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Camtasia Studio 3.1 from TechSmith Corp. is a very intuitive tool for creating attractive application demonstrations and presentations. In fact, its probably one of the best products eWEEK Labs has seen for creating sales-oriented product demos and tutorials, although its not as useful for complex training and coursework applications.
Click here to read the full review of Camtasia Studio 3.1.
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Camtasia Studio 3.1 from TechSmith Corp. is a very intuitive tool for creating attractive application demonstrations and presentations. In fact, its probably one of the best products eWEEK Labs has seen for creating sales-oriented product demos and tutorials, although its not as useful for complex training and coursework applications.
Pricing for Camtasia Studio 3.1 starts at $299 per user; volume pricing is available.
If rival SoftSim is like a high-end application development environment, Camtasia Studio is like a video editing environment, with timeline and transition settings that will be familiar to anyone who uses such tools.
Recording application usage was very simple in Camtasia Studio, and we especially liked that it gave us the option to record audio or even video (which in outputted content would appear as a picture in a picture) as we created simulations. When completed, audio and video were automatically synchronized with our simulations.
Once content was recorded, we had access to a number of tools that helped us create attractive presentations. For example, a menu maker tool let us build custom menus for navigating the application demo, and we could zoom into simulations to focus on specific areas. Camtasia Studio also includes support for integrated polling—a useful feature but less sophisticated than the testing features in SoftSim 2006.
Like SoftSim, Camtasia Studio runs only on Windows platforms but offers a wide variety of output options. We could output content specifically for the Web or to a CD or DVD in Flash, Windows Media or QuickTime. A nice touch—and one that clearly shows the products sales orientation—is the integrated PowerPoint features that make it simple to record a presentation, add audio and video, customize the presentation, and output the presentation in any one of the supported formats.
While we found Camtasia Studio easy to use in general, the product includes plenty of learning aids that will help users who are less experienced with this type of product. For one thing, Camtasia is eating its own dog food, making good use of integrated simulations to provide tutorials and show users how its different features work.
Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.
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Evaluation Shortlist
Adobe Systems Inc.s Captivate The former Macromedia/RoboHelp Captivate is a highly usable tool for creating Flash-based product demos and, not surprisingly, integrates well with the Flash authoring environment (www.macromedia.com/captivate)
OnDemand Softwares OnDemand Personal Navigator A powerful e-learning and training platform for building complex simulations for complex applications (www.ondemandgk.com)
Qarbon Inc.s ViewletBuilder A simple-to-use but surprisingly capable tool for recording and annotating application demos (www.qarbon.com)