Active Presenter 8 is an easy-to-use yet powerful screen recording and video editing tool. With its advanced features, it lets users create high-quality video tutorials, interactive presentations, and more. Its intuitive interface, flexible editing options, and extensive video export capabilities make it an ideal choice for individuals and businesses alike.
The rich set of features ensures that learners can create engaging and interactive content with ease. With its powerful collaboration capabilities, Active Presenter 8 allows users to collaborate and share projects with ease. Overall, Active Presenter 8 is an excellent tool for creating engaging and visually appealing eLearning content. It's easy to use and packed with features, making the Active Presenter 8 review a positive one.
Part 1. Key Features of Active Presenter
Active Presenter is a popular tutorial and software simulation screen recorder that is known for its key features. It offers many of the same capabilities as a standard screen recorder, allowing users to record any type of video.
Recording – Recording allows you to capture video from your screen and webcam at the same time or independently, and audio from your system or an external microphone. Voice-overs and audio narration can also be added.
Editing – Active Presenter's video and audio editor allows basic editing, such as cutting, copying, pasting and deleting. Complex modifications can also be made to audio and video clips - users can insert clips, speed up or slow down videos, blur items or apply green screen effects to them.
Software Simulation – Apart from recording regular video, you can record software simulation. In software simulation, you get a series of slides instead of a video. These slides can be regular slides or video slides. In video slides, your scrolling actions and drag-and-drop actions are recorded with full-motion recording. Besides, the application creates smart annotations, indicates mouse cursor path as well as mouse clicks and keystrokes on the slides. Moreover, you can add feedback messages and record narration for the software simulation project.
Interactive Quizzes – You can create engaging and interactive quizzes on Active Presenter. You have to select the question slides, add interactive actions and events that users can performance for engagement. You can also set score, time limit, and number of maximum attempts, pass and fail conditions and much more.
Export To HTML – You can export your software simulations and quizzes to HTML5 so that the users can access them online. The design is responsive and hence, it can run on any web browser on any device.
Versatile Export Options – Various export options are available, allowing you to export your video in multiple file formats including MP4, AVI, WMV, and MKV. You can also customize the frame rate, video quality, keyframe parameters, and other settings to decrease the output file size.
Part 2. How to Download and Use Active Presenter?
Active Presenter by Atomi Systems offers a free trial version that allows access to all features. However, videos recorded with this version will have a watermark. It is available for both Windows and Mac users, and can be downloaded from the official website. To use the software, these are the steps to take:
Step 1: To download, go to atomisystems.com/download from your web browser.
Step 2: Download the latest version of Active Presenter, according to your operating system.
Step 3: Once the download has finished, click on the downloaded file to initiate installation of the software onto your computer.
Follow these steps to use Presenter to capture your screen.
Step 1: Launch Active Presenter and select Record Video option.
Step 2: When recording, choose an area to record and the audio and video sources that best meet your needs. If no external video source such as a webcam is selected, then the software will record the screen exclusively.
Step 3: To begin recording, press the Rec button. You will be given three seconds of lead time to prepare.
Step 4: To end the session, press Ctrl+End.
Step 5: Once the video is recorded, it will open in Presenter, which enables you to edit and export the file in a chosen format.
Part 3. Pros and Cons of Active Presenter
Active Presenter 8 has pros and cons that must be considered in order to decide whether the premium plan should be purchased or a different option chosen.
Pros:
The combination of PowerPoint and Screen recorder is powerful.
It is possible to record screen and webcam with different audio sources.
Develop software simulations, quizzes, and tutorial videos.
This software provides various options for editing, with a range of export file formats.
HTML5 is suitable for eLearning content creation.
The user interface is organized and all options are easily accessible.
Cons:
The learning process is challenging.
The software sometimes experiences bugs, lags and crashes.
The premium versions have a high price.
There are limited options for importing video.
Part 4. Best Alternative to Active Presenter
Active Presenter's focus lies in creating software simulations, demos, and interactive slides rather than being a dedicated screen recorder of what most users expect. It's pricing is high and its learning curve can be demanding. Furthermore, the video import option is limited. Therefore, we suggest Wondershare Filmora as an alternative to Active Presenter 8.
Filmora is a dedicated video recorder with an advanced video editing platform. You can record and edit your recorded video better than Presenter. There is no restriction on import options, and the pricing is affordable. Here are the steps to record the screen with Filmora.
For Win 7 or later (64-bit)
For macOS 10.12 or later
Step 1: Download and install Wondershare Filmora as per your operating system. Launch Filmora and click on PC Screen option to record the screen.
Step 2: Select the recording screen area and the audio sources. Enable Record the Camera Stream option if you want to record webcam video alongside screen recording.
Step 3: Click on Record button to start recording. Press F9 key to stop recording. Thereafter, you can edit and export in the desired file format.
Conclusion
Overall, Active Presenter 8 stands out as a comprehensive screen recording and video editing software. The software is easy to use, has a wide range of features, and provides an intuitive user interface. With its advanced features, users can create professional-looking videos without having to invest in expensive video editing tools. It is a versatile and multi-purpose recorder; however, it may not be the optimum choice due to certain drawbacks in terms of pricing and other issues. An alternative option with similar features is Wondershare Filmora which is a professional video recorder and editor.