase the question and hope to make a decision based on
your experiences…

Could you please tell me some features in Captivate 3.0 that
aren’t available in Camtasia and vice versa.

J Michael
|||
I gave you the wrong impression. I haven’t used Camtasia for
several years. Captivate 3 (current version – brand new release) is
the culmination of Adobe’s rewriting of the code to make a better
mousetrap. Long full-motion is possible now (AVI captures converted
automatically to SWF) where only short 3-5 second sequences were
reliable earlier. Audio is reliable (someone is going to call me a
liar somewhere in here).

The best part of the last iteration is that with one
recording session, you can have Captivate create separate files for
differing purposes … for instance a demonstration of software
complete with audio and text-captions and highlight boxes can be
recorded, and at the same time, Captivate will be creating an
Assessment Simulation and/or a Training Simulation complete with
click-boxes (hot spots) to train or test the end-user.

Captivate supports a very hearty “quiz” capability that can
be used in LMS (learning management) compliant with either SCORM or
AICC or a variety of other elearning standards … or simply send
test results to a department head or other party by email (this use
is problematic and I don’t encourage it).

The product is just waaay to versatile to describe in the
limited time I have available, but it is basically the best
etutoring tool in the world today – in or close to its pricing
structure (IMHO).

Have a good day!! I hope this is some help, but I still think
the answer is going to have to come from your after trying both.

.
|||
Thanks Larry.

I appreciate your thoughts and time
|||
Hi, a while ago I saw this this article
http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2005/04/16/camtasia- vs-captivate/

I used Camtasia 1,5 years ago, and that was little cumpersome
to use it, and some obvious features did not exist at that time.
This winter I started to use Captivate and are more pleased with
that. I do not have any experience of the latest Camptasia version
though
|||
It really depends on what your looking for. In my opinion if
you haven’t much programming experiance Captivate is the end all be
all for simple easy to use demonstrations and training guides. The
only draw back is the bug’s which the demo version has
A lot of. Captivate has some amazing features that Camtasia
can’t touch with a fifty foot pole though. Camtasia is good for
just straight screen capturing, and seems to have a little more
freedom as opposed to the Adobe commercialization curse (all those
Adobe style captions? Come on!). Captivate is good for the bells
and whistles.
|||
Preface this all with the fact I’ve not played with Captivate
3 yet, so

this all refers to CP2 compared to Camtasia 4.02…

Camtasia blows Captivate away in ‘full motion recording’,
there’s simply

no comparison. So if your recording requires captures that
are ‘movie

like’ in the fact that constant motion is required (like
scrolling, or

dragging items, etc), Camtasia rocks.

However, Captivate equally blows Camtasia by when it comes to

interactivity. Camtasia is really limited to just putting in
hotspots,

that will indeed pause the piece til clicked and have some
limited

reactions, but there are no ‘feedback options
(correct/incorrect) like

Captivate, and absolutely no branching.

Well, maybe you could branch with some real creative editing,
but that

could quickly get messy.

Camtasia requires a lot more precision during the recording,
since the

whole process is captured as a movie. Captivate is a LOT
easier to make

mistakes with and edit later by using its ‘keyframe’
approach.

Both have their bugs. Captivate’s seem more diverse but
Camtasia’s one

‘extend frame’ bug is REAL annoying (if you use that
function).

In short, for something like a product demo, I’d use
Captivate. For an

elearning project requiring interactivity judgment, Captivate
hands-down.

Erik

LoanGenie wrote:

> Can anyone tell me the advantages and disadvantages as
compared to Camtasia 4.

>

> Do the Videos come out cleaner…maybe because Captivate
is related to Flash

> (both Adobe products)?

>

> Can you create a long presentation and/or make chapters
of different projects?

>

> Thanks

>

> J Michael

>

–

Erik Lord

http://www.capemedia.net

Adobe Community Expert – Authorware

http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/

———————————————————————- –

http://www.awaretips.net -
samples, tips, products, faqs, and links!

*Search the A’ware newsgroup archives*

http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.authorware

|||
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS:

Thanks to Erik, TheBurger and tykebrahe. Your comments are
Very helpful.

Can I import Video files created by Camtasia (.avi) into
Captivate for their superior interactive format?

Has Adobe reduced their output Flash file sizes?

It seemed the video on the website about Safty-Kleen at

http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/

is incredibly clear. Is that done with Captivate or something
else?

I’m looking to improve our presentations. Here’s what I’ve
been doing…

I use Camtasia for our Mortgage Moment and Apprentice
programs….

