CyberCam

4.0 stars

"A extremely cool tool - but it could be better than 10 fps!"

July 10, 2007  |   By Fabwid

Version: CyberCam 2.2

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)

3.0 stars

"PPT Don't Bother"

September 3, 2006  |   By ukandu

Version: CyberCam 2.2

Pros

When converting a powerpoint, if you don't need sound then this is a great product. The transitions were perfect.

Cons

Powerpoint add-in is not available in the trial version. I liked the trial interface and decided to take a chance and buy the full version. The product did indeed convert the ppt into a movie. The conversions were great, but I never could get the sound to work. The most important part of the movie was the music and therefore this product was a failure in my mind. The help files are online and are great, but specific information about powerpoint sound was not available.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (1) (0)

3.0 stars

"Good video quality but demo version has icon over picture"

April 2, 2006  |   By psychepooh

Version: CyberCam 2.2

Pros

The program only goes up to 10 frames per sec so I was concerned about the vid quality. The quality actually came out very good. I was very pleased with the video quality.

Cons

The demo version puts a BIG logo right smack in the middle of your captured video so forget using the demo for anything. It renders your video virtually useless.

Not sure if it's because it's the demo version, but when I tried to put my captured video into Sony Vegas Movie Studio to edit, it wouldn't play and was completely unusable and useless.

Thus, I'm in search for another capture program that will allow me to capture video from You Tube and import into Vegas.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (1) (0)

5.0 stars

"A professional level product"

September 30, 2005  |   By James-Johnson

Version: CyberCam 2.2

Pros

Terrific 1-of-a-kind product. Easy to learn. Extremely accurate captures. Exports to Flash and AVI. Can edit cursor path and visibility. Can add audio and interactivity. Sophisticated editor. Reasonably priced.

After doing a little reading on their website, I downloaded the free trial and starting trying to use it.

At first, I was a little hesistant, because the installer is quite compact. Given that MS Office is so incredibly large, could I actually take a product with a small footprint seriously?

Wow. And how. This product has done everything I have asked of it, and with some further research, I even found a lot of functionality I have never thought of.

For example, I can now capture a website, even if it has flash animations, and various streaming visual elements, and ScreenCam will capture it ALL. No hiccups, no complaining, no muss, no fuss. The "Fast Record" concept is terrific - it blows away any other way of doing this. It allows you record nearly anything with just a couple of clicks. Be sure to check out their 'how to record' tutorial to see how it works. Very slick.

After you finish capture, it drops you directly into the editor. You might get a little fooled by the presence of a 'red line' that seems to indicate where your cursor was going during capture when you suddenly realize that you can edit the cursor's path, and even turn off the cursor's visibility. No other product I've found comes close to doing this. Totally trick. I added some stop and play buttons, and then exported to SWF. It pops up the SWF file it created in IE. Wow. Completely amazing.

Saved my hide when I needed to create an archive of a website. I embedded it into a PowerPoint Presentation (be sure to read the Microsoft Powerpoint help file on how to do this - you need to insert an Active X control on the slide).

Cons

Although I think that their help files (which are all online HTML files) are really good, they aren't available when I'm on my laptop on the plane!

Be careful about making really long movies - I found out that Macromedia puts a limit of 16,000 frames on their Flash Movie playback functionality - the workaround is to cut your movie into pieces for playback. I guess that's not really a problem with ScreenCam, but something to look out for when using Flash.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (1) (0)

5.0 stars

"Extremely unique - I think its a new category of product."

September 29, 2005  |   By james234

Version: CyberCam 2.2

Pros

Outstanding Interface - by far the most intuitive. Smooth, detailed movie captures. Ability to add interactivity. Ability to separate cursor capture from rest of screen. Ability to convert PowerPoint to Flash. Ability to crop/append/cut/paste/add graphics/add text. Ability to make stand-alone, interactive movies.

I have been looking for something like this for a LONG time. I have used some other products, but they all had a bunch of limitations - like using proprietary compression techniques, or slowing my machine to a crawl during capture, or having really balky user interfaces that look like someone designed it while half-asleep. This product appears to have been designed by someone who creates tutorials, demos, and guided-tours for a living. It's the only one with a 'EZ interface' that allows you to quickly take movie after movie without having to stop and reconfigure the product every time. They also have figured out a way to get totally smooth playback with a REALLY low frame per second capture. This allows me to capture some pretty large screen areas without slowing my machine, and the results are still quite small and look very realistic.

I was able to create some interactive, standalone ScreenCam movies that so closely mimic a real appllication, that one of my unwitting coworkers actually went up to my PC and tried to 'run the application', and he actually got pretty far before realizing it was a demo! That's got to be a first - he was completely convinced it was a live application!

I was at a trade show a couple of weeks ago, when a prospect came up to me and asked for a demo of a product that we didn't have available at the show. I was able to quickly download a ScreenCam demo to show to them, and they are now moving forward with a software order from us. I was able to be a hero, and I owe to this little product. Thank you, ScreenCam!

Cons

Interface is so simple that you can miss some of the deeper functions - be sure to check all the menus. So much functionality that you can easily add TOO much interactivity and clutter your demo.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (2) (0)

2.0 stars

"Looks like it has great potential but did not deliver."

August 20, 2005  |   By mgallen

Version: CyberCam 1.61

Pros

Very nice, professional interface. Looks like it has lots and lots of nifty features.

Cons

I am looking for a utility that will produce a smooth video capture effect, and this was not it. At first glance it looked very promising but it limits capture to 10 fps. The developers claim this is all that most computers can handle. At the rate that PC computing power is increasing I don't quite buy it. If you are interested in still screen shots this might be a good choice for you.

Reply to this review Read reply (1)

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)

5.0 stars

"Software Help Files"

January 3, 2005  |  

Version: CyberCam 1.61

Summary

Software was easy to figure out and provided nice control over video and audio editing. Would have been nice if output to Windows Media was included.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)

5.0 stars

"Well executed, produces commercial quality results"

November 27, 2004  |   By james234

Version: CyberCam 1.61

Summary

I have been an avid user of the now-ancient ScreenCam 97, which had a couple of capabilities that I sorely missed: the ability to record large screen sizes, the ability to do simple annotations. I'm singularly impressed by this new product, which has all the earmarks of being produced from scratch. It doesn't require any strange capture drivers, and doesn't force the use of proprietary compression drivers. It was able to produce clean detailed captures of almost any screen activity, and performed well at anything from 8 to 32-bit screen depths. I was particularly impressed with the ability to produce highly-compressed, lossless demonstrations. It is incredibly helpful to visit the online tutorials and help site, which you can access by clicking on the 'help' button on the EZ interface. It answered a lot of the questions I had in a few minutes. It takes a little time to get used to the way it works, but once I have done so, there is no turning back. So many of the things I have wanted in the past, like the ability to 'clip' a mistake out of an otherwise-perfect tutorial, the ability to add quality sound, the ability to have the files play automatically in a browser window, to have platform independance... the list is pretty impressive, given that this is a new release. I did need to get used to the Config-Area-Record-Stop protocol, since ScreenCam moved to this protocol to support things like 'partial screen area' recording, but the couple-minutes it took to figure this out were well worth it. For those of us who have been pining away for a replacement for the beloved old ScreenCam from Lotus, this is clearly a well-engineered and thought-out product. I found it stable, full-featured, and worthy of serious consideration from those of us requiring a serious demo and tutorial Screen Camcorder tool that runs on modern Windows OSes. Just a little more tweaking on the interface, and it would have been 5 stars all across.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)