| Making Screen Capture Movies with Camtasia and HyperCam | |
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By Tanya K. Metaksa
As the price of computer equipment in relation to price becomes less and less expensive, so does the price-value ratio of software. Today's software was unthinkable less than a decade ago in terms of what software allows the user to accomplish. It seems like only yesterday that a studio full of equipment was necessary to produce instructional movies or video—not anymore.
Now Techsmith, a company that specializes in capture software, has released its version 2.2 of Camtasia. Another company that develops capture software is Hyperionics, offering HyperCam. Both programs are based on the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words and that a moving picture is worth more than the sum of all its images. They are targeting the large and expanding market of those that train others in the use of computer equipment and software.
Both products enable the user to capture what is relevant on the computer screen and then apply real-time effects to those screen images. Both products facilitate the introduction of capturing all or part of the screen; add special effects such as titling, adding notes, panning, and zooming while capturing the screen activity. And both programs—once properly configured—produce a very usable AVI movie. Yet, they differ in their presentation and methodology of fulfilling these tasks.
Camtasia comes as three different programs: Camtasia Recorder, Camtasia Producer and Dubit. Camtasia Recorder is the program that allows the user to capture what is relevant on the computer screen and to apply real-time effects to those screen images. Camtasia Producer is the editor for those video screen images captured by Camtasia Recorder. Producer allows the user to select full screen or part of a screen, add special effects such as mouse clicks, titles, watermarks, and transitions between clips. DubIt is the Techsmith product included with Camtasia that is used to add audio to movie clips and images. Using DubIt allows the video editor to add the audio while watching the movie/video or image. Thus adding a narrative to a video clip is easy, and if the narrative is longer than the video clip, Dubit is smart enough to leave the final frame on the screen until the audio has finished. Using DubIt one has a choice of creating standard AVI video files, Windows Media, or RealNetworks streaming video files.
HyperCam, on the other hand, is a stand-alone program that includes the ability to add sound to the "movie", but does not include an editor. The editing program, which they will sell bundled with HyperCam, is Vframer, a product of Flickerfree.
