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 
[log in to unmask] 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary E. Hanlin" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
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: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>