Articulate vs Adobe Captivate

[ergomaniac]

Hi everyone. I'm developing an online course and am currently trying to work out which software to run with. I've whittled it down to either Articulate or Adobe Captivate and have set up trials of each. I really love the articulate engage interactions but am a bit concerned about going down a route where I am limited to only the interactions in the engage program. However, I tried Captivate which is more flexible but it is no where near as easy to use and I don't think the interactions are so good. Are there any others out there who are in the same position and if so how did you decide on the package to run with? It seems that articulate is quite a bit more expensive compared to the adobe package for educational users which will influence things as well but I don't want that to be the primary reason for my selection of product. All suggestions/feedback gratefully received.
Thanks.
Karen

[doofdaddy]

If you're working in PowerPoint, Articulate is a hands down winner. Captivate is a great tool for screencasts however, you'll find that it's not as easy when it comes to authoring in PowerPoint. The editing process is a lot more cumbersome.

[Chip]

Mzinga has a tool Firefly Developer which is an application simulator ( more powerful than screencast movie ) and their output is HTML based which can be linked into Presenter.

Has anyone worked with these two products and can offer additional feedback?

Chip

[xryzflec]

I use both of these products which is proving to be great. I can take the content from a published articulate presentation and embed it into captivate, or else I can create content in Captivate and embed it into Articulate.

If you are doing Software training, captivate is good for showing how to do things, however it lacks the simplicity of using PowerPoint and articulate for the none screen related pages. This is why I have taken to making these pages in captivate and slotting them into my presentations on Articulate.

At the moment, I'd say I know Articulate inside out, but I'm forever finding out new things about Captivate and because we have no flash authoring software here, I've found that Captivate is a good substitute for making some slides in Articulate more interactive.

Chris

[wangs]

I use both software. As mentioned above Captivate is good at creating things like software demonstrations. However Captivate doesn't handle large files very well, and if you are thinking about creating a video that's longer than 5 minutes in Captivate, well, you better forget about it.

[beeneeb]

Originally Posted by ergomaniac

I really love the articulate engage interactions but am a bit concerned about going down a route where I am limited to only the interactions in the engage program.

Anyone from Articulate care to comment on this one? *nudge *nudge

[Justin]

You are limited to the interaction types but I think you shouldn't get hung up on what they are called. You could use any of the interaction types for anything you wanted to do. A timeline interaction doesn't have to be used to create a timeline interaction. You could use it for something else. A great example of expanding the use of the different interaction types can be found here.

[GerryWaz]

All excellent points here. Engage can be creatively applied and also may seem limiting to some.

[Justin]

I bet you we'll do something about that.

[GerryWaz]

back to you . . .