Vikki Olds
December 2004
DemoCharge 2004 Standard Edition by YesSoftware is a wonderful product for capturing screen activity. This is very useful for presentations, tutorials etc. DemoCharge 2004 Standard Edition is extremely easy to install and very easy to use.
When you first open DemoCharge 2004 you are given options for what you want to do.
For the demo I did I set it up for an area capture. It was totally easy. I had the program open that I wanted to capture and I dragged the capture marquee to fit the programs screen area. All you have to do is hit the enter key to start a capture and CTRL-F10 to stop the capture. It can't get any easier than that. The capture then shows up in the DemoCharge 2004 IDE for further editing a saving.
You can see thumbnails of each frame in the thumbnails section of the IDE and by double clicking on any one frame will open it in the IDE for further editing.
The Standard edition of DemoCharge 2004 can only be exported to GIF and AVI. The Professional version due out 1st quarter 2005 will output to Flash and Java also. You have many options for saving your animation as shown below in the OutPut dialog.
You can create new projects of many types quickly and easily from the File menu.
You can capture a full screen, a window, a region and in background mode. You can preview your creation before exporting it and you can add a custom background to it.
You can export a frame, import a background and view the properties of frames.
The toolbar brings most options to the forefront for easy access. Also on the toolbar are options to add balloons, text, images and highlights to accent anything you'd like in your presentation.
Create balloons and use the properties panel to edit position, shape, size transparency and more.
Create text on your balloons or in a frame and use the properties panel to edit position, size, transparency and more.
I'm pretty impressed with the size of the animations created. Below is a 547x410 animation that is only 50kb in file size. That's pretty cool and makes creating tutorials, demos and all types of presentations possible for web viewing. The image quality is terrific.
Animation is 50kb in size....no too bad for a 547x410 pixel animation!!!
Key Features
Capturing/Recording
-
Smart auto-capturing by detecting screen changes, menu actions, and clicks and mouse movements
-
Manual recording
-
Capture full screen, window, or region Background mode
-
Full-motion recording, including mouse cursor movement
-
Action-based recording
-
Ability to capture and append additional frames to existing demos
Output Format
-
Animated GIF output (DemoGIF) with optimal compression, suitable for emails
-
Flash (SWF) output * (Professional version only)
-
Java Applet output * (Professional version only)
-
AVI output * (Professional version only)
-
High output compression (small ? le sizes) without loss of original quality
-
Resizable output - create demos in different resolutions
Editing
-
Intuitive and easy to use GUI
-
Thumbnail view
-
Timeline view for time-based frame and effect manipulation
-
Properties panel
-
Preview mode via internal demo player
-
Customizable workspace
-
Masterframe
-
Cut, copy, paste, and duplicate frames and effects
-
Hide frame
-
Customizable mouse cursors and tracks
-
Full undo/redo management
Effects & Captions
-
Balloon, caption, image, and highlight effects
-
Effects can be extended across multiple frames
-
Effects can fade-in and fade-out
-
Many prede? ned balloon shapes
DemoCharge 2004 Standard Edition is an awesome product for those who need to create presentations both for local and remote distribution. I can see graphic artists using this for art presentations, web developers for tutorial and informational presentations and many more applications. You really should try this software. To see more demos created with this software go to YesSoftware to see them. I personally can't wait to get my hands on the Professional edition and you'll be seeing a review on it when it is released first quarter 2005 so come on back and check out the review on the Professional version then. Meantime, grab the standard edition and see just how easy it is to use and just how powerful it is for creating terrific presentations.
Pricing: $49.95
Company Website or URL: http://www.yessoftware.com/
Requirements:
Windows
-
Intel Pentium Processor, AMD or equivalent
-
128 MB available RAM
-
10 MB available disk space
-
16-bit color monitor capable of 800 x 600 resolution
-
Windows 98, ME, XP, NT4, 2000 or 2003
Copyright (c) 2004, Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved
