Re: Moving Screen Captures

[Mark Magennis <markmagennis -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>]

---"Marie C. Paretti" <mparetti -at- RRINC -dot- COM> wrote:
>
> While we're on the subject of PowerPoint presentations . . . does
anyone
> have recommendations for a screen capture software that allows you to
> capture a *moving* screen shot (or more accurately, a series of
shots) that
> can then be inserted into PowerPoint

I've only got time for a quick reply but I hope it helps. There are a
few software product available to make movies of what happpens on the
screen. I  know of Microsoft Camcorder, HyperCam, and Lotus ScreenCam.
The first 2, I think, produce .avi files but I've never used them and
I don't know off hand whether .avi files can be run in PowerPoint. I
suspect they can since it's a pretty standard sorftware movie format.
I've used Lotus ScreenCam quite a bit and here's some info and
thoughts about it:

1. It produces files in it's own .scm format which need the ScreenCam
player to run. You can make them into executables which aren't
significantly larger and don't need the player. You can export as .avi
but the files are *huge*, although I think there is software available
for compressing big .avi files into very small spaces.

2. There is virtually no editing possible with finished .scm files
(unlike .avi) except appending one movie onto another and removing
segments which doesn't work properly anyway.

3. You can include pop-up captions in the movies.

4. ScreenCam comes in both Windows95 and NT versions.

5. ScreenCam is only compatible with certain monitors (or video
cards). Slight incompatabilities cause screen glitches, mostly stripey
scroll bars, but major incompatabilities mean you can't record
anything at all. Make sure you have compatible hardware before buying
ScreenCam.

6. It's very buggy. Crashes a lot, thinks it's still running when you
try to restart it so you have to reboot, loses its menu bar, sometimes
can't find one of its captions, etc.

7. Online help is apalling.

8. It can take a long time and a lot of careful planning and scripting
to get a movie recorded satisfactorily, though in your case you'll be
wanting warts 'n' all rather than slick no-mistakes stuff, so that may
not be a problem.

9. I groan every time someone tells me I have to record another damn
ScreenCam but unfortunately that's what I'm using. I usually get
results I'm relatively proud of in the end.

I hate it but it may be what you need.

Mark
==
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Mark Magennis                  |   Information Developer
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