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DemoCharge
2004
Review By Rick Dobson
After taking a first look at DemoCharge 2004, I think of it as a screen recorder application for the people. By a screen recorder application, I mean DemoCharge can create a file that captures a sequence of screens that you can play back. You can create either an animated .gif or an .avi file to capture the sequence of screens for replaying. Both of these file formats are very popular, but my experience as a webmaster makes me especially value the animated .gif file format.
The reason that I call DemoCharge 2004 a screen recorder for the people is because it gets the basics of the task done in a straightforward fashion. I gave myself about a couple of days in between other chores to get to know the application. In that time, I learned the application’s UI. This, in turn, empowered me to turn on recording, save a recording, edit a recording, and generate a playback file, such as an animated .gif file. It is absolutely the first time that I managed these tasks on an end-to-end basis. The most complicated graphics programs that I have used in the past several years are the Windows Paint utility and Power Point. DemoCharge 2004 offers a more advanced kind of functionality than either of these, and it is still easy to use and learn.
Why bother with DemoCharge 2004?
The DemoCharge 2004 Help file asserts the application is good for three groups of users, including causal computer users, technical support and marketing persons, and software developers. As a professional trainer, I immediately saw the relevance of the application for computer trainers. The bottom line is that if a picture is worth a 1000 words, then a sequence of pictures is more like letting someone see for them self how something works. By posting your screen recording on a web site, people can see your demo recording for themselves on any day of the year at any time!
I have my suspicions about this program being for casual computer users. However, the application is definitely easy to learn and use. You only need to know how to start and stop recording, save the record of your sequence of screens, and finally generate a playback file format. You can learn this by reading three or so Help file screens. In addition, the program costs about $50. Therefore, if you plan on using it with any degree of frequency, it could easily be worth the price.
Technical support and marketing persons can clearly derive value from DemoCharge 2004 by creating demonstrations of how a program works. Instead of just describing a program’s benefit, marketers can show the benefits to prospective buyers. Because you can post the demonstrations as animated .gif files on the Internet, prospective buyers can look at animations any time. Technical support persons can post answers to common questions in a visual form on the Internet. This will provide a significant benefit to users, and it offers the potential to cut down on the need for some support calls.
Developers can use DemoCharge 2004 to document the operation of a program. This is particularly convenient for documenting bugs so that quality control engineers can easily demo the steps to generate a problem. In addition, a visual file documenting how a program will ultimately work based on a prototype creates a clear record of the functionality that a developer is working to produce. Furthermore, the ability to annotate a visual file, allows you to record how a prototype is to change as it becomes a final solution for an assignment. If new requirements emerge over the life of a development effort, a developer will have a visual record to clearly identify the scope of an initial agreement. In addition, clients can review visual files showing how a program is intended to work and thus submit requests for changes earlier in a project’s life when they are less costly to address.
I spend a lot of time doing training in web-based and hotel-based venues. In addition, I regularly write books and articles as well as author DVDs. Being able to inexpensively record screen sequences and offer them in an easy playback format allows me to augment these other modes of training developers. In these challenging times, doing more with less is highly prized. DemoCharge 2004 helps computer trainers achieve that goal.
Getting started in a hurry
After you install DemoCharge 2004, getting started in a hurry takes just a few simple steps. Begin by starting a new demonstration file. DemoCharge 2004 saves a demonstration file in a .dcs file format. If DemoCharge 2004 is already open, choose File, New to open a dialog box that helps you start a new demonstration file. Select Start capturing and Window. In fact, you do not even need to choose File, New because DemoCharge 2004 can open the dialog box for a new demonstration whenever you start the application.
After selecting Window, click Next. This opens another dialog box that reminds you how to start and end screen capturing screens. In short, you drag a lens from a camera icon to the window from which you want to record. You terminate capturing screens with the Alt+F10 key combination.
After you complete your recording with the Alt+F10 key combination, you can create an animated .gif file with a single keystroke – just press F5. This makes some default selections and saves your sequence of recorded screens. You can run the animated .gif file from a browser of even an email program that can show .gif files.
Overview of regular process for creating screen recordings
In general, there are four key steps to creating a demonstration file. These are:
- Start and end recording screens
- Edit any screens in a recording
- Preview the edited recording
- Create an animated .gif or .avi file to play back the edited recording
You can specify how you are going to perform a recording by choosing File, New. This opens the preceding screen. As you can see, there are several recording options. By choosing Window, and controlling the size of an applications window so it is just large enough to show the essential content for a recording, you can control the size of the play back file. When you are sending a file via email or downloading it from a Web server, it is especially important to control your file size.
