Moodle in English: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

Hi,

We recently purchased Camtasia along with Snagit. We also have looked into Hot Potatoes quiz making software.

After reviewing Adobe Captivate 3's new features it has become clear that Captivate far surpasses Camtasia's ability to do scenario branching. Together with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 I'm having doubts that Camtasia will match the richness of the learning experience from Captivate.

Question #1: Does anyone have experience working with both of these systems?

Question #2: Do you recommend one over the other?

Are there other software packages that do a better job than these ones?

I was recently told that video should be captured in Camtasia, because it's a better tool for that, and flash quiz's and post production should be finalized in Captivate.

Please post.

Thanks.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Matt Gibson - Friday, 27 June 2008, 8:09 PM

I use camtasia and find it more than adequate. What do you mean by 'scenario branching'?

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Ray Lawrence - Saturday, 28 June 2008, 12:07 AM

Hi Matt,

More info here: http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/productinfo/product-demos/softskills-simulation/

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Prem Shankar - Saturday, 28 June 2008, 1:00 AM

Hello Ray:
I too am evaluating Adobe Captivate for scenario branching in quizzes. However, my quizzes would contain maths equations and scientific notations. Do you know if it supports these?

Thanks.

Prem

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Ray Lawrence - Saturday, 28 June 2008, 4:26 AM

I'm not sure (I doubt it though). Could you use the Lesson module with the Tex filter enabled?

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Ger Tielemans - Sunday, 29 June 2008, 7:56 PM

.. and the algebra filter and NEW: the very nice DragMath filter ( a LEGO-kind formule editor for in the student answer..)

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Matt Gibson - Monday, 30 June 2008, 3:51 PM

Thanks Ray,

that's an impressive feature. I know Camtasia can have clickable hotspots and can include quiz questions with the whole thing exporting as a SCORM object, but I'm not sure about branching like that.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Rodgers - Tuesday, 1 July 2008, 9:26 AM

After having a look at the captivate "branching" feature, I believe Camtasia does the same thing.

The "branching" is achieved by jumping to different places in the time line, a feature supported by Camtasia.

I haven't looked at captivate, but I will say I like Techsmith as a company.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Jake Sheridan - Thursday, 3 July 2008, 3:59 AM

Hi,

Camtasia allows for "linear" jumps, however Captivate allows for jumps between non-linear clips, which basically allows for complex scenarios.

Has anyone used these functions before?

Jake

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Rodgers - Friday, 4 July 2008, 7:23 PM

Sorry Jake. Just to clarify, the captivate tutorial posted above included "branching", which was achieved by managing linear jumps on the time line. (move the scrubber manually on the time line and you will see all of the feedback for right and wrong answers).

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Jake Sheridan - Saturday, 5 July 2008, 9:31 AM

Hi,

The scenario branching feature of Captivate offers the following:

Scenario Branching: Visually map out different learner paths. Collapse and expand sections of the simulation, and focus on branching for specific scenarios. Create complex scenarios by automatically branching at the end of slides based on a learner's choice at the beginning of the simulation. Adjust interaction properties such as score or number of attempts.

Scenario branching

This is a feature not available within Camtasia. Camtasia does offer linear jumps though, as you mentioned.

Jake

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Rodgers - Saturday, 5 July 2008, 10:30 AM

d06cfef5-011b-4b89-8ec0-1b718bc3bcb5_1352190e-21ea-4bc2-afae-442337225567_static_0_0_2008-07-04_2225.png

Here is the scenario branching example as a rendered flash movie. The branching is achieved using linear jumps, as is available in Camtasia.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Jake Sheridan - Tuesday, 8 July 2008, 3:41 AM

Hi,

Thanks for this. My understanding is that Captivate uses "non-linear" branching, whereas Camtasia uses "linear" jumping.

I'm assuming that "branching" and "jumping" are two different things, and that "non-linear" allows you to have a variety of different logic trees and therefore a variety of answers independent of the timeline, whereas a "linear" timeline constrains the learning pathway to a single timeline and you must literally advance (or "jump") on that single timeline to an appropriate answer.

