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February 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Screencasts 24 Comments »
The two leading screencast tools, Camtasia and Captivate, both have strengths and weaknesses that make selecting a clear winner difficult if not impossible. But lately I’ve been using both of these tools and have been particularly impressed by Camtasia’s zoom-and-pan feature.
The new zoom-and-pan feature in Camtasia is, without argument, the most exciting feature in Camtasia. The zoom-and-pan feature allows you to easily zoom in or pan to a different area of the screen in a smooth way. This allows you to have a small frame size for your video without forcing users to break out a magnifying glass to read the screen.
I made a little screencast to demonstrate what I’m talking about. I recorded this with Camtasia over the breakfast table this morning.
Here’s the same attempt with Captivate.
I hope it’s obvious that with Camtasia, users can still view the video in a small space, whereas with Captivate, you need a magnifying glass.
The more I think about the zoom-and-pan feature, the more Camtasia wins me over. We live in an age of mobile devices — BlackBerry, iPhone, PDA, iPod, cell phones, and so on. To deliver screencasts for these applications (as well as youtube and the myriad other online video sites), you don’t have much real estate for your video.
If you shrink the application frame you’re documenting, at some point the buttons and toolbars start disappearing, misaligning, or not displaying all the columns and text you need to capture. This can be a real problem, because large frames simply do not fit into the size of your publication space. And resized frames can leave the text so small as to render the screencast useless.
Another growing publication medium is the blog post. As blogs become more common among businesses, bloggers will need to fill their posts with interesting, video content. Unless they take a video camera around to capture footage of people and scenery, most likely much of the content will be screencasts (at least for software companies). The average blog post width is about 400 pixels wide — not a lot of room if the application you’re showing spans twice that space. Smart companies will also want to get the screencasts into youtube’s space.
The only drawback of the zoom-and-pan is increased file size. You want the motion to look smooth rather than jerky, but turning up the framerate to 15 frames per second results in a larger file size. A 4 minute video can have a 10 MB flash file (but you can reduce the size by lowering the image and voice quality, or by breaking up the file into multiple small videos, and lowering the number of special effects, including the zoom-and-pan).
One of Captivate’s strength is that it doesn’t consolidate all the information into one flash file. Captivate breaks it up into smaller chunks that load faster. It not only breaks up the audio, but spreads it across multiple slides. (Captivate also has a zoom/magnify feature, but it just doesn’t work in the same smooth way as Captivate.)
Overall, I’m still too new to Camtasia to really provide an extensive analysis of the two tools. But I’m leaning toward Camtasia for several reasons. First, I really, really like that zoom-and-pan feature. But second, I also like voice and full-motion recording. I tire of screen demos that force me to click in specific areas to keep the video going. Clicking around is a hassle, and it doesn’t teach me more efficiently. I prefer to sit back, munch on something, and soak in the tutorial, listening to a human voice.
Additional Resources
- Check out the Tech Smith Visual Lounge blog, one of the best company blogs I’ve seen.
- Here’s a tutorial on posting Camtasia videos onto Wordpress.com blogs
- By the way, for the microphone, I was using the H4 Zoom Recorder as an audio interface to my laptop.
- I used the Kimili Flash Embed plugin to embed the flash files directly into my WordPress site.
- Here’s the original Camtasia video on its own page.
- Here’s the original Captivate video on its own page.
Tags: Camtasia, Captivate, screen recording, Screencasts
limetwrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt We live in an age of mobile devices — BlackBerry, iPhone, PDA, iPod, cell phones, and so on. To deliver screencasts for these applications (as well as youtube and the myriad other online
Claywrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt To deliver screencasts for these applications (as well as youtube and the myriad other online video sites), you don’t have much real estate for your video. If you shrink the application
Camtasia Versus Captivate: Thinking About Screen Real Estate … February 2nd, 2008 at 12:52pm Under UncategorizedClaywrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt To deliver screencasts for these applications (as well as youtube and the myriad other online video sites), you don’t have much real estate for your video. If you shrink the application
Tom,
When I read your article in Google Reader, all I got was code for the Flash file examples. Here is the screen shot that I uploaded via Techsmith’s Jing: http://screencast.com/t/BpRqBePaI
I wonder if the Flash plugin you used does this and if it’s better to to just embed the Flash code. That way it’ll play in Reader too just like YouTube videos.
I agree with your assessment of Camtasia’s pan&zoom feature. It’s great. And, it’ll be even better when they have a Mac version. (Please hurry Betsy & Troy!)
Camtasia Studio 5 also has another thing going for it – it’s incredibly easy to use. It’s such a breeze to work with that almost anybody can produce useable results quickly.
