Customer Reviews

Camtasia Studio V 5.1

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me be clear: Camtasia Studio 5 is a very good piece of software. I've produced three complex videos with it, and all three projects were successful.

Camtasia's core competency is capturing the screen, adding audio narration (during capture or in post production), editing to a final cut, and producing in a wide variety of formats. It excels at all of these tasks. This latest version adds some clever and very useful Zoom-n-Pan functionality, which automatically follows the center of attention on the screen. I have found this very useful, because I can capture at 1600x1200, getting all of the details, edit, then render at a smaller resolution depending on my target delivery media (web, CD, etc.)

I'm not going to go through all the features here. Go to the publisher's web site at techsmith.com web site to watch a bunch of video demos that do a great job of showing what the product can do. Instead, I will share some experience:

1. To take full advantage of this product, you should probably buy the book Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide (Wordware Applications Library) by Daniel Park, available here on Amazon. Camtasia has good online help, and the aforementioned videos also help, but this book is the missing manual.

2. Bugs dropped my rating from 5 stars to 4. If you make a very complex video (more than 100 clips!), the program becomes a bit unstable, and the project file can get corrupted. This is a big problem, and I would have saved 10 hours of grief if I had known about it ahead of time. It is an indication of how much I otherwise like this product that I did not deduct more stars for this bug. But tech support was very knowledgeable and helpful when I called, and this kept me to a single star deduction.

Please note that very few users ever make a video that complex, so you may use the product for years and never encounter that bug.

3. The Techsmith.com user forums are an invaluable resource. Read through the threads to learn how to use the product and avoid more obscure problems.

4. Get a good microphone! You can't create good audio without a good microphone. Many laptops have very noisy audio input stages, which may impact the quality of your audio. This is not a Camtasia issue, but rather a laptop hardware issue. A good microphone coupled with a clean audio input can create fantastic audio. The book mentioned above has a whole section on capturing good audio. I use a good quality wired Plantronics computer headset that gives good results.

5. Study and try the various output options. Camtasia includes a nice Production Preview feature that lets you create multiple previews, then compare them in the Production Preview Manager. This helps you understand the tradeoffs in audio and video quality with various compression levels for internet delivery.

6. For web delivery, if more than a couple of people will ever view your videos simultaneously, you probably need a streaming server. You can set one up yourself, or you can just Google for a "streaming service provider". I evaluated several after people complained that our web server was too slow. Eventually I purchased a plan from Streamcast.com, which is also owned by Techsmith. Their pricing plans beat everybody else cold, and I've been very happy with their delivery for the last three months.

I think Camtasia is the best solution on the market for screen demos, software training, etc. It is well worth the expense.

This is a fantastic product. Easy to use interface that allows you to create anything from a simple demonstration with text to a complex multimedia tutorial. I recommend highly!

I am in the process of learning this software and really getting the most out of it. Although I have not received my "official" copy from Amazon yet, I have been using my Demo copy from the company site. A really terrific piece of software. I used Version 4 in Demo mode right before this was released and there appear to be some interface changes. Is it worth the upgrade? Hmmm, I am not sure. If I was an owner of 4, I would sit tight and wait for another upgrade. There are no Camtasia books (as far as I can see) for this version yet. Still, really AWESOME software. :)