Camtasia Studio is a presentation software program that allows you to capture, edit, and share multimedia presentations. This software program can be used for creating staff training presentations or for online marketing presentations. Its easy to use interface allows people of all video editing skill levels to put together high quality videos that may be broadcast in multiple formats that look as good on an iPod screen as they do on a 24 inch widescreen monitor.

Camtasia Studio Applications

Camtasia Studio was designed for creating high quality, entertaining, and engaging video presentations. The videos can be used for personal or professional uses. As a training tool Camtasia Studio can be used to create interactive training videos, it can be used to create Flash quizzes and surveys, or it can be used to create a video version of a Power Point presentation. As a selling tool, Camtasia Studio can be used to create commercial presentations that highlight your products and services. These commercials can be broadcasted online, via mobile phones, or via other media formats. Camtasia Studio videos can also be used as an educational tool. Interactive videos can be used by educators as a study tool for their students or as a testing tool for their students.

Software Overview

Unlike many other interactive video software products, Camtasia Studio is a stand alone product. This means that you can record, edit, and share your video presentations all from the same platform. This will not only save you money on your software purchases, but it will also simplify the video creation and distribution processes.

Recording video is very simple with Camtasia Studio. You can record basically anything that is on your computer screen from Power Point Presentations to video clips. You also have the option of importing graphics and videos from other sources allowing you to add slides, charts, and other visual elements to your presentation.

The editing options offered by Camtasia Studio make this software package very easy to use. First of all you have complete control over how your video is organized. You can splice, cut, move sections, and add in transitions at will. Camtasia also comes with 25 different transitions that you can use. You can even develop Flash quizzes and surveys that will either entice your customers to stay at your website longer or test your students or employees’ comprehension and retention of the material presented in your video.

Sharing the videos that you create using Camtasia Studio is also a simple process. You can export your videos in formats that are compatible with both Macs and PCs, and that have a video quality that is equally superior on an iPod as they are on a 24 inch widescreen monitor. Some of the formats that you can export your video presentation as include: MP4, M4V, MOV, animation GIF, SWF, AVI, RM, and MP3.

Pros and Cons of Camtasia Studios

Camtasia Studios has received great reviews. It is generally considered to be an easy to use and very functional video editing software product. People seem to enjoy the fact that they can record, edit, and share their videos using a single platform. Other pros offered by Camtasia include the ability to create interactive video elements, ample help menu options, and great image quality regardless of the final format of the presentation.

While this product has been given a great overall rating, there are a couple of problems that still need to be ironed out. The first problem is that Camtasia doesn’t allow you to import some graphic file formats. The second problem is that there is an HTML problem that deals with creating watermarks for WMV videos. While these problems are irritating they are not deal breakers, and generally people feel that the $299 price tag for Camtasia Studio is worth the investment.

Click here to Downaload a free trial
Click here to purchase full version for $299

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Spontaneous Crash #1

About 3 weeks ago, I am working in my PHP file, everything is fine, I’m just working, i type in “if (…” and then all of a sudden, Dreamweaver disappears. “That’s weird…”, I think to my self as I double click the icon to launch it again. It loads fine, so I open up the file I was working on and of course I was not able to save my previous changes before it crashed. I remember what changes I did before it crashed and proceede to type in my code. As I get to the point where the program crashed I continue typing in “if (“, POOF! the program is gone. “What the crap???!!!” Yes it vanished again.

After messing with it for about an hour, trying this and that and the other thing I trieg Googling this. Apparently:

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 crashes when working with certain PHP or ASP files in Code view or Design view after the clock goes back one hour, when Daylight Savings Time ends. The crashes only occur when selecting certain lines in Code view, or selecting certain objects in Design view. The crashes only occur in files that have PHP or ASP code, intermingled with HTML code. The crashes do not occur in Dreamweaver 8 or earlier (Ref. 229536). (Adobe.com)

“Whaat?!” Ok, so the solution is:

The Solution

1. If Dreamweaver is open, quit the application.
2. Delete the WinFileCache-AD76BB20.dat file from the Dreamweaver user configuration folder. Note that on Windows, the Application Data and AppData folders are hidden by default, so verify that your Windows Explorer folder options are set to View Hidden Folders. The location of this file is as follows:
   • Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows Vista:
     C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration
   • Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows XP:
     C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration
3. Restart Dreamweaver.

This worked for me!! Weird but ok, as long as I can get back to my work.

