CameraMan 3.0
Volume Number: 13
Issue Number: 10
Column Tag: Tools Of The Trade
by Edward Ringel
QuickTime screen capture utility simplifies documentation
and training
Software authors sometimes find end user documentation one of the most vexing
aspects of development. End user satisfaction with your new application depends not
only on the quality of your product and its ultimate ease of use, but also on the slope of
its learning curve. While some programs are inherently complex, and the learning
process is inherently long, good documentation and tutorials can make the training
process less painful, take less time, and sometimes even be fun. Good documentation
and training materials may not be responsible for the initial sale of your product, but
will heavily influence upgrade sales and sales of other titles in your product line.
Applications benefiting from a graphical user interface require graphical
documentation. The move toward electronic documentation, although probably fueled
primarily by paper publishing costs, has as a secondary benefit high fidelity screen
reproductions. Many applications now benefit from built in electronic help systems
such as Microsoft Help, QuickHelp as used by Claris, and of course AppleGuide.
AppleGuide is particularly sophisticated in that reference material, instructional
material, and outright assistance with tasks can be incorporated into an AppleGuide
file.
Animated tutorials of the kind that can be programmed in AppleGuide and recorded in
CameraMan can be incredibly helpful in learning to use a product. A "movie" of how a
screen should look and change during certain program actions can sometimes be all
that's really needed to show exactly how to use a program. Creation of an AppleGuide
file to do this can take considerable time, knowledge, and effort. CameraMan cannot
create a Guide file, but it can create an animated tutorial with no programming effort.
Enter CameraMan
CameraMan is a product that documents screen activity on your computer. Because this
review is in MacTech Magazine, I am approaching this product primarily from the
standpoint of the developer with a need to document software. Obviously, such a
product can be useful in any number of documentation, education, and entertainment
scenarios.
Like a number of other utilities, CameraMan can perform a simple screen capture. Of
greater interest, it can make a movie of the screen activities or sequential stills, the
latter particularly useful for slide shows and other forms of static documentation.
CameraMan has three virtues: it is cheap, it is incredibly easy to use, and it does
exactly what it says it would do. It has a few failings, and with one exception they are
relative and do not detract from the overall value of the product.
I obtained CameraMan electronically, over the Internet. It is available from
http://www.mwg.com. It comes as an installer application that creates five files.
First, it places the CameraMan extension in your system folder. Second, it creates the
CameraMan application. Third, it creates QuickEdit, which permits editing of the
movies created by CameraMan. Fourth, it creates a .pdf documentation file and the
mandatory Read Me SimpleText file.
The documentation indicated that the applications would work with QuickTime 1.6 or
greater. Although the CameraMan extension and application would record with QT 2.1,
QuickEdit would not work until I upgraded my system to QT 2.5 with Goodies. (This
problem has been acknowledged by the company and will be addressed in the next
maintenance upgrade.) After that, I had no difficulty with the product's performance.
System 7.0, 8 megs of RAM, 32 bit QD 1.2, and QT 1.6 is the minimum configuration;
System 7.5.5, PPC processor, 16 megs, and QT 2.5 with Goodies 2.5 is recommended.
Please note that I evaluated this suite of products on my Performa 6200 CD with the
recommended configuration. I like to think of this CPU as particularly useful for
stress testing products since, at this point, the creature is about 15 months old and the
PPC 603 chip that powers my fearless machine seems to have ended up on a dead
branch on the evolutionary tree.
Record It,...
From a user's standpoint, the CameraMan application is a control panel for the
CameraMan extension. The most important settings are the capture settings, which
permit the user to define the size of the screen capture area, the frame rate, and a
QuickTime vs. PICS vs. sequential PICT's decision. It is possible to create a capture
area that then "tracks" the cursor movements, which can reduce memory usage and
focus the attention of the viewer.
There are a number of advanced options regarding QT compression and the like which I
will not review in detail; suffice it to say they are present and extend the utility of the
program considerably, especially for long, large videos. The user can define the
various control keys, where movies are stored, and several options regarding sounds,
including the opportunity to use stylized mouse click and keyboard sounds. The movie
can use microphone input or other audio input such as the computer's internal CD. The
user can record sounds as a separate soundtrack or as an integral part of the movie. On
systems with multiple monitors, the user can pick which monitor to record.
Figure 1. The CameraMan Application main window showing the recording
configuration options.
The documentation for CameraMan is quite acceptable. All options were carefully
reviewed and several strategies were offered for optimum recording. File sizes
predicted by the documentation were somewhat larger than what I actually
encountered.
