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Hi,
Sheesh...I'm hitting up the list a lot lately. We've recently been
considering options for creating tutorialware. Generally speaking, I'm
referring to short "movies" of the software based on screen (and or
motion) captures that may or may not include audio. Up to now we've been
using Webex (www.webex.com) to record offline sessions and then post
them to our site. This is not necessary the best solution because:
a) Webex was designed (and works well for) interactive presentations and
collaboration. It wasn't designed for generating tutorialware, and
doesn't provide any annotation or editing functionality.
b) Recording a Webex session is like recording a song...if you get it
wrong, you have to go back to the beginning and start again (technically
not true in these days of voice manipulation, but you get the idea).
c) You have to download a browser plug-in to your browser to view the
Webex, and it launches a seperate window to display the thing.
d) The files are pretty large.
So, we've been looking at alternatives. We do not want to generate AVI
or WMV or other movie files. They're too big and generally a pain to
edit...this precludes using, say, Camtasia. Our current options include:
a) ViewletBuilder (http://www.qarbon.com/products/viewletbuilder/)-
Despite its lame name, it seems to do the trick. I was able to create a
half-decent brief demo in just a few minutes. Plus, it's output is SWF,
which is a Flash file. This means that it's both very small and
non-proprietary.
b) Turbo Demo (http://www.turbodemo.com/Eng/) - The first two sentences
of their Web site feature two grammatical errors and a logical fallacy:
"With Turbo DemoT you will be able to create professional Online- and
Offline-Demos ( see an example ) in few minutes. Thereby the demos
remain extremely small." Not a good sign. Uses a Java applet to display
its content. Hence it feels kind of slow.
That's as far as we've gotten. Any other recommendations? Has anybody
used either of these tools? Thanks. DB.
Darren Barefoot
Technology Deacon
CapeScience - Cape Clear's Developer Support Network http://www.capescience.com
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