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Jimco Software Reviews - Camtasia Studio 3.0 (continued)
Production
Your options for producing your presentation are numerous with Camtasia Studio. The Production Wizard (see figure 3) walks you through setting the options necessary for your output format. If you're not sure which format to choose, TechSmith has written some comprehensive documentation to help guide you to the right choice.
Figure 3 - The Production Wizard
The quality of output that you get from Camtasia is exceptional, due in no small part to the quality of TechSmith's Screen Capture Codec. Even with highly compressed output, the quality of the video is astounding. Such output is not unheard of in screen capture applications, but Camtasia isn't really a screen capture application in that sense.
 The quality of output that you get from Camtasia is exceptional, due in no small part to the quality of TechSmith's Screen Capture Codec. 
Most applications like Camtasia will capture screenshots (still images) at particular points and then add an artificial cursor with tweened frames to make it look like the cursor is moving. Camtasia doesn't work that way. Camtasia actually captures a video file of everything you do so it is vitally necessary for the codec involved to be of superior quality. Fortunately, the TechSmith Screen Capture Codec is astonishingly good.
If you're interested in creating a Camtasia production that will be burned to DVD, TechSmith's got you covered. By choosing the Recommend my production options radio button, you can have Camtasia Studio automatically create your production files based upon how the presentation will be distributed as shown in figure 4. It really couldn't be easier.
Figure 4 - Many Production Options
Other Niceties
Camtasia 3.0 adds quite a few niceties that didn't exist in previous versions. For example, if you are unsure of how to use a particular feature, TechSmith has provided an Assist Me and a Show Me link in many cases as shown in figure 5. (It's ironic that it took TechSmith until version 3.0 to realize that Camtasia is the perfect tool for demonstrating how to use Camtasia.) Clicking the Show Me link will take you to the TechSmith Web site and show you a Camtasia video demonstrating how to use the feature (Internet connection required) while the Assist Me link will take you to context-sensitive Help.
Camtasia 3.0 also adds a quizzing feature (see figure 5) that allows you to create multi-question quizzes for Flash productions. TechSmith has even gone as far as to allow reporting of quiz results via the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model, SCORM. Many users will never need this functionality, but it's quite nice that it's here for folks leveraging Learning Management Systems, or LMS.
Figure 5 - Quizzes in Camtasia 3.0
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