Unfamiliar with Captivate; anyone know if it can support this specific video production use case?

[Ferdinand256138708skm]

Thanks to anyone you reads my post; even more thanks to anyone who cares to make a knowledgeable post to my question.

Ionsidering licensing Captivate but must be able to address one specific video production need.  We have a very tiny team who video production.  Some are content experts who record the raw content and others deal with the editing and post-processing.

My present perception of Captivate is that video production is one of several main functions but it may not be it's strong point.  

Before I can license even just one copy, I need to know if Captivate specifically supports the sequential process of one user recording video content and another user editing that same content.

I know that it sounds like a basic question but it is one that I've not been able to get answered anywhere else thus far.  And, this question is mission critical for us.  No other combination of (non-video) benefits that would come from using Captivate could possibly overcome it's inability to address this specific use case.  

Thank you again for your consideration of  sharing a post with me.

[Lilybiri]

Do you mean the creation of a passive video? Captivate is an eLearning authoring tool, where interactivity is very important. Video creation is for sure not one of its main functions although you can publish a course to passive video (MP4) if you accept the loss of all interactivity.  

By 'recording' do you mean screen recording or any video recording? For screencapturing Captivate offers Video Demo which has only output to MP4, or the slide based software simulations where you could publish the demo mode version to passive video since it has barely intractivity.

Post-processing and editing can be done, but all depends on what you exactly want to do. It may be better for paasive video to switch to a real video editor. VIdeo Demo has a pretty good editor, but even then I will switch to Premiere Pro or Rush at the end because that offers more editing features.

[Ferdinand256138708skm]

You are correct Lilybiri.   I am asking about ("Talking heads" kinda of) non-interactive video stuffs.

I apprecaite your response and the details you shared.  As for video, I'm still interpreting that Captivate's focus is not video production and hence it's video editing functionality is not it's strength.

I should add to for anyone who is kind enough to try to understand my question that I have coworkers who use Captivate all day every day but none of them have every used it's video features.   Plus, I'm very familiar with Camtasia, so when I think of video editing, I think of the many things that Camtasia can do as a tool focused (exclusively?) on video production.

[Lilybiri]

VideoDemo issimlar to Camtasia, but Camtasia has more bells and whistles. For webinars I have been asked to prepare a video, and always used Video Demo in that case, with its editor. You answered my question indirectly, since Camtasia is indeed a screen recording tool.

[RodWard]

If you are focused on video production rather than interactive e-learning production, then Captivate is NOT your ideal tool.  It's video editing abilities are limited to making cuts and transitions in screencast video that was captured by Captivate itself (as a proprietary CPVC file format).

I have the latest versions of both Captivate and Camtasia and use both in my day-to-day work as an e-learning developer working for large companies.

In my opinion, you are correct in holding the view that for video production, especially where a "talking head" is required (e.g. the type of video tutorials Youtube is famous for), Camtasia would be a better tool.  For that kind of work, even die-hard Captivate users prefer to use Camtasia for their own Youtube videos.

So, why use Camtasia rather than some other video editing tool like Adobe Premier?  Well, the main reason I would suggest is that Camtasia might have more "bells and whistles" than Captivate, but Premier is a full-on professional video editing tool and its "bells and whistles" dwarf Camtasia.  But all of that extra power can also tend to slow things down when all you really need is a fairly simple video tutorial.

Both Captivate and Camtasia are often misunderstood as authoring tools.  People who don't know Captivate's full functionality can often be heard on this forum saying "Captivate is just a screen capture tool" when in fact its real strength is its robust functionality for creating interactive e-learning experiences that require no screencapture at all.  That's what I am mostly using it to create.  By the same token, while Camtasia may have started out as little more than a video screen capture tool, you will now find that its video editing workflow makes it very easy to create excellent quality video tutorials.  I used it recently to splice together side-by-side video footage of a train journey with footage of the software on the screen viewed by the train driver during that same journey.   I would not have been able to pull off the video side of that particular job with Captivate 2019.  Yes, I could have edited the video in Premier too, but it would have taken more hours of work and (in my view) it would not have looked any different.

So, what I find is that this is one of those "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" situations.  Captivate is not quite enough power.  Premier has way too much horsepower and complexity for most situations.  And that leaves Camtasia right in the middle at the "just right" position.

[Lilybiri]

@RodWard Did you ever have a look at Adobe Rush? Much less complicated than Premiere Pro. Sorry, I don't have followed the evolution of Camtasia, have only an older version.