Camtasia (Was: Re: [WEB4LIB] Video Capture - I need help)

[Cliff Urr]

Julia,

I have used Camtasia - put out by the same people who put out Snagit -
extensively for a project to create many .avi files of a web database 
demo, and the output was superb. It looked identical to the actual web 
database captures. I've used a bunch of other .avi capture programs 
but Camtasia is the best in terms of not only its gorgeous output but 
ease of use and interface design. One gotcha - always one of these - to 
beware of: to get the best quality near-identical output of what you are 
capturing, you need to download their codec (from the Snag-it site). 
It's a freebie .exe file that you must run once on the machine where the 
captured .avi file is to be viewed (keep this in mind if you distribute the 
.avi file on CD-ROMs, even if the .avi file is displayed within a 
production created with another program, like Director.) You can 
capture an .avi with Camtasia, however, using the Indeo codec (already 
on most Win98 machines and likely Win95 machines), but the gotcha 
for that is the output is non-near identical and noticeably lesser quality 
screen captures than those done for the Camtasia codec.  When I got 
Camtasia a few months ago, it went for $150.00, and it included other 
software. A possible way around this is Snag-it does .avi screen 
captures, I recall, but the method for doing it is a little less elegant and 
it has fewer features than Camtasia to do this, but it works. Get 
Camtasia if you can, it is very well worth every cent. 

While a little dated and in need of some editing, I think, see "John 
McGowan's AVI Overview" at: 

http://www.jmcgowan.com/avi.html

It's quite informative. 

Cheers, Cliff Urr, MLS

Date sent:      	Fri, 11 Aug 2000 14:11:41 -0700 (PDT)
Send reply to:  	jschult at elmira.edu
From:           	Julia Schult <jschult at elmira.edu>
To:             	Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Subject:        	[WEB4LIB] Video Capture - I need help

> My director has asked me to find out what we need to capture
> computer sessions and put them on videotape.  He has been
> hearing and reading about video capture cards.  He was told
> that besides the video capture card, you need a special
> cable that does some sort of conversion on its own, and
> those are expensive.  I immediately thought of SnagIt, and I
> went to their page and found their product Camtasia, which
> captures a computer session in .AVI format.  I looked into
> that, and found that .AVI format can be converted to
> videotape with a "scan converter".
> 
> It seems to me that the video capture cards sell for "less
> than $1000 dollars" meaning around a thou.
> Camtasia plus a scan converter seems to cost less than $400.
> 
> The conclusion seems obvious.
> 
> Am I missing something here?  Is there an expert out there I
> can talk to about video capture cards, or Camtasia, or
> converting AVI to videotape?
> 
> Please?
> 
> ---Julia E. Schult
> Access/Electronic Services Librarian
> Elmira College
> Jschult at elmira.edu
> 
> 
>