TechSmith Camtasia Studio 5

While Adobe hopes to dominate the world of computer-based training with Captivate (web ID: 137355), there are a number of other contenders. And chief among them is Camtasia Studio 5.

TechSmith is otherwise best known for its screen-capture utility, SnagIt, and it's no coincidence that screen capture is central to Camtasia Studio, too. It's been completely reworked: you're now presented with a simple graphical dialog with just three options for audio, video and screen capture. Setting up the screen area to record is also simpler: elements such as windows and dialogs are automatically highlighted as you mouse over them, or you can just drag to mark out a freeform area.

Once you've finished recording and saved your file to TechSmith's lossless CAMREC format, you can load it into the main Studio module for editing and enhancing. Your various clips, images and audio files are ordered by dragging them onto the timeline. Here, you can split clips, add in and out points, extend frames and change the playback speed. Since Camtasia Studio 5's projects are now edited at 30fps, handling is more precise and the results smoother. The Studio module is also the place for adding title sequences, callouts, transitions, new audio and video (for picture-in-picture effects), and even Flash quizzes and surveys.

But for all that, Camtasia Studio can't match Captivate's polish. With features such as automatic highlight and captioning as you record, plus its slide- and overlay-based approach to editing, Captivate moves far beyond basic screen recording. And if you plan to extend into assessment and eLearning, Camtasia's crude multiple-choice and fill-the-blank questions look pretty pathetic compared with the rich interactivity of Captivate.

However, if you just want to produce simple software demos, Camtasia 5 has a major ace up its sleeve. Often, you'll record at one screen size, but then want to output at smaller dimensions; previously, the downsampling produced blurry results in which the action took place in a small part of the smaller screen. With Camtasia 5, when you change a project's dimensions, it gives you the option of applying its innovative SmartFocus technology: this intelligently resizes your recording around the points of screen activity, panning and zooming.

Even better, it adds zoom points to your timeline and, by double-clicking on these, you can manually control the position, size and duration of your pans and zooms. The end results aren't just physically clearer, the pans and zooms are also an excellent way of making your demos more engaging and intelligible.

The Production wizard provides quick access to four main destination presets - Web, CD, Blog and iPod - or you can set custom parameters. Crucially, the wizard offers a preview to see and compare video quality before committing yourself. Unlike the Flash-only Captivate, Camtasia supports everything from animated GIF and RealMovie to high-quality AVI, MOV and Silverlight-compatible WMV. But Flash dominates, and TechSmith has fully embraced both SWF and FLV formats.

Flash can also be used to create interactive players for your content, and Camtasia Studio has long offered the Camtasia Theater module for adding DVD-style menus and controls to your projects. Camtasia Theater still has its uses, but it's largely replaced by the new integrated ExpressShow feature. Select this option and Camtasia produces a single SWF file with embedded playback controls, along with an optional preview thumbnail and table of contents based on markers on the timeline. The results look good, are easier to navigate, and much easier to post to your site.