how cool is this? multi.dimensional.media has released flashcast, a screen recording tool that outputs recordings in flash format. for example, you could record someone using dreamweaver or microsoft word, and output their actions to a .swf file. totally perfect for creating online product tutorials or demonstrations. i'm recording this blog entry as i type it (361k)...pretty slick! and you can even add sound. flashcast also does powerpoint-to-swf conversion. pretty impressive tool.
you can download a trial of flashcast here.
Posted by moock at May 5, 2003 12:55 PMThe price is certainly nice on this. I've tried Qarbon's offerings, and they are quite nice, but a bit pricey. RoboDemo's solution is OK...not quite polished, and requires that you register the software to a specific machine...something I loathe. Will give this one a shot!
Posted by: Darrel at May 8, 2003 09:42 AMDon't forget ViewletBuilder from Qarbon. (http://www.qarbon.com). Their previous version output to a Java applet, but the most current version (3.5) outputs to .swf. The authoring app is still in Java, so the program runs on Windows, Linux & Solaris and it's coming to Mac OSX. The full version isn't cheap, but they offer a 50% educational discount and they have a Lite version available for $99. We've used it on several projects and, while quirky, it has worked out well.
Posted by: evan orensky at May 7, 2003 07:43 AMI'm a bit of a Camtasia fan, myself, and I think it produces smaller files.
BTW you have very strange font/button sizes in you XP scheme...
Posted by: Peter Hall at May 7, 2003 04:50 AMwell it is a screen capture app after all...there's not much way around the bitmaps, but the program does do some interesting things like saving the mouse as a separate sprite and moving it around the bitmaps. if you're careful and use a small enough view area, i think you can make some reasonable stuff for web distribution. remember that it streams too, so you can watch while it downloads. the equivalent video files would be much bigger.
Posted by: colin at May 6, 2003 11:06 AMjust out of curiousity i ran your file on ASV.. as i expected, the file turns out to have 114 bitmap image.. im not sure if it's such a good idea :-)
Posted by: ahmed at May 6, 2003 01:33 AMRoboDemo
http://www.ehelp.com/products/robodemo/
Pretty sweet. Will definately save a lot of animation time for demo purposes.
Price is nicer than Camtasia Studio as well...
http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/default2.asp
Cheers
Posted by: Dan Rogers at May 5, 2003 05:13 PM