A graphic representation to a curriculum developer would be like the difference between working with a single thread vs. working with a patchwork quilt, or having to use a single twig vs. using an entire tree with all the branches.

Are my assumptions correct?

Jake

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Richard Ingalls - Saturday, 5 July 2008, 11:50 AM

I have not used Camtasia, but I do use Captivate 3. I can say that for full motion video capture, Captivate 3 may work for you, but I feel it is less than stellar in this particular function.

You were told video should be captured in Camtasia, but flash quizzes and post production should be finalized in Captivate. I might agree with this statement (but I haven't any experience with Camtasia).

My complaint about full motion video captures with Captivate 3 is that it captures by creating several small packets of full motion video. This in itself doesn't seem to be a problem, but it is when you want to edit your captured video. Rather than displaying the entire capture in a single long timeline, you get several slides, each with its own short timeline. When you want to add in captions or buttons later, you have to copy/paste them from slide to slide until you reach your desired duration. This is a royal pain in the rear!

So I would recommend looking for another application other than Captivate 3 for your full motion video screen captures.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Jake Sheridan - Tuesday, 8 July 2008, 3:45 AM

I liked what you had to say.

Based on your analysis I agree that Camtasia has a way better video capture system. It does have some drawbacks, like the inability to export PIP (picture-in-picture) using it's more professionally looking flash templates (like ExpressShow).

It also has a great set of wysiwyg sound editing tools, which make cleaning up static an easy job as well as boosting audio and adjusting tones.

I'm looking forward to checking out Captivate's quiz system and non-linear capabilities.

Jake

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Richard Ingalls - Tuesday, 8 July 2008, 5:43 AM

You should check out this blog (http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/) and see if you start drooling over Articulate's products instead of the Adobe lust that most of us suffer. I'm an Adobe fan-boy - I have the Creative Suite CS2 (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, ImageReady); I have Acrobat Standard; I have Premiere Pro 2.0 and Captivate 3. Yep. I like their products and workflow and integration, etc. But...

The way I see it, Captivate's main competitor is Articulate and perhaps a nod to TechSmith's products SnagIt and Camtasia. In fact programmers from Captivate have migrated to Articulate I'm told by someone at Articulate. But the way I see it, TechSmith's products are not designed to be a total e-learning solution, but rather a part of a complete solution: the screen capturing portion. Actually, there's probably not a total e-learning solution from anyone.

Captivate and Articulate are probably better suited for software simulations and branching scenarios. I had hoped to also use it (Captivate) to output PowerPoints into Flash SWF files too. Believe it or not I use PowerPoint quite a bit; I just import them into Captivate files and manipulate from there - but even here Captivate has less than stunning capabilities, whereas Articulate appears to do a better job.

I'm just not raving about Captivate. It's OK. Adobe owns it. But it just doesn't deliver the goods like PhotoShop, Illustrator or Premiere Pro does. Those products are best of breed. Captivate is a work in progress. I hope it improves.

Good luck.

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回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Claire Fu - Tuesday, 8 July 2008, 5:01 PM

Hi Richard,

I think you may make a little mistake. Adobe has the PowerPoint to Flash software named Adobe Presenter with the similar function of Articulate Presenter. Captivate, Camtasia and Wondershare DemoCreator have the similar function of record computer screen and generate simulations, and then publish to Learning Management System with SCORM/AICC.

I also like the "Scenario Simulation" setting of Captivate, pretty professional. And the interface and template player of Camtasia seems more stunning. But at last I chosed DemoCreator on google search, just because of I did not have the budget enough. It also supports the SCORM.

Good Luck!

Claire

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Richard Ingalls - Tuesday, 8 July 2008, 10:36 PM

Claire:

Thank you for you clarification - you are correct on all your points: (1) Adobe Presenter is the flagship product from Adobe touted for converting PPT into SWF. (2) There are other applications with similar features to Captivate and Articulate, such as DemoCreator which you mention.

