Blogs - Web Technologies Blog

TechSmith hits a home run with Camtasia Studio 7

Written by Marco Conti Friday, 02 April 2010 15:45

Camtasia 7 Full Screen

TechSmith is a company that specializes in screen captures and related technologies. Their flagship product, Camtasia Studio, has been the last word on screen captures on Windows systems for many years now. Version 7 is a great leap forward for the company and with its release they have cemented their position at the top of the industry.

TechSmith has been busy of late: two years ago they released Jing, a free still and video desktop capture for both Mac and PC that connects directly to their online video storage space Screencast.com. Late last year they also released the long awaited Camtasia for Mac OS X and just a couple of weeks ago they made available the Mac version of Snag-it Pro for Mac OS Beta.

Camtasia 7 New Library

But with the release of Camtasia 7 TechSmith produced a home run that competitors will find hard to emulate.

I have mastered at least 50 videos with Camtasia 6 so far. 10 or so of them for my Joomla! Screencast "10 Minutes Joomla! Tips". I think I have earned the right to judge this software by now. Camtasia 7 greatly improves on version 6 in almost all aspects of the program and it's a joy to use.

There are still a few glaring shortcomings that in my opinion they could have addressed, but for the vast majority of users they will be of no consequence at the moment. I am referring to the 64bit compatibility that has been one of the most requested features of late.

But, beside the 64 bit issue, everything else Camtasia 7 offers is fantastic.

Interface

The first thing a Camtasia user will notice is the revamped interface. It no longer looks like a leftover from Windows 95 but it sports a sleek new look while maintaining most of the old version layout. There is now better contrast in the timeline and a general sophisticated look the previous version lacked.

But the change is hardly just aesthetic. A new feature, called the "Library" promises to greatly streamline the editing process. The Library lets you save frequently used videos, stills and audios right in the program, without the need each project to import intros and outros as it was the case in Camtasia 6.

Cursor

Camtasia 7 New Timeline and Cursor

A new cursor feature lets the user manage the aspect and behavior of the cursor in the editing stage instead of having to commit to a certain style during the movie taking stage. A keystroke function even lets you insert, on screen the keystrokes used in a shortcut. Something that was completely absent in previous versions.

Timeline

The new timeline hasn't just gained a pretty face. The cursor now has clearer in-out insertion and finally, after probably hundreds of posts in their forum, ThechSmith activate the "delete" key to ct snippets of timeline instead of having to use the Ctrl-X keystroke shortcut.

The best improvement

In my humble opinion, the new version would be worth the upgrade money even if they left the entire program unchanged and they only improved this none key aspect of the software: Editor responsiveness after a certain number of edits.

This is not something I can be sure of, and an inquiry in the user-to-user forum at TechSmith has gone so far unanswered, but according to my tests, it looks like they either improved or eliminated what was Camtasia 6 biggest shortcoming.

In Camtasia 6 as the edits progressed, the system would get progressively slower, to the point where after a somewhat low number of edits it became impossible to continue editing the same project. resulting in having to master the movie up to that point and import it again in a new project.

this was, to put it lightly a PIA of biblical proportion. For those like me that like to keep their Screencasts snappy and flowing quickly, numerous edits are a must. Even when the edits do not improve on the quality of the narration, YouTube's 10 minute upload limit always looms large in the back of one's mind and in some cases precious seconds can be gained by editing the video a bit closer to the narration pauses.

However, at least in my case, about 5 minutes worth of edits (meaning edits producing about 5 minutes of video) were enough to slow down Camtasia to the point of crawling. Unfortunately, mastering the video and starting again while an option had some serious shortcomings, such as the loss of all mouse input and zoom data.

Camtasia 7, it appears, no longer suffers from this nasty problem or at least has reduced it greatly. I took an 8 minute video and I edited it enough times where in Camtasia 76 I am certain I would have seen a noticeable slow down. Camtasia 7 didn't flinch: the player head started immediately after each edit even toward the end, when I had almost nothing left to cut. At best, in Camtasia 6 I was able to get 8 minutes worth of video before the wait between an edit and the player head running would approach 30 seconds or more (doesn't seem like much, but in video editing is an eternity).

What else is there? A lot, and I have not used it yet in a full production environment to be able to evaluate many of the other features in depth.

The title system doesn't seem to have improved a great deal, if at all. Some of the more esoteric features, such a quizzes and flash interactivity I have never used, so I cannot comment on them. But as far as I am concerned Camtasia 7 is a winner and worth every penny of the upgrade. I wish it was priced more in the Mac OS version vein and I am sure that there are competitors that can approach it's quality and ease of use for less money, but if you are serious about your screencasts and you need a product that will do almost anything your creativity deems necessary, Camtasia 7 is it. Start saving.

*cc*

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this