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Camtasia Gets Better Captioning Support

Simon Mackie — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:00:51 +0000

Techsmith’s popular screencast recording and editing tool, Camtasia, has just been updated; it now includes much better captioning support. Both Camtasia Studio 7.1 (the Windows version of the app) and Camtasia for Mac 1.2 offer new and improved captioning tools, including:

Simplified captioning support
Multiple language support
Importing/export of captions, including support for common caption file formats (SRT and SAMI), and sync with video
Ability to search the content within the videos you create
Screencast.com (Techsmith’s screencast video hosting site) now has support for closed captions, caption-based video search, and HTML5-enabled mobile device playback.

Additionally, Camtasia Studio gets automated speech-to-text transcription tools (based on Windows Speech Recognition) for generating captions.

Captioning is important in order to create screencasts that are accessible for the deaf, and is therefore vital for organizations that are required by legislation (or will be) to create web content that is accessible. It’s also useful if the presenter’s speech isn’t crystal clear, and is appreciated by viewers who don’t want to have to have the volume turned up to be able to understand a screencast. Additionally, captioning screencast content makes it searchable, so viewers can jump to the sections that they’re interested in, which is especially useful for longer videos.

As well as the improved captioning support, Camtasia also gets some other useful updates, including iPad-optimized video output, 64-bit codec support and integration with Camtasia Relay, a distance learning tool.

What tools do you use for captioning your videos?

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Camtasia for Mac: A Full-featured Screencasting Solution

Simon Mackie — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:00:14 +0000

Most of WebWorkerDaily’s screencasts are recorded using Techsmith’s Jing Pro screen-recording software, an easy-to-use, low-cost solution that we’ve also written about. Techsmith recently released new versions of Camtasia, its more full-featured screencast recording and editing suite for PCs and Macs. I was fortunate enough to be offered the chance to try out Camtasia for Mac 1.1, so I’ve been putting it through its paces over the past couple of days.

Like Jing, Camtasia is a tool for recording your screen (or just a portion of it) together with a voiceover, and optionally, input from a camera, such as a webcam. That’s where the similarities end, though — with Camtasia, once you’ve finished recording, you’re taken to an editing suite where you can turn your recording into a polished movie. Add transitions and fades to your recording, splice in additional video, record a new voiceover, overlay text, edit the audio — there are plenty of robust tools available for creating a truly professional-looking piece. There are some really useful “smart” features available, too. Perhaps most useful is the SmartFocus, which automatically zooms into the portion of the screen where the action is taking pace (perhaps you’re clicking a button, or filling out a form). Adding effects and transitions to the movie is a simple matter of dragging and dropping them onto the timeline. You can also overlay text and shapes, and reposition elements like the webcam shot, just by dragging them on the canvas.

Editing in Camtasia is fairly straightforward, although if you haven’t done any video editing before if may take a little getting used to. However, I think that if you’re doing any kind of serious screencasting work, it’s worth spending the time getting the hang of it. With Jing, if I make a mistake during recording or if there is something in the final version that I’m not completely happy with, I have to re-record the entire thing, while in Camtasia, I can fix little mistakes and just generally produce a much more polished end product with a little editing.

I made a short screencast in Camtasia to show you around the editing suite:

One additional significant difference between Jing and Camtasia is, of course, the cost. While Jing is free (the Pro version that I use costs $15 per year), Camtasia for Mac is currently on sale for $99 (it normally costs $149). A 30-day free trial is available, which I would recommend taking advantage of to see if the editing facilities available are worth the additional cost for you.

Let us know what you think of Camtasia for Mac in the comments.

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Jing Capture Software Goes Pro

Scott Blitstein — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:13:29 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of Jing capture software for a while now. I use it for all of my screen shots here for WWD, and have also used it to create some short demo screencasts. It works really well for me, and is a great free option for my needs.

Today the folks at TechSmith announced the availability of a Pro version with features aimed at the video capture crowd. For a paltry $14.95 year they have beefed up the service to allow higher quality HD videos, enhanced integration with video sharing sites including a direct upload to YouTube, and removal of any Jing branding.

With the ability to capture H.264/MPEG-4 AVC in addition to the SWF files of the free version, Jing becomes a more flexible option for your video capture needs.

If you’re doing heavy duty video capture, you’ll probably want to consider an upgrade to Camtasia or similar, but for an easy to use screen capture / screen cast solution Jing is a great choice.

Jing is available for both PC and Mac, and is now available in both a free and pro version.

What do you use for screen capture?

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