It really depends on what you want to do and how complicated you want to get.
I've used Camtasia, SnagIt, and Adobe Captivate, and they're all good for what they do, but my personal favorite and go-to program is Captivate. The learning curve is a little higher, but it's very powerful. It separates out the recorded elements (screen, mouse, typing, etc.) into different tracks so that you can tweak the timing on each one separately, you can configure it to automatically add in different things (sounds for typing and clicking, pop-up label boxes, highlight boxes, etc. - each of which you can modify or delete individually), it allows you to add individual voiceover recordings and adjust your screen timing to go along with your voiceover (so that you don't have to record your voiceover at the same time as you're concentrating on the screen recording), you can build quizzes into it, you can make it branch depending on answers, easily add title slides between sections of video, easily import graphics, etc.... You can also use it to make a quick & dirty screen capture without any configuration and upload it directly to YouTube without having to mess around with conversions when you want to, but if that's all you need, then it would be overkill. Terran McCanna PINES Program Manager Georgia Public Library Service 1800 Century Place, Suite 150 Atlanta, GA 30345 404-235-7138 tmcca...@georgialibraries.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary E. Hanlin" <mhan...@reynolds.edu> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 1:06:14 PM Subject: [CODE4LIB] Screencasting Usability Studies Hi All, Sorry if this has been discussed before. (I'm new to the list.) But, has anyone conducted usability studies using screencast software? If so, what software works well? (Morae is too pricey; I'm thinking along the lines of Camtasia, Silverback, etc.) Also, do you have any anecdotal advice regarding what worked and what didn't? Thanks in advance. Mary Hanlin Electronic Resources and Web Librarian Reynolds Community College Richmond, VA Phone:804.523.5323 Email: mhan...@reynolds.edu<mailto:mhan...@reynolds.edu>
