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Trade Show and Event Marketing
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Flash Media Alternatives - Camtasia Producer
Flash Media Alternatives - Camtasia Producerby Rick Hendershot, Videoinabox.comI've been playing around with online audio and video for years and have always been unhappy with the mainstream alternatives — Windows Media, Real, and Quicktime. What a pain having to encode for different players — and then trying to get those players to work. It is no wonder that rich media has been stalled for the last three years or so. About a year ago, when I was working on some video tutorials, I stumbled onto Camtasia. TechSmith had just started including a flash encoder in their upgraded suite of screen capture tools ("Camtasia Recorder / Producer"), and I found I could create some very good looking (and sounding) software training videos by using a combination of these tools. The final step in the process involved using Camtasia Producer to encode the finished .avi file as a .swf, and then embed it in a web page. This worked like a charm, was relatively easy, and the quality was surprisingly good. Here's an example. But, as usual, there were some problems... First, I didn't like Camtasia's clunky stock control buttons. TechSmith had anticipated this, and actually made a separate controller available — one with more functionality, and one that looks much better (see the sample.) But to add it to your flash movie you have to do some work in Flash MX. If you happen to own Flash MX — it is ridiculously expensive — you probably agree with me that it succeeds in making even simple little tasks like this painfully difficult. No problem. I spent a couple days learning enough of Flash to get by, and was able to crank out quite a few demo training sessions. Second problem: the Camtasia system is based on screen captures and uses a special codec that gives you incredibly crisp images at very low fps (usually about 5 fps). This is great for screen captures (software tutorials), but no good for regular videos that have much more motion, and a higher frame rate. Using the Camtasia tools to encode regular video into .swf files creates files that are much too large for streaming or progressive downloads. So "real" video can't be done in Flash with this set of tools. Curses! This means the enterprising online video guy is back to using a hodge podge of tools. Forget it! Third problem: the Camtasia system (Producer) is really based on the screen-capture-to-tutorial model, and doesn't have enough flexibility to handle straight audio productions. So if you want to just take an online article and create an audio version of it, there is no easy way to do it. Well, that's not quite correct. Creating a Flash audio controller amounts to creating a "movie" -- some buttons that control an audio source. So you can simply use Camtasia Producer to add the stock control buttons to a stripped down video — say just a couple of photos strung together into a "movie". For a while I took advantage of this to create "radio" presentations that included photos (see this example.) I actually constructed simple videos (.avi) with Ulead MediaStudioPro, and crunched them through Camtasia Producer to encode them as .swf files. But this was not what I really wanted. I just wanted a fairly simple tool to let me control audio productions from a web page. Using Camtasia Producer for this was overkill. My productions involved a clunky work flow using a mish mash of tools. And in the end Camtasia Producer simply does not (did not?) have enough audio handling capabilities — and certainly no audio editing capabilities. So you pretty much take what you get. For creating screen-capture-based video tutorials Camtasia is a great tool. Especially if you augment it with a program like Ulead Media Studio Pro that recognizes the Techsmith codec. But I had moved beyond tutorials. My mission was to find a tool to produce and control simple "talking articles" (audio), and very simple flash videos, and clearly Camtasia Producer did not fit the bill for either of these. In Part 2 of this series I look at a product called Flix Pro from Wildform. This is an honest to goodness video encoder which also packages your video in a variety of flash players. Other Reviews of Camtasia Studio www.designer-info.com - "In each case the control over your output is comprehensive letting you choose target bitrates, frame settings and so on. With Flash output you can even specify a preloader, an end Jump to URL and Producer will produce the HTML code to host your SWF for you.... Camtasia Studio provides an excellent all-round solution from initial recording through to final delivery." www.flashmagazine.com - "What really impresses with this release is the attention to workflow and the huge improvements to the interface of both products. They both do what they do really well, but this time round they look and feel like more confident products." www.about.com - "Camtasia Studio is probably the most complete and well-supported screen recording package available for Windows." Rick Hendershot is the founding publisher of The Linknet Marketing Resource Library, and has been dabbling in online video and audio for a number of years. The Linknet Network is a library of resource materials spread across more than 20 websites and a number of blogs. You can place your link text on 15 pages spread out over at least 15 different sites for one small annual fee. Sites that focus on Trade Show and Event Marketing include Vinyl Banners from America-Banners.com, Vinyl Banners from Banners-Canada.com, Low Cost PopUp Displays, Trade Show and Display Graphics. |