I am like you in that my budget did not allow me to purchase several products to create my own custom Rapid e-Learning suite. Instead, I chose Captivate because I have had good experiences with other Adobe products, because Captivate was the top choice in a survey from the eLearning Guild, and because Captivate's feature set included the ability to convert PPT to SWF. I had hoped Captivate would be the best choice to solve many of my needs.

I have been disappointed because my expectation was that Captivate could become my main rapid elearning tool. It has not delivered on that expectation. My main complaint is that Captivate is promoted to be a type of "Swiss Army knife" product that does many things well. But in practice (for me) it only does a few things well (and some things it does poorly, like importing PPT files, or editing full-motion screen captures). If I had known this I would have purchased a different product (probably Articulate). Some things can only be learned through experience. Oh well.

I do not hate Captivate - in fact I use it often. I have just come to realize that it is not the rapid e-learning savior I had hoped it would be.

Thanks for you comment Claire! (Off topic: How are things in China where you live after the big earthquake?)

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Matt Bury - Wednesday, 9 July 2008, 2:42 AM

For my 2 cents,

I use Captivate but I haven't tried Camtasia. I've found that Captivate is pretty good for most things but the comments about chopping full motion video into short slides are spot on. It IS a real pain in the ****.

To get round this, I use an open source screen recorder called Camstudio. It works pretty well for very basic motion video. You also have the very useful option of getting the output files in very nicely compressed SWF and an AVI file. You can then import the SWF or encode the AVI into FLV and import that into Captivate.

Here's the Camstudio site:

http://camstudio.org/

We should be supporting open source too guys ;) Oooh, and they've just released a new version...

))

Matt

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Jake Sheridan - Wednesday, 9 July 2008, 4:40 AM

Hi Richard,

I'm still not sure why Articulate is such a "hot" product?

What sets it apart from a suite made up of Camtasia coupled with Captivate?

The only difference that I can tell are some nicer quiz functions, a few innovative graphics / animations and a much crisper looking .swf output.

Is that all Articulate has to offer?

I would love to see a table comparing all of the above mentioned products and their features as well as the one's listed in other parts of this thread.

Something like:

	Captivate 3	Articulate Presenter	Camtasia
Price
Feature x
Feature y
Feature z
...

I think this would prove useful in the final evaluation.

Jake

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Brady - Wednesday, 13 August 2008, 12:51 PM

Late post and somewhat off topic
I use both Captivate and Camtasia. I view them as different tools in my toolbox.

These days I use Camtasia mostly for capturing webinars and videoconferences.

For information sessions, software demos, and training sessions I use Captivate. I don’t often use the Captivate Full motion recording option because I wind up with a separate file every 26 seconds or so. When I do need a Full Motion capture, I evaluate what I’m attempting to show and how long it will take to capture and then decide between Camtasia and Captivate. If I can get there with Captivate, I’ll do that since it is my tool of choice.

For many of the things I do sessions on, I’m not a subject matter expert. So being able to review notes between recording each Captivate slide is much more comfortable for me.

I also find Captivate much easier to update after publishing. Often an SME will ask me to add things and sometimes reword something before release. Also we have some longer series that may add up to an hour or two of training. We don’t need to recreate the whole thing when a new product or feature is added. Replacing a slide or adding a new slide can be accomplished easily and seamlessly.

One frustration I’ve had with Captivate is the lack of drawing tools. Even a simple arrow must be imported. Until recently I’ve had inconsistent results with arrows. Sometimes they were fine and sometimes they had a white rectangle around them when they were in front of another object. Random thought: I’ve pretty much stopped importing PowerPoint slides and just create my presentations in Captivate. I do still use PowerPoint as a scratch pad and drawing tool.

Anyway, I’ve solved my little drawing problem in Captivate. I draw the arrow in PowerPoint, copy it to the clipboard and paste it in MS Paint. Then I save it as a gif file and insert the image into Captivate. Then I mark it as a “Transparent background” and life is good.
Pics from the web tend to pixilated and need to be cleaned up, the cell phone on the attached pic was easy because it was a rectangle, the other phones needed some cleanup before importing them to Captivate and marking them as “Transparent background”.

