Technical Writer

I have spent the last two weeks switching between Captivate and Camtasia Studio. Talk about schizophrenic. I spent a lot of time trying to remember which command I had to use in which program, but overall it’s been an interesting experience.

For those who are not familiar with either program, they are both programs which allow you create screen-based learning modules. I’d call them eLearning tools.

The marketing material doesn’t always say what a program does, but here is the publisher blurb for each:

• Camtasia Studio gives you the power to easily record your screen, PowerPoint presentations, voice and Web camera video to create compelling video tutorials, training presentations and rich sales demonstrations for web and CD-ROM delivery. (TechSmith)
• Adobe Captivate 3 software enables anyone to rapidly create powerful and engaging simulations, scenario-based training, and robust quizzes without programming knowledge or multimedia skills. (Adobe)

Some history

Captivate started out as a product called RoboDemo, produced by a company called eHelp, whose most famous product was … that’s right … RoboHelp*.  eHelp was bought out by MacroMedia, who changed the name RoboDemo to Captivate and added some new features. Macromedia got bought out in turn by Adobe, who added more features.

Camtasia Studio is produced by a company called Tech Smith, famous for one of the handiest pieces of software I have ever used—a screen capture program called SnagIt.( If you have never used SnagIt, I recommend that you try it.)

I started using Captivate a couple of years ago, after a Macromedia consultant gave a very enthusiastic demonstration of its properties.  And I found it good. I am currently using Captivate 2, which is one release behind the current version.

I was first introduced to Camtasia Studio by a colleague who had downloaded the demo version, created a couple of video files (.avi format) using it, and then wanted me to turn them into eLearning modules for him. He refused to create the videos using Captivate (of which the company had a full copy) and I couldn’t do much with the AVI files in Captivate so I ended up downloading a trial version of Camtasia Studio and managed to tweak the files enough to produce something not really good but okay enough to get by.

And there I was until two months ago, when a contracting company for whom I do occasional work asked if I would create some screen demos. I agreed, but because this was weekend work, outside of my permanent employment, I needed a program to do it with.  Camtasia Studio costs US$298, while Captivate starts as US$699. It was a quick, cheap contract, and wasn’t even going to make $700.  You can guess which one I purchased. 

Two weeks ago the colleague who had created the original AVI files started producing training material (under contract). I don’t have any control over what he produces—and naturally, he’s producing AVIs. So far he’s created six hours of it, and by my calculations he’s only half-way through. Not to mention—they’re huge.  One of the videos comes in at 500MB.  I can’t even load them onto the website. We had some animated discussions about it. In the end I agreed—he could make the videos as he wanted (it was the best use of money versus his time) and I would do something to them to make them at least useable.

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