Screen Capture Recommendations?

JimMSG wrote on 11/11/2005, 7:01 AM
I get a lot of inquiries rearding PPT to video transfer. Yesterday another one came in wanting to transfer a PPT to DVD presentation. The animation isn't that involved, and could be done if the client can provide me with all the individual elements (so often they can't or can, but haven't got a clue); however the time involved is going to make the cost prohibitive.

It is my understanding the only other way to do this sort of thing is to use a screen capture program. I tried a test version of one a couple of months ago, and the output was awful. I realize, one only gets what one pays for, but I was thinking if this one that costs $40ish is that bad, ten times better with a $300ish program still isn't going to be good enough.

Then a client, a duplication house I engineer and author for, brought me a file they couldn't open, didn't have the right codecs, would I try. In the process, I learned the file was a PPT presentation captured by Camtasia, and was amazed at how well it transferred. I even rendered it down to MPEG1 from the Camtasia format in Vegas to see what would happen, and it still looked good.

So . . . I'm thinking I can make the client a happy camper and do the translation without it costing thousands to rebuild the entire PPT in Vegas for DVD, and have a useful tool for taking other lower budget tasks. The question is, does Camtasia work as well as it seemed to? Are there other capture programs that work better I should be looking at instead?

Thanks!

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 11/11/2005, 8:11 AM
Camtasia is awesome and worth every penny for doing tutorial work. Especially for someone who doesn’t have an NLE because it provides an entire video editing solution as well as capture. It will output direct to DVD compliant MPEG2 files. It’s a complete solution in that respect.

You can also buy their SnagIt program for much less ($49) and still capture PPT files with animation. It just doesn’t come with the SmithTech codec or video editing tools but if you have Vegas you don’t need the editor. SnagIt is also very helpful for annotating images for tutorials (I use it all the time along with Camtasia).

Amazing as it might seem, there is also a free solution from Microsoft called the Windows Media Encoder. It will do video screen capture to WMV files. This is actually a pretty nice tool. You should check this out first since it is free. ;-)

Bottom line: I think Camtasia is the best if you can justify the cost. (you are absolutely right, you get what you pay for)

~jr
birdcat wrote on 11/11/2005, 10:37 AM
JR -

I've considered both programs - Will SnagIt capture mouse movements and such as animations?

Tnx

Bruce
JohnnyRoy wrote on 11/11/2005, 1:53 PM
> Will SnagIt capture mouse movements and such as animations?

Absolutely. It will capture anything on the screen just like Camtasia, even video overlays. You have an option to not include the cursor if you want. Download the trial and see for yourself. I downloaded the trail and bought it the very next day. Just 2 days of playing with it convinced me that it was a valuable program to have.

It also has some great options for static capture. For example: It can capture a scrolling web page. You just point to the page and it will automatically scroll though it and stitch the frames together perfectly. If you ever have to capture a screen grab of a web page for a presentation, this is the tool to use.

It also does optical character recognition (ORC)! So if you get an error message from a program and you can’t swipe it to cut and paste, just run SnagIt and it will convert the screen to text to be included in your email to the developers. This even works with capturing dropdown menus.

If you ever do tutorials or documentation where you need to annotate a picture, SnagIt has a great annotation editor with circles and arrows with shadows, etc. I use to use PaintShop Pro to annotate my images and it took forever. With SnagIt it is incredibly easy. Here is one of the tutorials I did with SnagIt: Installing the Virtual MIDI Router

I know, I’m sounding like a SnagIt commercial and I have no affiliation with them at all but it’s one of those products that you don’t think you need and then once you get it, you wonder how you worked without it. Best $49 I ever spent.

~jr
JackW wrote on 11/11/2005, 5:13 PM
Take a look at Liam's PowerPoint Conversion Exporter script, and search for "PowerPoint" and UserName "Liam" on this bb. Might work for you. We use it all the time.

Jack
johnmeyer wrote on 11/11/2005, 5:21 PM
Here are links to past posts about getting Powerpoint to video. There have been many, many others, if you want to do a search:

PowerPoint 1

PowerPoint 2
Erk wrote on 11/11/2005, 7:15 PM
Johnny, are you saying the Windows Media Encoder will capture video playing on your screen, with decent resolution and framerate? I've tried Snagit and several others and they couldn't even come close to this?

I'm also wondering how to capture a Flash animation to video.

Thanks,

Greg
B.Verlik wrote on 11/11/2005, 8:20 PM
If you get super desperate, you can always set the refresh rate of your monitor to 60 or 75 Hz and point a camera right at it. Be sure to adjust focus manually. That probably still won't give quite the resolution you want.
Grazie wrote on 11/11/2005, 11:17 PM
JR! Thanks for that! !

I just re-tried WMEnc! I had forgotten about this prog .. thanks JR! I quickly knocked-up a a typed lower third in bold COURIER, within WORD! Totally brilliant ..

I;I've got a gig coming up whee I could use this to display the question being made to a "talking-head" - I could also have their answers transcribed and introduced on screen so to supply the hard of hearing recipients with a readable format!

The other thing I can use this for is the lower third "Mission Impossible" feel ... yeah?


But my favourite has been using the spray can within Windows Paint to do Graffiti on a white wall of a building! Love it! ! !

Grazie