Edit: I now have a My Pictures folder named Arrows that I can simply import Arrows from. Like Arrow Left red.gif and Arrow Right 90 red.gif. and Arrow right blue.gif...

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Matt Bury - Thursday, 14 August 2008, 10:30 PM

Hi John,

In your post you wrote, "I don’t often use the Captivate Full motion recording option because I wind up with a separate file every 26 seconds or so."

- For full-motion recording, I use a freeware desktop recorder called CamStudio to create a pretty high quality AVI file and then I have the option to either recode it to FLV or use CamStudio's SWF conversion and compression tool, which gives very good results, and import those into Captivate.

You also wrote, "One frustration I’ve had with Captivate is the lack of drawing tools."

- This is a typical feature of Adobe software. Rather than provide you with built-in tools for things like this, they say, "Captivate isn't a vector graphics package. You should buy the appropriate package for your vector drawing needs and import it." To their credit, Adobe have made it fantastically easy to work between different Creative Suite (CS3) packages and create new content 'on the fly' and have it instantly available in the correct format. You can also create and build libraries of assets so you spend less time creating the same graphics and importing them over and over again. The problem is, it's all so expensive!

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Richard Ingalls - Friday, 15 August 2008, 12:09 AM

Thanks for the tips Matt! I've forgotten about CamStudio - I've used it before (along with Wink) and thought it was pretty simple to use. Wink is also adequate, but Captivate is much more intuitive to work with than Wink (but Wink is free, like CamStudio!)

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Brady - Friday, 15 August 2008, 9:44 AM

“and import those into Captivate”
I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks; this opens up some opportunities to be creative. I even read about this earlier in the string and it didn’t go “click” for me at that point.

CamStudio
I’ve installed CamStudio and have begun playing around with it. It was easy to set up and figure out how to use it. If I didn’t already have Camtasia, this would be a good alternative.

Creative Suite (CS3)
I’ve come to the realization that I need or will need the Adobe CS 3 Toolbox.

Captivate Branching
I did a Captivate project a several months ago for a product launch where I used Branching (at a very basic level). This project was posted on a public web site for a few months, and has since been replaced, so I suppose I can share it. You can find it here on a not yet ready for prime time website:
http://enduser.toshibatraining.com/course/view.php?id=5

I’ve enabled guest login, Select: Telephone Tour.

I’ve also included some pictures to show what it looks like while working in the Branching area of Captivate. Note: The pictures will only be available for a week or so because I need to get the site ready for a demo to the marketing folks.

Here is a link to a Camtasia project someone else did that appears to use branching:

http://www.toshiba.com/taistsd/next-gen-phones/tour.jsp

Sorry for the product commercials, but those are the types of projects I work on.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Todd Thornton - Wednesday, 9 July 2008, 8:35 AM

I've used most of the products that have been listed in this thread (in addition to a few others) and I just wanted to say all of them have weaknesses. I realize everyone is under budget constraints particularly if you are delivery low cost or fee courses, but to try to find one product (or even two) to do everything in elearning (IMHO) is not going to happen and things will change anyway in two to three months when a new version of some program comes out that has new features. I think the saying goes "Jack of all trades, master of none" which I think certainly applies in terms of elearning software programs.

To me, it depends on what kind of training you are doing and how important screen capturing is to that process vs. whether you're mainly wanting to convert PowerPoint slides into flash files. I don't do a lot of screen capturing currently so I mainly use Articulate Presenter, Engage, and I do use SnagIt to do screen captures/recording, but I use lots of programs to create content. I use whatever tool allows me to do what I need to do in order to accomplish what I need.

Here's a brief rundown from my perspective. (These could have changed, because I don't have the latest versions of everything) I think I tried Captivate at one time, but don't remember enough about it to comment.

Camtasia- Using the built in recording, the audio quality was always sub-par compared to other tools and the player look options seemed very limiting.

SnagIt- It's only designed to do a few things, but it does them very well. At $49 bucks, it's the single best bargain in elearing. If you haven't upgraded to version 9, I highly recommend it.