Captivate still leads when it comes to creating interactive multimedia – e.g. Tests, Software simulations – but we use Camtasia for everything else.
Cheers,
Malcolm.
Malcolm, I completely agree about Camtasia’s usability. I was able to create about a dozen screencasts after playing around with it a few hours.
By the way, here’s another good example of the zoom-and-pan feature. This video is Tech Smith’s screencast of the week.
I would like to post a counter-point. Sometimes seeing the relationship of objects on the screen is more important than seeing the details. Even though I know Photoshop very well, the zooming and panning was disorienting to me, because I wasn’t able to see the “big picture”.
Stu,
Thanks for posting your counter-argument. I think I went overboard with the zooming and panning in my little demo video. You’re right — too much of this can be disorienting. Creating these videos is an art that requires practice and talent — I’m still learning.
But as far as seeing the big picture, I don’t think you mean a big-size picture. I think videos need to be small enough that they can be easily embedded into websites and blog posts, without requiring a separate window that fills your entire screen. If I can embed a video inside a drop-down hotspot, and have it play without disorienting the text on the screen, I think it’s more pleasing to the user.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: see the Highrise video on this page. The video is embedded directly into the web page without requiring a massive viewing window. The author makes good use of the zoom and pan as well.
Here’s a Camtasia screencast that doesn’t have so much panning and zooming. I think it’s one of the best screencasts I’ve seen. Getting the Best Quality with Smallest File Size. I particularly like the narration.
Hi Tom – thanks for the write-up. Great feedback. I appeciate it.
I’ll make sure to pass on your review to the Camtasia Studio so they hear the feedback in the post and comments.
@Scott_S – We’re pursuing a Mac version of Camtasia Studio. Sign-up for updates here: http://www.techsmith.com/macdevelopment.asp And, I’ll be posting any news on the blog too.
Tom – Drop me a line – lets chat…
Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist
TechSmith
I just wanted to say, this is truly a great blog.
Thanks.
[...] also decided to ditch the pan and zoom feature that I so loved because the post-production editing (setting the pan and zoom points) was taking too long. I wanted [...]
Tom, thanks for the demonstration. I have been looking at different software to make videos with and your demonstration was very helpful.
[...] Camtasia Versus Captivate: Thinking About Screen Real Estate Problems in Video Captures [...]
[...] Thanks for the tip about the movie. Re embedding flash, I didn’t see anything in the screencast that mentioned it. However, I wrote a post a few weeks ago embedding flash (created from Camtasia and Captivate) here. [...]
Its great to see there is a tool like this for users. Screens are so small on some of these mobile phones as you point out. As more and more people buy these phones with internet capabilities this is a great resource. Its nice to be able to zoom in and really see detail.
What is you view on the recent real estate tax lien changes in government? I feel it opens up a huge change for people looking to make a substantial income.
Thanks
Camtasia definitely wins me over.
Arthers last blog post..How to Choose the Realtor Who Will Really SELL Your House
I agree that ease of use is of prime importance but “zoom and pan” is an excellent feature for novices! Camtasia gets my vote.
Real Deals last blog post..Real Estate search engine optimization
Zoom and pan is a great feature. But if it doubles viewing time no one will watch the entire video.
roberts last blog post..Houston Medical Center Apartments
Great features with the zoom and pan, best of all this program is extremly easy to use
Great write up Tom.
I used Captivate 2 for a while, creating flash demos, but recently switched to using the freeware Camstudio and a magnifier tool. My videos struck a cord and there is interest is creating slicker videos, quickly.
Currently I am evaluating the latest Captivate and Camstudio for use in my company. Your blog entry pretty much sums up my feelings and pushed me into the Camtasia camp.
Post production issues aside, we have no need for interactive training (a Captivate win), just record and post to YouTube and our website.
Your kid(s) in the background made my day, it is exactly like that around here.
Michael, thanks for the comment. Re Camstudio, does it play in both IE and Firefox? I believe it only plays in one of the two browsers, which was a showstopper for me.
Camstudio outputs AVI or SWF files. SWF seemed to work OK for browser viewing. I simply upload the resulting high res avi files to Youtube or use Windows movie maker/Adobe Premiere Elements to export to another format for web use.
Yes, I am cheap.
Actually, this is all still a learning experience for me. Here are some samples I created with CamStudio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39zCmqIiLnA&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t17aRPNjfA
If you are on a shoe string, or simply learning, a small collection of freeware and open source apps can work well enough, but it is nice to have all that in one application.
video is real interesting and it attracts many customers to go through it and come to decision whether to buy land or not. it is real good job form real estate business people.