The main difference, however, is what you can do with the two programs. Although Captivate makes use of a timeline too, it is not central to the workflow in the way that it is in TechSmith’s Camtasia. Rather, like dedicated video editing software, it is primarily organised around audio and visual timelines that determine what appears on the screen, and when. Camtasia is not slide-based like Captivate. However, there are important differences. You can import and edit audio files, and create and produce short videos that have nothing at all to do with the recording on your screen’s desktop, if you wish.Ĭamtasia’s rich feature set means it is often compared with Adobe’s Captivate or MadCap’s Mimic, and if you already have or use one of these you may wonder whether you need Camtasia at all.

More significantly, it also offers a full-featured editing suite, including animations, transitions and annotation tools. Camtasia can embed video both from other sources such as QuickTime or MP4 files from your hard drive and from your computer’s iSight or webcam. It does all of the above and a whole lot more. While these products are fine for basic screencasting work, they lack the features to make really professional, corporate-quality videos. Like Jing, it includes the ability to share your screen capture online freely on TechSmith’s own site. SnagIt also allows users to capture video, save it and share it, as well as add some basic annotations. It provides relatively little in the way of either editing or playback options, but does include free online sharing. Jing is a free product and ideal for making what are sometimes called ‘quick and dirty’ screen captures. There is no shortage of screencasting software on the market, so where does Camtasia fit in the grand scheme of things? Camtasia’s developer, TechSmith, offers two other screen capture products: Jing and SnagIt.

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