Articulate Presenter- It's probably one of the easiest to use PowerPoint conversion tool on the market, but it's expensive. You really need to purchase the Engage program with it to create interactive exercises. As already mentioned, the built in quiz is very good.

Hot Potatoes- Easiest to use quiz creation program, but using Moodle you don't really need the quiz part of the program at all. Very good way to create flashcards, matching, and crossword puzzles and integrate them into Moodle. The Hot Potatoes module in Moodle does not render pages correctly if you are using 1.9 and a "custom corners" theme. Education license is free (If you make exercises available to the public) although the commercial license will run you around $135 I think. It's not a bad deal, but once again it only does a couple of things, but it does them well.

I guess I would use the analogy that a carpenter doesn't show up with just a hammer to do every job. There will be different needs at different times depending on what you are trying to accomplish. If there's an open source product, that's great. If there's not, then you have to decide how important it is to your classes to buy another program that can accomplish something else you want done or if it can do something quicker or better than your existing software.

As an example, I still have Pointecast Publisher which is somewhat equivalent to Articulate Presenter, but there were a couple of features that I developed a need for that it didn't have so I switched to Articulate. I don't like unnecessarily spending money, but I used Pointcast for two years. I don't look at it as wasting $400 on Pointcast. I look at it more as a lease in that I spent $200 per year to use software that allowed my online classes to prosper.

Todd

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Glenys Hanson - Thursday, 10 July 2008, 1:49 AM

Hi there,

I've just read on the Mentor forum that you can get a free copy of iSpring Pro at: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ispring-pro-35/

"iSpring Pro is a PowerPoint add-in which creates Flash movies from your PowerPoint presentations with an outstanding quality. Just in one click your slideshows can be published on your web site, blog or SlideBoom.com portal and shared with millions of the Internet users."

It has to be downloaded and installed today, 9th July.

Thought you might like to know.

Cheers,
Glenys

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回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Claire Fu - Tuesday, 19 August 2008, 3:09 PM

Hi Glenys,

Thanks for your information. As I know, Ispring Pro does not support LMS, just the ultra version support LMS. But the ultra version is a little expensive just with the SCORM function added, and it does not support quiz.

For alternative, I could recommend Wondershare PPT2Flash Pro, it converts PowerPoint to Flash with some eLearning templates. Also it supports AICC/SCORM, quizzes and simulations.

Claire

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Brian Tarr - Thursday, 16 July 2015, 4:56 PM

Hi everyone,

I realize this is an ancient thread, but I thought you all might be interested to know about some big changes that have happened at iSpring since these comments were posted. iSpring now offers a Free E-Learning Suite with SCORM and quiz support! (Check the comparison table on that link.)

Hope that helps!

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Marcus Green - Thursday, 16 July 2015, 6:15 PM

iSpring stuff is nice and their free stuff is surprisingly fully featured.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Sunday, 19 July 2015, 8:51 AM

Yes, looks OK, but.... you have to get the full featured package. The Free iSpring is very limited and does not create SCORM to full standard, merely converts PowerPoint to semi-SCORM, bummer....

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Marcus Green - Monday, 20 July 2015, 12:14 AM

I have never considered converting a powerpoint to SCORM, i'm not sure what the theoretical advantage would be and I have always had a poor experience with SCORM. In the situation I did want to convert to SCORM, what is semi-SCORM?

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Sunday, 26 July 2015, 1:26 PM

Hi Marcus, semi-SCORM is a file converted to an flv file with an index.html file, but not accepted into Moodle as it is not zipped and doesn't have a manifest.xml file. Likely the wrong term to describe it, but I couldn't think of anything else.. And lots of people are far more familiar with PowerPoint, and would look to build in their existing skill base, rather than learn a whole new package. And agreed, SCORM is serious work to get right and is not for everyone.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Don Hinkelman - Sunday, 26 July 2015, 10:24 PM

I have not tried it but am wondering if Office Mix is an easy content authoring solution for teachers who have powerpoint ability to start with. https://mix.office.com/watch/nthh1qhp5z1n

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by John Papworth - Thursday, 24 September 2015, 5:39 PM

The whole conversion of PowerPoint to SCORM is an utter nonsense. It is how the likes of Articulate and the rather average e-learning tools out there have been able to mug off customers with the promise of rich engaging e-learning.