After you finish a recording, use the Alt+F10 key combination to turn off capture mode. Then, you can optionally edit your recording. DemoCharge 2004 represents a screen recording as a series of frames. You can edit these frames individually. For example, you can add text in balloon icons that appear on one or a sequence of frames. DemoCharge 2004 represents the images along a time line. You can use the time line to vary the duration for which each frame shows. You can also modify the start position of the mouse within each frame. These and other kinds of editing capabilities help to improve the appearance of a screen recording so that it is more appealing and easier for viewers to understand.
After you edit a set of frames, you can determine how the frames will appear when they playback by previewing them. One way to do this is to click the Preview tool on the Default toolbar. The tools in DemoCharge 2004 have text legends that appear when you hover your mouse over them. You can play a demonstration file from its beginning or select another starting point farther along into a demonstration. The preview player lets you optionally set a demonstration to repeat automatically.
It will sometimes be desirable to use the preview player and do editing in an iterative fashion. In this way, you can edit a portion of a recording, and then see the impact of your edits. If you need additional fine-tuning, you can modify your edits or make additional edits to a portion of a recording. When the preview player shows the frames appearing as you wish, you can move on to edit a subsequent set of frames in a recording.
When all the frames in a recording appear as you prefer, you can save the set of frames in a playback format. As mentioned, this can be as simple as pressing F5. Optionally, you can choose Demo, CreateDemoGif. This menu command opens the Generate Demo dialog box that appears below. The Flash and Java output formats do not currently work. They are designed for use with a future generation of DemoCharge. By default, DemoCharge 2004 saves playback files in the Demos folder of the \Program Files\DemoCharge\ path. The file name defaults to the name of the .dcs file. The two file extensions are .gif for animated .gif files and .avi for .avi files.
Other settings in the Generate Demo dialog box help you to specify how to compose the playback file. Many of the settings can control the size of a playback file. For example, using more bits per pixel will give greater color resolution and larger file sizes. You can also control whether a file will repeat forever, a fixed number of times or not at all.
A sample demonstration
In order to evaluate the package, I created a short recording. Then, I edited the recording. I saved the recording for playing back as I originally recorded it and after editing. Links in this review (see below) show you the recording before and after editing.
Either recording shows how to prepare for downloading a copy of SPAM Blocker, a spam filtering program available from ProgrammingMSAccess.com. The process involves opening your order confirmation message and copying three fields from the message to a web-based login form. The order confirmation includes a link to the login form. The before and after demonstration files show how to prepare for downloading SPAM Blocker for a fictitious order.
I rehearsed a sequence of keystrokes and mouse actions several times until they flowed more or less the way that I preferred. Then, I shot the sequence of screens. Next, I saved the demonstration and created an animated .gif file based on it. After saving the original demonstration file, I started to make edits that included the addition of text in balloon icons that appeared over the frames. I also visually eliminated selected frames that were not essential to the flow of a task. Finally, I edited the duration of selected frames to either shorten or lengthen the time that they showed during playback. After making these changes, I saved the frames as a new demonstration file and created a new animated .gif file as well.
Click here to see the unedited play back file.
Click here to see the edited play back file.
In playing back the output files, I noticed that I got my best results when playing in a browser that was larger than the original size of my recording window. The recording showed erroneous or illegible content as I shrunk the browser window used to play back the output file. The easiest way to reliably show the playback images is to just maximize your browser window.
Summary remarks
In the limited amount of time that I had for taking a first look at DemoCharge 2004, I grew to like it. I believe that I can easily put this package to use in a couple of ways. Also, it was easy for me to believe that others could make good use of the package as well. The package worked reliably, and it was easy to learn the basics of using it.
I did notice that the process of capturing screens felt slow. The Help files offered several suggestions for resolving this issue, but I did not have time to personally evaluate their impact. If you are bothered by slow recording, I encourage you to search the Help file for clues on how to speed up recording. I particularly liked the ability to edit frames. I had never done anything like this before, but the concept was easy to grasp and apply.
I look forward to the next version of DemoCharge. It will offer more output formats. In addition, it will let users record an audio stream to accompany a sequence of frames.
Rick Dobson is the webmaster for ProgrammingMSAccess.com
as well as the founder of the Database Developers Group.
Rick is the author of 9 books and DVDs on Microsoft database technology
and VBA/VB.
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