If you need to capture what’s on your screen, such as if you’re in the middle of a work presentation or you want to create a video game tutorial for your online followers, you need to make use of a screen capturing tool. Some products that you should check out are from TechSmith.
What is TechSmith? This is a company that offers screen capturing and screen recording software. It enables you to record professional videos and do a variety of other tasks, thanks to its range of useful tools.
If you think TechSmith is software that you might be interested in, read on to find out more about it. We’ll dive deeper into its interesting tools to see what you can achieve with them.
TechSmith Products: What’s On Offer?
TechSmith offers many different tools and software. These include the following.
Snagit
Snagit enables you to capture your screen. There are different ways in which you can do this, such as by snapping your entire desktop or just one section of it. You can also capture a scrolling screen. This makes it convenient to grab both horizontal and vertical scrolls, as well as capture chat messages.
You can also extract text. If there’s a screen capture you have that contains text, you’ll be able to extract it or paste it into another document. This means you can copy information instead of having to retype the text that you require for your task.
Snagit offers a range of features and functions. These include:
- Record your screen. This enables you to record yourself working through various steps. It also means you can grab frames out of the recorded video. You’ll be able to save a video file as an animated GIF or mp4.
- Animate your GIFs. You can actually transform any type of short recording into an animated GIF so that you can add it to a document, chat, or website.
- Record webcam. This feature enables you to toggle between the screen and webcam recording during a video.
- Record audio. This enables you to add audio to your videos, such as from your mic or your computer’s audio system.
- Trim video clips. This feature helps you to remove sections from the video you don’t want in your screen recordings.
- Annotate your screen grabs with professional markup tools to add personality to your screenshots.
- Use Text Replace to change words, text size, font, and colors in your screenshot.
Is Snagit Worth It?
Pros
- Snagit enables you to use shortcuts for easier access to your tools.
- It has a SmartMove tool to make objects in your screen grabs movable.
- You can integrate your content with email, Microsoft Office, and image editors.
Cons
- It doesn’t come with a spell/grammar check in the text editor.
- It requires an easier method to enable you to merge two images.
- It uses quite a bit of memory.
Camtasia
This is another screen recorder tool but it also excels in video editing. It enables you to make professional videos, whether you’re using Windows or Mac.
What’s great about it is that it’s beginner-friendly. You don’t need to learn tons of editing skills as you can simply start with a template or record your screen before adding effects to it. This will save you time.
Here are some of its best features:
- Record your computer screen. You can record anything that’s on your computer screens, such as video calls, websites, software, or presentations.
- Add effects to the screen right in the built-in video editor.
- Camtasia contains a variety of theme and video templates you can use when creating your video.
- For user-friendliness, you’ll be able to have your tools and effects you use regularly right at hand. You can save styles for increased ease of use.
- Make use of over 100 transitions that will improve how your videos flow.
- Highlight important things in your videos with the use of annotations. These enable you to use arrows, shapes, and more.
- Add interactive quizzes when making videos for training purposes.
- Make your video recordings more interesting by adding royalty-music and sound effects from the library.
Is Camtasia Worth It?
Pros
- You can use the Techsmith Capture app (for PC) to record directly from the screen. Then you can add gestures to simulate swipes and taps in your video.
- You can easily upload videos to Vimeo, YouTube, and Screencast.
- Camtasia has audio-cleaning tools so that you can achieve better-quality sound recordings.
Cons
- The software sometimes takes a long time to load.
- Some people have said that it doesn’t have as many features as Final Cut and Premiere.
- Some of its editing features are difficult to figure out, especially because things change a bit with different versions of Camtasia.
Knowmia
Knowmia is specifically designed to help educators who want to create interesting and informative online lessons for their students.
This software not only enables you to create videos but to better engage with your students, thanks to features such as its interactive quizzes and video commenting. This has the additional benefit of helping you to tailor content to your audience.
Here are some of its best features:
- Knowmia has an assessment dashboard. This contains video analytics that help you to monitor student progress. You can also use this to plan your future lessons.
- You can create and share videos easily. You can record a full or partial screen, or document.