However, for those who actually understand this process - you cannot just take bog standard PPT that have been used as ILT to be used as fully functional standalone e-learning with sufficient knowledge transfer. It is this sort of product that gets our industry a bad rap.

SCORM isn't that bad Marcus, as your just up the A19 from me, I can always give you pointers t'old cock.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Marcus Green - Thursday, 24 September 2015, 6:58 PM

What would be the theoretical advantage of converting Powerpoint to SCORM?

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Friday, 25 September 2015, 5:41 AM

I doubt there is any advantage actually. The idea of SCORM, for me, is to create an interactive quiz, or tool, or even something to click on while waiting for it to tell you you have it wrong. You can achieve a similar, but static, thing with a Quiz. I understand there are a number of other tools that can be used without creating a SCORM, now. Some tools allow you to develop video based activities, or similar. I have just completed two certification courses, one by my employer and the other by Red Cross, largely interactive, in terms of step by step responses and immediate grading, ongoing and adaptive commentary, screen object manipulation, and a lot of other stuff way out of my skill range. No idea how they are made, but I would think it likely Captivate was used.

PowerPoint is largely static, and actually boring as most users never seem to use it adequately, but largely passive. I only use it now to display step by step explanations of quadratics, trig, trig identities, and similar, rather than use a white board and marker. (Not imaginative, I know, but less messy..) To me, this is the opposite of what a SCORM package should be doing. So, having time to consider this, I do not think that using PowerPoint to SCORM is of any real value.

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Richard Treves - Friday, 11 July 2008, 6:54 PM

Just to chuck in my 2p worth:

A general view of Camtasia vs Captivate:
A serious problem with Captivate for me is that it only outputs to flash and that the output consists of 2 SWF files, one is the controller and the other the content. This buggers up importing flash into programs like eXe.

I have also found Captivate 2 buggy, sometimes the tool bar just stops operating, you roll over and it flashes up the menu for a second then dissappears.

However, I still tend to use Captivate as personally I find Camtasia incredibly annoying, it works in 'modes' so that when you are editing something you have to click out of that mode before you can start editing something else. Captivate is much more intuiative.

Rich

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Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Andrea Lorizzo - Friday, 22 August 2008, 10:17 PM

IMUO they are different tools:
-camptasia is a very good tool for screen recording end editing video recorded (captivate is not so good video editor)
-captivate works on slides (not on videos). is less good for video recording/manipulation but is very good for interactivity. captivate let building quiz and test very interactive and let to build a path-viewing depending on your choice in quiz.

So for video recording I'll chose camtasia.
for quiz and test captivate.
Andrea.

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回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Claire Fu - Tuesday, 26 August 2008, 7:43 PM

Hi,

I agree with Andrea. Camtasia is good at screen recording, and Captivate is good at building the training course with quizzes and test.

Camtasia is developed by Techsmith. Let's have a look at their products, Snagit, Camtasia and Jing Project. All of them are used to record the computer screen and share with others.

Captivate is developed by Adobe. As I know, Adobe provides Presenter, Captivate and Acrobat Connect Pro. All of them are designed for building and managing the training.

They are designed for different usage and position.

Welcome for your suggestions!

Claire

http://blogs.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/powerpointtoflash/

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Dan Hinckley - Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 4:48 AM

I've spent some time using both Camtasia and Captivate and I feel that Camtasia is a bit easier to use.

It is true that Captivate may be better for building training courses, but for screen captures and video tutorials, I prefer Camtasia.

Thanks for everyone's additional thoughts.

Dan

http://leanforward.com

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Sam Mudle - Friday, 3 August 2012, 8:31 AM

For OSX users, Screenflow and Snapz Pro are good equivalents.

Techsmith's OSX versions of Camtasia and Snagit are lacking.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Glenys Hanson - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 5:02 AM

Hi Jeremy,

I've used Snagit on Windows 7 for years and now also on Mac Lion but I don't find it lacking on anything on Mac - just does things differently which I do find annoying because I'm forever switching between the two OS.

I've only just started using Camtasia for Mac but I've never used it on Windows (too expensive for me) so I can't compare. What's it lacking?

Cheers,

Glenys

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Mary Cooch - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 5:43 AM

Grr! I just wrote a long paragraph about my experiences with these and my love of Snagit -then when I pressed to post I lost the internet and lost the post -so I can't be bothered repeating it - but basically: I too would like to know in what way is Snagit lacking?

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Glenys Hanson - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 6:13 AM

Hi Mary,

I know what used to be lacking on the Mac version of Snagit: it couldn't do video captures. But it does now - 2 months after I bought Camtasia for Mac. But Camtasia for Mac costs less than a 100 € so I wasn't ruined.

Never occured to me to use either for making interactive exercises though. Hot Potatoes does (nearly) all I need (with lots of the customisation that are so easy even for non techies like me) and can be made to look reasonably "smart" though not to rival with Flash tools.

Cheers,

Glenys

PS: You mean to say you don't have Lazarus Form Recovery installed? Haven't lost a post that way in years. In fact, it recovered this one for me because Firefox crashed as I was writing to you. (I couldn't use Lasarus in TinyMce directly, but I clicked on "Paste from Word" and that did the ticket.)

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Mary Cooch - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 6:19 AM

Lazarus! That was it!! I recall you mentioning it years ago but I thought it was only for FF and I use Chrome now. (Am just off to check if it will work in Chrome or if there is an equivalent)

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Lazarus for Chrome and Firefox

by Glenys Hanson - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 6:36 AM

Yep! Lazarus Form Recovery exists for Chrome as well as Firefox.

Cheers,

Glenys

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Re: Lazarus for Chrome and Firefox

by Mary Cooch - Saturday, 4 August 2012, 6:41 AM

Got it! Now just need to figure out how to work it if I lose something...

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Snagit on OSX

by Sam Mudle - Wednesday, 12 September 2012, 6:50 PM

Snagit on Windows is great! When you take a screen capture, the image gets loaded into a really powerful editor.

Snagit for OSX is very primitive, in fact I find that Snapz Pro has more options than Snagit for OSX.

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Re: Snagit on OSX

by Glenys Hanson - Tuesday, 18 September 2012, 4:31 AM

Hi Jeremy,

Could you be more explicit about what is better in the Windows version of Snagit ? I have both the Windows 11 and the Mac 2.1.2 versions but tend to use mainly the Mac - just because I'm more familiar with it. What am I not seeing in the Windows version?

Cheers,

Glenys

Mmmm... I saw I'd already asked you this question on the 3rd of August.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Rick Jerz - Monday, 6 August 2012, 11:48 PM

Although these posts are replies to an old post, I will add my two cents to this current thread.

I use, and really like, many of the Adobe products. For example, I have the Adobe Master Collection. However, I prefer Camtasia instead of Captivate for one very important reason that I think is still valid. With Camtasia, you can export your video to a variety of standard formats, which can then be combined with other videos with video editing products like Adobe Premiere. With Captivate, you cannot.

I have pointed this problem out to Adobe many years ago. I found it odd that Captivate and Premiere could not be integrated. I was once told that the technical reason for this is that Captivate's file format is not video, it is actually a series of bitmaps. Who knows (except Adobe)?

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Wednesday, 12 September 2012, 7:29 PM

Rick, you would be right there, if Captivate is a series of bitmaps. That would make it a little resource hungry, moreso than video I would expect. I know that both these tools have been around for ages now, but I have only recently found the time to start to use them. I must admit I was imediately attracted to Camtasia, for the very reason you made there, I could export in a variety of formats, depending on what use I want to put the resulting file to. Unfortunately, I have just been blown out of the water, again, by my current site, it is a Mac site so Camtasia is being replaced by the dreadful iMovie.