Capture of screen activity on my 15 inch screen occurred without malfunction. I tried
recording a narration of my activities along with my instructional demo, and aside
from the fact that my kids laughed at me for talking to the computer and our new kitten
insisted on sitting on my lap and purring into the mike, this part also went well. Comic
relief aside, the utility works as described, and it was enormously easy to set up. As an
example of file size, a 1 minute, full screen capture with voice-over was about 10
megs.
I have two comments about the capture aspect of the CameraMan package. First, it
would be great if MotionWorks created another capture mode which automatically
tracked and captured activity in the front window. It is possible to do this by setting
the capture frame correctly, but I would expect that an automatic setting would be
fairly easy to implement. Static screen capture utilities such as Flash-It do this, and
it would be a reasonable and helpful upgrade to CameraMan. More importantly,
initiating capture slowed other activity on the computer to a crawl. In fairness to
MotionWorks, they forewarned of this, and I deliberately stressed the program by
doing full screen recording.
I made several of the suggested alterations such as choosing the correct compression,
reducing frame size, and using a solid background for my desktop, and performance
improved. I think that careful thought and planning to record only the necessary
portions of the screen would be an important aspect of product use. Obviously, the
documentation should be produced on the fastest CPU available to you. I see this speed
issue as CameraMan's one significant problem, since product documentation and
tutorials often may require full screen capture. Given the task at hand, though, I'm not
sure that anyone could write faster code. I think the speed issue may be an inherent
limitation of the genre.
Practical use of the capture utility would include having the producer thoroughly
understand the product or procedure to be recorded. He or she would then write a
script of screen actions and a narration (or some other form of background music or
sound) appropriate to the situation. Then, in a quiet room without cats or children, the
script would be executed. The next step in production would be to edit the file.
Edit It...
Editing of recordings takes place in QuickEdit. This application can edit movies and
soundtracks. I freely admit that I am not a QuickTime maven, but excepting a few rough
spots, the product was more than ample for creating animated documents. Soundtracks
can be edited and applied in "layers." Animations also can be layered, and text movies
that overlay screen recordings can be created. Cut, copy, and paste appropriate to the
tasks were available. The only glitch that appeared was that the window showing the
tracks of the movie I made insisted on positioning itself partially offscreen.
The documentation for this application was not as good as for CameraMan. For example,
it took a while for me to figure out how to create a new narration for a screen
animation and replace the original; too much familiarity with QT was assumed.
All in all, I wouldn't want to create the sequel to "Toy Story" using QuickEdit, but it is
a very creditable product. The individual responsible for developing a software
tutorial will not push the limits of QuickEdit, and will learn how to use the package
fairly quickly.
...Then Play It
The last part of the manual deals with playing back the movies you have created. It
addresses licensing issues and the use of Apple's MoviePlayer. I would not have thought
to put this last section in the manual, but it is a useful addition that will prepare the
developer to write the necessary instructions for the end user. I used MoviePlayer to
view some of my "tutorials" and encountered no problems.
The Bottom Line
CameraMan is a useful product for tutorial production and software documentation.
Consider this: the average CD can hold 650 megs. Your golden master has 250 megs of
software. With a little forethought and planning, in the remaining 400 megs you could
present a tutorial video 20 or 30 minutes long that eases your new user over any
ambiguities in the use of the product. You would have expended no resources on writing
or contracting out an AppleGuide file and you would have required no fancy production
house to make your video. I would like to see some portions of the documentation
improved for QuickEdit, and I would like to see front window autoframing. Some
utilities are probably better for still picture capture.
Personally, I would like to see more software QT tutorials. I used them when learning
to program the Newton, and was impressed with this approach. I see this as a good
package at a fair price, and I encourage developers to consider this means of software
documentation.
Products Reviewed
• CameraMan(tm) 3.0 and QuickEdit 2.0, Motion Works International, Inc.
Suite 130 - 1020 Mainland Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 2T4. $69.95.
Windows 95 and Window NT versions are due shortly.
• MoviePlayer 2.5, Apple Computer, Cupertino, California.
Useful URLs
1. http://www.mwg.com Motion Works on the Web.
2. info@mwg.com Motion Works e-mail.
3. http://www.quicktimefaq.org QuickTime information.
______________________________
Ed Ringel, eringel@mint.net, is Contributing Editor for product reviews for MacTech
Magazine. In his spare time, he is a respiratory and critical care physician in
Waterville, Maine.