Camtasia.

Camtasia, CD-ROM, 2006, TechSmith Corporation, $299.

For a demo of this product, use the "Product Preview/Demo" link to the left of the review.

Primary use: Rapid e-learning 

Pricing: Very low

Rating: High

Training Media Review asked a panel of training and education professionals to rate the authoring tools they have used regularly. This review summarizes the comments of the nine panelists who have used Camtasia.

Best uses

According to our reviewers, Camtasia is an excellent application for developing software demonstrations in video format for both web and CD-ROM delivery. Camtasia's fairly simple learning curve was noted by many reviewers, as was its capability to rapidly create content, add voiceover narration, and convert recordings to multiple formats, including Flash.

One reviewer summarized: "Camtasia is best used for producing brief demonstrations of software through its motion screen-capture and voiceover capabilities." Another said: "Excellent for quick production of software demonstrations or anything else you want to record from a PC and play back. Converts recordings to most popular formats including Flash."

The top two uses of Camtasia listed by our reviewers were:

* Creating software demonstrations

* Recording PowerPoint presentations with an added audio overlay 

One panelist uses Camtasia for "creating animated, narrated software tutorials; screenshots; documentation and illustration of step-by-step procedures."

Limits and drawbacks

Although Camtasia is a great tool for creating demonstrations (show me), reviewers agree that it is not the best tool to use if you are looking to create interactivity in a practice environment (let me try). As one reviewer put it, Camtasia isn't the right choice for "highly interactive content that would be better produced as a simulation. Although Camtasia has the ability to create 'simulation type' content, it is better suited for more 'passive' than 'active' learning."

Other comments indicated that Camtasia would not be a likely choice for the following uses:

* "Long lectures or demonstrations"

* "Full WBT design and development"

* "Testing and evaluation"

* "Programs with multi-branching requirements"

To create interactive simulations and assessments, reviewers agreed that there are better-suited tools. Captivate, Firefly, and SST-Trainer were mentioned as possible choices, with one reviewer saying that "there are much better tools out there for practicing or assessing ability to perform key strokes after the demo or simulation. I'd stick to this for simple demos only."

Ratings

Camtasia had an average overall rating of 3.44, or slightly below Very good. (In the ratings box below, the overall rating is rounded to the nearest point on our half-point scale.) This puts it in the top one-third of all tools in the forthcoming TMR Report on authoring tools. It received its strongest ratings in the Value for the money and Installation and initial use categories, although no categories were rated lower than 3.11--that is, all were better than Good. As one of the panelists remarked, Camtasia is "easy to learn--a developer can get by without much knowledge of multimedia."

Review by Deanne Dalrymple

Product Ratings

Camtasia

Interface             ***
Ease of use           *** 1/2
Ease of installation  *** 1/2
Documentation         ***
Value for the money   *** 1/2
Overall rating        *** 1/2