What should I buy? Captivate, presenter, presenter video express?

[kstvs]

Hi

I am looking into buying captivate. I was wondering about presenter and screen recording.

If I buy captivate, do I need presenter at all? What extra functionality will it bring? I have some PPTS which could be useful, but mostly I guess we will be designing from scratch in captivate, which I would guess would be a better design environment.

And next, do I need presenter video express? I guess this is for making screen casts. Does captivate include this? For sure we will be making screencasts for software use and features such as zoom, pan, highlight, annotate will be good.

Thanks for anyone's advice with using these products.

[Lilybiri]

You can use Captivate for PPT import, but that is certainly not its 'best' feature. If your goal is to convert a lot of PPT's, I would indeed recommend a PPT-converter. Adobe Presenter is such a plug-in that converts a PPT and adds some features like quizzing (as is iSpring and Articulate Presenter).

Captivate is IMO the best tool for software tutorials. It has a feature  Video Demo which will produce pure video like Video Express. Moreover it allows you to create more interactive software tutorials, which is not possible with Video Express. However: if you want a very simple way to have a video that combines a view on the presenter and on the screen capture at the same time, Video Express is the way to go. Video Demo in Captivate has a dedicated Video Editor that allows a lot of editing, but it is not as simple. And combining with a 'talking head' - which is possible - will take more time in Captivate Video Demo than in Video Express.

This is just my opinion. I am not using Presenter myself (anymore), did in the past.

[kstvs]

Hi Lily

Thanks for your answer and help.

I should explain that I will need captivate anyway as I want to make eLearning apps with tests, animation, sound etc.

I was mostly wondering if I buy Captivate, if I then need to buy presenter or presenter video too.

One of the things we will need is some video screencasts of software being used, so are all the features of video express (in some way) available in video presenter?

And if I can import PPT in captivate, that sounds good enough for now.

Basically, if I get captivate, which I will, do I gain anything buy also buying presenter or video presenter?

[RodWard]

I have both Captivate and Presenter.  I use Captivate all the time, but never use the PPT plugin side of Presenter. 

I wanted Presenter purely for the Adobe Presenter Video Express app.  I prefer using it to Captivate's own Video Demo because the Video Express app allows me to easily build video tutorials that show both the presenter (via web cam) and the screencapture at the same time.

If Captivate's video demo did that, I would not need Presenter at all.

[kstvs]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your help.

It sounds from what you say that presenter video ex. is included in presenter? I didn’t know what, though they were separate.

I get what you mean about video. For me, I don’t think we will need presenter view at all, all our video will be screenshots I think.

So I am leaning towards only buying captivate.

[RodWard]

I believe you will find the Video Express app is ONLY available with Presenter when you have a PC, not a MAC.

They are actually a separate app, just bundled together for PC users.  If you have Presenter loaded (even as a trial version) I think you should be able to see it in your list of apps.

You may not want the Presenter view, but I have found it gets a very good response from end users if the presenter seems knowledgeable and personable.

[Lilybiri]

Video Express is included with Presenter if you buy the PC-version, it is the only application if you buy Mac-version because Macs do not allow plug-ins for PPT, and Presenter is a plug-in for PPT.

Captivate can import a PPT, but that is a work flow that I certainly will never recommend. Each PPT-slide will be converted to a movie-slide, with all the animations of the PPT, but there is almost no way to edit such a slide. It is a much better approach to create from scratch in Captivate, using assets (like backgrounds, images,...) that were used in PPT.

Video screencasts: I thought that I already mentioned that both Video Express (Presenter) and Video Demo (Captivate) allow you to create pure video (output MP4). Captivate however has since its first version the ability to create interactive software tutorials, which are slide based and more efficient for learning (but that is of course my opinion as a university college professor). Video Express is very easy to use, and will indeed capture the presenter as well (if that is very important to you). Video Demo has a much better editor with a lot of non-destructive editing features, you can insert many non-interactive objects, but to have a 'talking head' you need to create that video separately and insert it as a PIP.

There are a lot of Presenter videos on YouTube, like those from Rod. They take a lot less time to create than a Captivate video. I posted a couple of videos created with Captivate Video Demo. If you want to have a look, maybe see some of the differences.