Friday, June 17, 2005

Wink - Free software that will capture your imagination!

I have been playing with a piece of free screen capture software available from www.debugmode.com. Wink enables users to capture screen shots which are then rendered to become a flash presentation. We have all produced handouts taking learners through step by step instructions to complete a task. Now you can show them the whole task in a video clip, but at the same time you are able to overlay navigation buttons and text boxes explaining what is happening.

Although this software is fairly intuitive to use, there is quite a bit to learn. I started with a simple capture process and just found it fairly straightforward. However, learning how to capture a process and then add the overlays for navigation and explanation took a bit longer to get to grips with. What is impressive is the quality of the image produced and the size of the compressed files. Two files are created – one is the flash file and the other is an HTML document for launching the flash presentation in a browser.

So, what is my verdict? I will continue to use SnagIT from www.techsmith.com for simple screen shot capture. But Wink scores for moving images. Download the free software and look at the two tutorials. You will be impressed!

Nigel