I am trying to use Adobe Captivate 5.5 to create demos for using DNS.  However, Captivate's record feature doesn't seem to see the Spell Window when I make corrections.  Does anyone have any experience doing this successfully?

Hands-Free,

Adobe Captivate is not the best tool to use for creating demos with DNS. We use SnagIt 11 & Camtasia Studio 7 for creating demos with VoicePower. You already run into some of the limitations with Adobe Captivate. I would take a look at SnagIt or Camtasia (TechSmith).

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you." - Anthony de Mello

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Hands-Free, one of the advantages of utilising Adobe Captivate: it permits you to create separate individual screenshots, so I would create a sequence of screen captures showing the Spell Window or any other feature within DNS that you are trying to communicate to your intended audience, and then incorporate them into your screen cast in the normal manner.

On the whole, I tend to agree with Chuck that Camtasia Studio 7 is the way to go, as it has many advantages,  it also has significant limitations, as does every piece of software. Adobe Captivate has significant advantages over Camtasia Studio 7 in other areas. Here in the UK, Camtasia Studio 7 is significantly cheaper than Adobe Captivate, so if you are on a budget Camtasia Studio 7 will always win.

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DNS 12.0 Professional, Windows 7, Intel Core i7 2630QM, 16GB of RAM. Second-Generation SpeechWare 6-in-1.

As Chuck has mentioned.

Snagit is a very good program for creating demos and tutorials for all programs not just DNS.

I have even created some basic tutorials using video and sound.

A lot of screenshots posted on this forum are created with Snagit.

Camtasia is I understand the professional program for creating video and sound presentations.

Snagit is within reasonable price range but Camtasia is rather pricey for me as I would use it rarely.

If your livelihood depends on it then of course Camtasia is not so expensive.

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Jomark

During some experimentation with Adobe Captivate, I have learned that using full-motion recording is the only way to capture both the target application and DNS windows.  Editing recorded video using Adobe Captivate is possible, but painful using DNS hands-free.

With Snagit, can you record audio & video?  If you edit the video, can it simultaneously edit the audio?  For example, if I trim a portion of video out of and Adobe Captivate recording, I have to go trim the exact portion of audio out in order for the two to be synchronized.  Adobe says this will be fixed in the next version.  Yeah.

With Snagit, does the audio pick up the system sounds (e.g. play that back)?  Adobe Captivate picks it up just barely.  This is with system playback sounds and Captivate audio settings maxed out.  Not good enough for a demo.

Hands-Free,

SnagIt will not allow you to do what you wanted do, but Camtasia studio does. Camtasia studio provide you with many features for editing your videos from editing the audio separate from the video and vice versa to adding captions and much much more. It's very sophisticated an extremely powerful. Take a look at some of the demos on our website at www.VoiceTeach.com. We are in the process of revising these to add more illustrations and other things, but Camtasia studio allows you to pick up and/or eliminate system sounds, such as playback. You can add narration after the fact, you can adjust the volume, show or not show the cursor yada yada yada, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Camtasia studio is much more powerful than Adobe Captivate, or even SnagIt for that matter.

In fact, Camtasia studio even allows you to convert speech to text by making use of Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) under Windows Vista and Windows 7. No need to configure anything and it's straightforward. I haven't tried to see if I could use DNS for this purpose but DNS and Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) under this condition in Camtasia studio do not conflict with one another. You kind of have to see it to believe it. That's why watching the TechSmith videos will give you a better idea of what Camtasia can do. Further, if you combine SnagIt and Camtasia studio, you can record in one and edit in the other. Properly used, Camtasia studio will also give you reduced size video demonstrations properly configured.

You can also go to the TechSmith website and look at their training videos. Comparing Adobe Captivate to Camtasia studio is like comparing Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. TechSmith also has a number of other applications that further increase capabilities for creating demos, training videos, quizzes, the whole 9 yards. Like the one James Bond theme goes, "Nobody does it better".

All that being said, when you're working with these kinds of applications there is limited direct support for DNS. However, Camtasia studio and least supports Active Accessibility and you could create Advanced Scripting commands to make it more accessible hands-free.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

Be careful what you ask for. What you get might not be what you expect, or want. - Aesop (620 BC - 700 BC)

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Thanks, Chucker.

Our technology center is trying to decide which way to go, and this is very helpful information.