Source files for a complex video can be LARGE, up to several hundred MB. If you have, some things work differently but there are no real surprises. It’s a high-end video edit and there’s a learning curve if you haven’t used a similar product before. With the course creation module, of course, you’d get many more. AP has a nice library of special effects, including transitions from scene to scene, fades in and out of individual items in the timeline, animation (even without Saola Animate), and opacity. Once you’ve captured a video, you can export it as a MP4, then add it to another video, then edit it again, then export that video and import it to another video…all without loss of audio or video quality. You can record a video without the mouse and layer the mouse in later, another big maintenance win. You can record multiple audio and video tracks at once. It captures video off the screen or from an application *and separates the video track from the audio track*-a huge win in maintenance. As you edit, you can separate your video into chunks ('slides') to focus on one piece of animation or editing at a time. It can import PowerPoint slides, images, GIFs, and other videos. For ease of use and breadth of features, my favorite is ActivePresenter.

I've used other video editing suites and course creation tools, including Captivate, Camtasia, and (currently) Premiere Pro. As a mystery writer, I produce 'teaser' videos for my books: fewer maintenance cycles but I need more dazzling effects. As a video producer for a major educational company, I produce small how-to videos that need frequent updating. With AP, we simply record the published older video and turn it into an AP source file. We’ve occasionally lost source files for older videos (not necessarily in ActivePresenter). With some other video editors, it took a couple of days. With ActivePresenter, we can switch out anything that needs to be edited for a new release, switch in new material quickly, and put out a revised video in less than an hour. Maintenance of how-to videos is a big issue.

Activepresenter pro