15-Minute Reviews :: Democreator v1.0.0
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Democreator version 1.0.0 by Wondershare Software – An application to create demos of your software or web sites interactively.
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Wondershare DemoCreator is a handy screen recording tool that captures full desktop screens, windows or regions. You can add images, annotation and narration to enhance and publish it as a flash video demo. It gives you the easy way to create software demonstrations, screencasting, presentations, product tutorials and interactive training.
Wondershare DemoCreator captures on-screen actions for making software tutorials, presentations, and game shows. With wide range of functions and features you can manage those tough jobs easier than ever!”
Quick Pros
- Interface is easy to use
- Plenty of elements to add to slides
- Lots of file settings
- Drag-and-drop support in timeline handy
- Audio annotation functionality a nice addition
Quick Cons
- Issues with recording process
- No keypress support
- No undo/redo functionality
- Would have been nice to have watermark feature
Expansion
Many websites and other professionals are adopting the use of Flash demos to increase interest in their product and reduce support tickets by addressing common uses of their products, either web- or software-based. It is a great idea – Produce a video to demonstrate the power of your product, or show how to use the most common functionality you have presented.
The interface was surprisingly easy to use. I didn’t find myself getting stuck or hunting for what to do next. It was a breeze to get rolling; Only the bugs with the recording feature was an issue.
I found there was a lot you can do to the slides once I had a working slideset. speech bubbles, text boxes, rectangles to highlight specific areas, and adding images is just a few. As well, there are a lot of file-wide options, including resizing the entire project to fit it into your final medium well (website integration for example,) as well as start and end effect, changing the control slider, file quality and more. There is also a lot of file output options such as Flash, LMS (A learning format,) EXE and EXE on CD (Embedded Flash,) and email sending.
A few other noteworthy functions of this application is the drag support in the timeline. You can quickly rearrange a slide by resizing the elements’ time boxes, or moving them around for timing; A great way to get a good feel to your slide. As well, you can add audio to your slides so that you can not only annotate your slides visibly, but audibly as well.
I did have some issues with the application however. The first two tries I attempted, I was trying to demo the giveawayoftheday.com website through firefox. The first attempt, when I clicked on the System Tray icon to end the recording, the whole application crashed. (Sorry, did nor write down the error.) The next attempt was the same – Record giveawayoftheday.com in firefox. After a few moments of clicking around the website, I clicked the System Tray icon. This time it did not crash – However it did not record anything except the very first slide – No other clicks recorded (And I checked to make sure I had Record Cursor on.) The third time I attempted to record DVD Presenter instead, and appeared to work, until I hit the 10th out of 14 slides. There was no background image at all; A bit of an issue in my opinion. (See the video below to see the Flash of this.) On my fourth try, everything went smooth. I’m not sure what is causing the issues here, but it is difficult for sure.
A few functions I would have liked to have seen in this application are missing. Keypress support is missing altogether (The help file states it’s ‘Not in this version’, yet on the website there is only one version available.) This makes presenting any shell usage unusable through this application, and any text entry into a recorded window appear to ‘pop up’ on your next mouse click. This really needs to be implemented to offer a wider level of control for those who will use this application. Another function I found missing was the lack of any undo/redo functionality. It is handy when dealing with this application to have it. If you delete your mouse movement on accident, for example, the only way to bring it back is opening your save file (you did save, right?) or re-record.
On a final note, one last part that I did not know to put it into pros or cons was the lack of mouse movement recording while the mouse button is up. Reason I do not know if this is a pro or a con, is that some will find this a feature a pro; People don’t want to have their mouse movements, shaky or otherwise seen and instead just the resulting movement – Or this feature as a con; Those who may be wanting to ‘point’ as elements, circle specific locations or similar. It is not that this application can not support recording mouse movement as a whole; It does this fine (See the Flash to see myself dragging a window into view.) It just appears they author chose not to enable it for one reason or another. It may be a good idea for the author to give an option to use ‘live’ mouse movement/live recording (At least cover the keypress issue,) if it is possible.
Resulting Flash
Final Verdict
All-in-all, while this application does show promise, it being in its infancy stages seems to have some serious bugs as well as some sorting out of features. I am sure with time this application will mature nicely and be a great addition to the market of demo creators out there. For free, if you are looking for this kind of application, I would recommend picking it up and giving it a try to see if it works well for you. As for paying $99.95, I would recommend holding off until the application has a bit of a chance to mature.
There are some alternatives out there: TurboDemo ($199.88 – Uses same slideshow technique), Demo Builder ($199.95 – Slideshow technique as well – Printing as well as in-video menus), and Flash Demo Builder ($99.95 – Live recording)
Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, June 14, 2007