For Adobe not to make the transition to video, or rather, bring out a tool to replace Captivate, smacks of a programmatic inertia, so is this an indicator that Adobe is starting to lose their edge?

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Sam Mudle - Friday, 14 September 2012, 3:15 PM

Camtasia and iMovie are two different things.

If you are using OSX, try the following:

iShowU
ScreenFlow
Snapz Pro

These are all great screen capture movie generators for teaching concepts.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Sunday, 16 September 2012, 9:35 AM

They probably are, Jeremy, but they may not be available on my site's servers and as the "new guy" I just can't rock up and demand "this set of tools for me to be productive". Unfortunately, I have never used Macs before.. an avoidance strategy that is now not working for me I am afraid..

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, 19 September 2012, 10:25 PM

I'll add two more cents.

On the PC, I use Camtasia for my "quick and dirty" videos. However, for my carefully created lecture videos, I do use a better video editor, it is Adobe Premiere (5.0 right now). Yes, Camtasia can do a lot, but for serious video editing, a full-fledged video editing program is the way to go.

For some of my lecture videos, when I want to show students how to do something on their computer, I will actually combine Camtasia videos into Premiere. They work together. This is where Captivate falls short - I haven't found a good way to get Captivate videos into Premiere (of course odd, since both products are from Adobe).

I am not real familiar with iMovie, but from what I recall, it is Apple's simple movie editor. I think serious Mac video editors use Final Cut (or maybe Premiere for the Mac, although less popular). The wimpy Microsoft video editor is Movie Maker. Probably iMovie is better than Movie Maker, but both products represent each company's way of giving their customers some form of video editor.

Here's some examples of my carefully edited videos (the link is viewable with Firefox and IE explorer, Chrome seems to want to display the XML code):

http://www.rjerz.com/c/opsmgt/Podcasts/MSCI3000.xml

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Thursday, 20 September 2012, 6:49 PM

And I will see your two cents and raise it two more... (lets see.. mmm convert..multiply,,, divide... carry the 1... mmm about 3.85 cents for me).

I would agree that iMovie is a simple tool, I have used it to get students to produce something about Geogebra recently. I was surprised at the number of students who baulked at it though. Some even asked if they could use Movie Maker... errr....

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, 20 September 2012, 10:18 PM

I have never asked my students to produce videos, so I am not sure how they would react. But I can share an observation. Last year, I was skiing in Colorado and staying at a hostel, so in the evening, there was a common sitting area where everyone relaxed. I, of course, was always working since this hostel had WiFi. I noticed some of the younger folks working on videos. This seemed odd (at first), what were they up to? Then, I learned that these "kids" were using one of these specialized video cameras (like GoPro), and they were recording themselves snowboarding and doing stunts in the "pike". At night, they were editing these videos in order to share them with friends!

What I realized is that these young kids will probably master video editing better than teachers, because they have a purpose!

So if you give students a "purpose", they might be able to produce remarkable videos and be excited about doing so. (Maybe buy a GoPro for your lab.)

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Colin Fraser - Friday, 21 September 2012, 6:31 PM

You are probably right, Rick. However, there is huge attitudinal issues to overcome, and not just of students. Admin seems to be terrified of new technologies and even at around the $400 mark, would use that as an objection to doing anything.

BTW, this is a terrific tip for me, thank you. All I have to do is give them a "purpose" rather than an "assignment"..

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Marcus Green - Saturday, 22 September 2012, 1:39 AM

The latest version of Camtasia (released in the last few months) is designed to be more like a general video editor. I'm sure it would not match Adobe Premier feature for feature, but it is also much cheaper and less demanding of system resources.

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Re: 回复: Re: Techsmith's Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate vs. ???

by Rick Jerz - Monday, 24 September 2012, 1:31 AM

Yes, version 8. I have it and am using it right now.

For many people, Camtasia would work fine for editing and producing videos. I have had this product since 2002, and I appreciate what it can do (and can't do). It is the much more affordable product (compared to Premiere). In fact, I would probably recommend this product over Premiere for the beginner, until they become more demanding.

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