Macromedia Captivate

by Macromedia

Product Features

• Macromedia Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) automatically records all onscreen actions and instantly creates an interactive Flash simulation.
• Point and click to add text captions, narration, and e-learning interactions without any programming knowledge.
• Smart Full-Motion Recording and Visual Timeline in Edit View.
• Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Export capabilities.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00067KYAI
• Item model number: CAW010D000
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 2, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,693 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #33 in Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Objects
  • #67 in Software > Web Development > Professional Development

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy it, you'll love it., July 3, 2005

By 

Richard John Jenkins "Richard John Jenkins" (Ventura, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Macromedia Captivate (CD-ROM)

What is the single best thing about Macromedia's Captivate?

It's incredibly easy to use!

Ever use easy to master PowerPoint to get your point across?

After playing around with PowerPoint for an hour or two you were creating cool slide presentations that you were proud of in no time, right?

Like PowerPoint you are up and running in Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) in a matter of minutes, creating computer / web based demonstrations, simulations and training that can be delivered on computers and also exported to: CD, DVD, movies attached to emails, FTP directly to a web site, compressed as a zip file, and best of all, the final Captivate movies can be stand alone Flash movies that can be viewed on Macs, as well as Window's PC!

You can even import your movies directly into Macromedia's Flash as well as include them in Macromedia's fantastic "Breeze" presentation tool.

In many other ways Captivate again is also very similar and as simple to use as PowerPoint - it uses the same "slide" type outlines (called storyboards) and super easy navigation through your slides to make changes to them (edit view), but Captivate adds several very cool additional layers to this mix: an easy to use timeline, live recording of your every click of the mouse, every drag and drop you make, window's opening and closing, automatic caption insertion, your very own voice narration in perfect sync with your every mouse movement, and one of my favorite things in the program, a terrific and easy way to import / export audio sound tracks and background music, and if you make a mistake, a no-brainer way to fix your audio mistakes on-the-fly.

And thankfully, there is no coding!

Unlike some of the other powerful Macromedia tools like Flash, Director, Cold Fusion, and aspects of Dreamweaver, you don't have to be a programmer to do some very powerful things in Captivate including creating e -Learning test, surveys and quizzes - perfect for trainers and educators at all levels.

I am a professional software trainer and to be honest in this review, years ago I once worked for Macromedia as a trainer.
Regardless, I have always pointed out to people at Macromedia that some of the company's tools have steep and complex learning curves and they should create tools that are powerful, but also "easy to master" for people like me who don't "get" coding, nor has the time to learn complex and overwhelming software tools.

Having taught tens of thousands of people complex software tools "live" in traditional computer lab classrooms, during public seminars, and at major computer / web conferences and tradeshows, Captivate is a God send for someone like me.

I will point out one major thing Macromedia did wrong in regards to Captivate; however, Macromedia's marketing team has forgotten to tell people how much "fun" it is to use!

With Captivate, Macromedia did it right. It's powerful as heck, "and" simple to use - the very best of both worlds.

Buy it, you'll love it.

Richard John Jenkins

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good product but not for the Web, not yet., December 30, 2005

By 

M. Burak Tutan (Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Macromedia Captivate (CD-ROM)

If you are going to use Captivate for non-web applications, like standalone .EXE files and such, buy it. You probably won't find any better alternative on the market.
But if you want to export your project to Web, you have to consider following before buy:
1. Not compatible with Flash v8. You have to copy and paste some dll files, and import the captivate file into the Flash 8. Still it won't import the mouse movements. So you have to do all tween motions manually.

2. Creates huge .swf files, mostly unusable for web. Example: Tried a web application demo, consists 6 steps. Captivate created 44 frames. When I import into Flash and export as swf, it turned out 4MB in size with over 8000 frames. Even if I can be able to reduce the size by half, it will still be 2MB with very low quality blurry images.
I had alot better results with capturing the each screen with FireWorks, and edit them in Flash 8.

Just my 2 cents.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivate e-Learning, June 17, 2005

By 

Jerry B. Day (Longmont, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Macromedia Captivate (CD-ROM)

Macromedia Captivate used to be thought of as a screen capture program by many when it was known as RoboDemo. Captivate is much, much more than that. It now includes the capability to produce complete e-learning programs with testing and assesments. It can produce software learning and testing simulations.

I was asked to produce a system administration tutorial in only seven days. The final tutorial consisted of 45 individual Captivate modules inside of a Flash built course structure. I could not have done this project without Captivate.

If you have to develop software demonstrations for marketing or e-learning programs, you must have this product. It is well worth the price and invaluable to me.