Spontaneous Crash #2

My happiness did not last too long, yesterday it happened again. Same thing…I am just typing along in my CSS file then all of a sudden Dreamweaver vanishes. “A crap!! Not again…”. I go and try launch it again, the loader window opens up and then disappears. “What? Can’t even open it now?!” I try again,…same thing. “Ok, I’ll try to reboot, this could be windows freaking Vista…”. I reboot and try loading Dreamweaver again. Nope…tries to load and disappears.

Ok, Google to the rescue. After digging around on forums and blogs I find something that catches my attention.

One possible reason could be that you have a file that is exactly 8192 bytes or a multiple thereof in the site that you used most recently before the crashes began. (Adobe.com)

Great! What’s next?!

The Solution

The solution is to remove the file from your site, and then start Dreamweaver. If the file is a text file, such as an HTML page or style sheet, just add a few spaces to the text to increase the size. (Adobe.com)

Took me a little bit to comprehend what they are talking about and here’s what I did. Went into the local directory where my websites are and browsed to the file which I last worked on. I moved that file onto the desktop, just to get it out of the site folder and then tried to load Dreamweaver. It loaded perfectly. Next, I opened the file that I moved to the desktop and added “px” to the line that said “margin: 0;” so now it is “margin:0px;”. Then I moved the file back to the site directory and everything is now peachy.

I wonder if these things will keep happening to me? I better get my program updated stat.

Ok, thank you for listening to me gripe about this, hopefully you found your answer, if that’s why you are reading this of course.

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DaneDigital zPen – The Review

The DaneDigital zPen is a flash drive digital pen. It comes with everything that you need to use this pen from day one including: the digital pen with refillable ink cartridge, 1GB USB drive, USB cable, 30 day trial of Note Search (only works with Windows), two V393 batteries and the full version of MyScript Notes Optical Character Recognition Software. This pen is compatible with Macs, Linux machines, and PCs.

To use this digital pen all you have to do is clip the receiver to the top of your paper and write using the digital pen. After completing your notes you will need to upload your data to your computer via your receiver and a USB cable. You can then convert your data using the software that comes with your DaneDigital zPen. MyScript Notes allows you to convert your written notes to a PDF and then to a rich text format (.rtf) file. If you have a Windows operating platform then you can use Note Search to identify keywords and to transcribe your notes to a Word document.

DaneDigital zPen – The Good Stuff

Overall the DaneDigital zPen has been reviewed as a decent product, especially for a digital pen. In general the zPen does what it says; it transcribes your handwritten notes into a digital format. The zPen is easy to work with, it has a refillable ink port, and the software is easy to set up and use. The software that comes with this digital pen also has a special recognition training tool which can be activated to help the software learn your handwriting style. This tool takes about 20 minutes to run and it greatly improves the results that you receive. This is a major plus for those people who have hideous handwriting. Taking the extra time to “train” the software to accurately recognize and translate your writing will save you a lot of frustration later on down the road. The final positive point of this product is that you can use it with any type of paper you want, as long as it is no bigger than A4 and as long as it is oriented in the portrait layout.

DaneDigital zPen – The Not So Good Stuff

While there have been a lot of compliments paid to the DaneDigital zPen, there have also been several cons listed by numerous people. The first complaint is that there is a size limitation and orientation limitation imposed by this digital pen. This means that it doesn’t work with legal pads, larger pieces of paper or with paper that has a landscape orientation. The second con is that in order for the digital pen to work you have to press firmly on the paper and your handwriting has to be extremely legible. This is a problem for people who write fast or who have less than perfect handwriting. In general though, poor handwriting can be compensated for by spending the additional time using the software recognition training program which allows the software to “learn” how to accurately decipher your handwriting.

As far as the mechanics of the DaneDigital zPen is concerned a few problems have been identified. First of all this pen is susceptible to infrared interference. This means that rooms that have a lot of wireless devices or items that use IR technology can inhibit the effectiveness of this tool. Another problem is that the batteries are small and can be difficult to install.

Overall Impression of DaneDigital zPen

Overall the DaneDigital zPen seems to be a good product for the price. It is functional and is easy to learn how to use. However, since the technology is still maturing for digital pens the zPen has a few hiccups that are causing user problems such as errors, omissions, and general frustration. After learning how to overcome some of the problems, such as using the recognition training tool, many people find the zPen to be very functional and recommend it to others. As with any other new technology, it will only continue to get better through updates and revisions. If this is a product that would be beneficial to you now, the price isn’t prohibitive at all. However, if you don’t necessarily need it now, improved, more powerful versions of this pen will surely be released in the near future. The zPen is definitely worth the money now and in the future for those people who can benefit from its use.

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