MortgageMoment:

http://www.understandingyourmortgage.com/MortgageMoment/MM22/HybridTru eRate.html

Apprentice:

http://www.understandingyourmortgage.com/Apprentice/

Thanks all

J Michael
|||
Just viewed your video…it looks like you would have loads
of fun with Cap 3, just my opinion. Instead of having a mouse
rolling around the screen, you can just take mouse pointer out (one
click!). Copy your slide then just highlight and record as you
go…or you could just record over one slide and adjust your
highlight to when you speak about it in your video. These steps are
very very simple!

Now I know the true power of the hybrid option arm!

I would assume you could use a Camtasia AVI file in Captivate
3 so long as it’s a AVI file and not using a Camtasia interface.
But if you look in the topics I have had a problem uploading any
AVI’s in to Captivate 3. When I publish the flash movie just
crashes. The only way to come close to viewing it is when I convert
in to SWF or FLV and import it in my slide and it looks horrible
when you play (pixilation) this could just be a “demo” version
problem of Cap 3. Mysteriously flash files work perfectly if
converted through Captivate. I will know better when my company
buys the full version next week. Erik is completely right about the
recording of video and everything.
|||
I haven’t had the chance to check your productions, but I
guarantee that

movie on the Adobe site was not created with Captivate. That
looks to be

a custom Flash (with FLV) production.

What do you want to improve about the existing Camtasia
movies you have?

I defer to TheBurger on importing a Camtasia movie into
Captivate.

Sounds reasonable to me, but I’ve never tried it.

Erik

LoanGenie wrote:

> ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS:

>

> Thanks to Erik, TheBurger and tykebrahe. Your comments
are Very helpful.

>

> Can I import Video files created by Camtasia (.avi) into
Captivate for their

> superior interactive format?

>

> Has Adobe reduced their output Flash file sizes?

>

> It seemed the video on the website about Safty-Kleen at

>
http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/

> is incredibly clear. Is that done with Captivate or
something else?

>

> I’m looking to improve our presentations. Here’s what
I’ve been doing…

> I use Camtasia for our Mortgage Moment and Apprentice
programs….

Does Captivate have additional channels or tracks for
crteating mixed elements?

What do you think was the software used to create the
Safty-Kleen Video? And what was it rendered as…SWF or Flv

J Michael
|||
Captivate is Flash-based, and it shares Flash’s
timeline-based metaphor, with objects existing on layers. So yes,
it has multiple channels/tracks that you can hide/show over time.
I’d recommend downloading the demo and playing around with it. Once
you figure things out, Captivate is a pretty simple program to use.

The Safety-Kleen video has been around since the launch of
Captivate 2, so my guess is that it was created as a .FLV using the
Flash 8 Video Encoder. I think that came as part of Flash 8 (or
maybe only with Flash 8 Professional).

Out of the box, the Flash 8 Video Encoder supports the On2
VP6 codec for Flash Player 8 and Sorenson Spark for Flash 7. The
Safety-Kleen video could have been created with either of those,
but I’d wager it’s the On2 codec. I’ve seen some really pretty
samples created with that.

Flash CS3 is out now, so I imagine it also has a video
encoder component to it that should be as good if not better than
Flash 8.
|||
1. With Camtasia you can create avi with CP3 you will not
(and probably never).

2. The price for Camtasia is strictly less than the price of
CP3 especially if you live in Europe.

3. With CP3 it is easier to edit the project than in
Camtasia. With Camtasia you have to be carefully with the mouvement
of the mouse. I do not have an extended experience editing with
Camtasia. General opinion on reviews that I have seen is that
editing with CP3 is easier than with Camtasia.

4. Better to download trial both products and see for
yourself.

5. Camtasia has a knwoledge base, answers by camtasia not by
users. You can access to it for free.

|||
Adding to this discussion…

Captivate 3 is very user-friendly and its interface is clean.
There are a lot more quiz options than Camtasia. One huge drawback,
I found, with Captivate is that you cannot import any video file
(other than .flv format) into Captivate. You certainly can convert
.avi file to .flv using Camtasia, however the process takes a very
long time, if you have a file larger than 7 minutes. I like that
Camtasia takes any video file but the quiz options are limited to
multiple choice, T/F, and fill-in-the-blank.

So really there’s no perfect solution but I really like
Captivate 3 and just need a work-around for the video conversion.
Does anyone have recommendation other than Camtasia to convert .avi
files to .flv?

Thanks!

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