Camtasia 4 vs Captivate 3 Screen Recorders

[Rick Stone]

Hi Karen

I should probably preface this with the fact I'm a bit biased. I'm an 
Adobe Certified Captivate and RoboHelp instructor. So I'm a bit slanted 
toward Captivate. ;)

However, I also have Camtasia 3 and 4 available on my PC. I find both 
products have a place in my screen recording toolbox. While improvements 
seem to have been made with Captivate and recording in full motion the 
whole time. The jury is still out, as we haven't seen the shipping 
version of Captivate 3. If you have tested each, you probably already 
know that they record in entirely different manners. Camtasia is a full 
motion recording from beginning to end, while Captivate grabs screen 
captures along the way and stitches them together. Both products produce 
a .SWF.

Camtasia shines at full motion (obviously) but also by being able to 
insert markers along the way. Then being able to generate something of a 
Table of Contents based on the markers. Captivate cannot do this. 
Captivate excels at saving you work by inserting the Text Captions 
automatically. Camtasia cannot do this.

Personally, I think Captivate is much easier to learn and use. But 
that's the product I began using first and am most comfortable with. So 
I'm probably biased there. I love using each product. But I do find 
Captivate to be the easier of the two to use.

Hopefully others will also respond so as to form a more balanced view 
for you.

Cheers... Rick :)

Karen wrote:
> I've been reading a lot of reviews on the web comparing older versions of Camtasia and Captivate. (Captivate 3 will be released this month.)
>    
>   After a quick review of the trial versions of each, I'm initially very impressed with Captivate since I had a workable demo produced in less than an hour. The auto-text captions alone saved me hours of work. 
>    
>   I need to use a screen recorder to capture information for software demonstrations, tutorials, and web demonstrations. Since I will be creating tutorials of software that is in development, I feel that it will be easier to edit one software modification where a screen changes instead of re-recording an entire procedure and re-annotating it.
>    
>   I need to make sure I can justify the difference in purchase price ($699 vs $299). I need about 20 man-hours of time savings which I think can easily be attributed to ease of use (fast learning curve) and lack of need for editing.
>    
>   A lot of the reviews are glowing of Captivate, but just wanted to check with other users who have worked with the most current versions.