- You can edit videos quickly with Knowmia’s web-based editor.
- Knowmia has an accurate speech-to-text caption tool. This means you can generate closed captions for videos and edit them with a caption editor.
Knowmia varies a bit from Screencast because of its extra features. These include the following:
- It offers unlimited storage and bandwidth.
- It offers quiz embedding and creation.
- It allows for time-linked commenting on videos.
- It also auto-generated captions.
Pros
- You’ll be able to see how well your videos are doing by making use of data to tell you how much of each video is being viewed.
- Knowmia can be used independently of other TechSmith offerings, such as Snagit and Camtasia, because of how it has its own in-built recorder.
- You can import media from a variety of sources, such as YouTube, Zoom, Snagit, Camtasia, and your mobile device.
Cons
- If you want to connect Knowmia to Camtasia to make it easier to edit your videos, you will require a Camtasia license.
- Some people have said that it could be a bit more user-friendly for people who are not technical.
Audiate
If you’ve ever wanted to turn your recordings into text, you’ll love Audiate. This offers a simple way to achieve text-based audio editing. It’s a standalone software that makes use of AI-powered speech recognition so your audio sounds professional.
Unlike with traditional audio editing software, Audiate displays your mistakes, such as repeated words, so that they’re easy to identify and eliminate from your text.
Here are its useful features:
- It takes only a few seconds to remove errors from your text, such as awkward silences.
- Once you have your transcript, you can save it as an SRT file for closed captions that you can then add to your videos.
- You can make your audio much more professional by removing background noise.
- It decreases harsh “s” and popping sounds from your recordings.
Pros
- You can upload and download audio files that are conveniently in formats you currently use.
- Audiate has a Volume Leveler feature so you can have a consistent sound throughout the entire recording.
- It comes with an audio equalization feature so you can manually adjust properties to make your laptop mic sound clearer.
Cons
- You can’t edit video and audio files simultaneously.
- Some people have said that sometimes the software struggles to correctly interpret different accents.
Video Review
This software lets you do online video collaboration. You’ll be able to get clear feedback from reviewers and streamline your review process. This will help you to perfect your videos.
How it works is that you’ll upload your video, send a review link, and then gain feedback.
For increased ease of use, you can review this content on a mobile device at any time, such as Chrome on Android or Safari on iOS. Reviewers will be able to mark up your videos with shapes and arrows to better explain their comments.
Video Review comes with a player that has many features, such as volume control, fullscreen playback, and variable speed playback.
You also have many sharing options – you can send your review links to a public or private source.
Pros
- You can add and save reviewers you work with so that you have a group you can rely on.
- You can share your videos to TechSmith Video Review from Camtasia. This ensures you’ll get feedback at a faster rate.
- You’ll receive email notifications when comments have been made by reviewers.
Cons
- Some reviewers have experienced playback issues, such as buffering, so they can’t properly use the tool. A playback quality dial would help because reviewers would be able to adjust the video resolution.
TechSmith Customer Support
TechSmith offers free tech support on weekdays between 8am to 6pm (Eastern Time). The website provides tutorials, support articles, and a user community.
TechSmith customer support has varied reviews as reported by its customers. For example, one customer has noted that the company could improve its after-sales support, while others have noted that the company responds to queries quickly.
How Much Does TechSmith Cost?
If you’re interested in purchasing software from TechSmith, here are the prices:
- Snagit – $62.99.
- Camtasia – $299.99.
- Snagit/Camtasia bundle – $362.98
- Knowmia – $239.88.
- Audiate – $359.88
- Video Review– $179.99
Related Questions
What is Screencast?
Screencast is a TechSmith product that enables you to organize and share content from Snagit and Camtasia.
When was TechSmith founded?
TechSmith is a company that was founded in Michigan back in 1987.
Conclusion
If you want to be able to capture screen recordings and record high-quality videos, TechSmith can help you achieve your goals.
But since TechSmith has a variety of products on offer, you might not know which one you should choose. In this guide, we’ve broken them down so that you can choose from five of the best products to make your workflow smoother and your tasks less stressful.
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