As an educator with over a decade of experience creating video lessons and online content, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can help streamline my workflow. Recently, I came across Capto, a video capture and editing software that seems tailor-made for teachers and content creators like myself. In this post, I’ll share my hands-on impressions of Capto after testing it out for the past few months.
Overview of Capto’s Features
Before diving into specifics, let me provide a quick overview of Capto’s main features:
- Screen recording – Record your screen with audio narration to create video tutorials and lessons. Lots of customization options are available.
- Webcam recording – Add a picture-in-picture webcam overlay of yourself over your screen recordings.
- Annotation tools – Annotate your recordings by highlighting, drawing, adding arrows, etc. Great for explanations.
- Stock media library – Search and add stock photos, videos, and audio to enhance your content. No attribution is required.
- Basic video editing – Trim recordings, stitch multiple clips, add transitions, export to MP4, and more.
- Automated transcription – AI-powered speech-to-text creates transcripts of your videos to make them more accessible.
- Collaboration features – Invite others to co-edit videos for easy collaboration.
- Integration with LMS platforms – Upload videos directly to platforms like Google Classroom, Canvas, etc.
As you can see, Capto covers a wide range of features useful for educators and content creators. Next, I’ll share my real-world testing results.
My Experience Using Capto as a Teacher
As an 11th-grade Math teacher at a public high school, I’m constantly recording video lessons to share with my students. I also upload some of my more evergreen tutorials to YouTube and LinkedIn to establish my authority as an educator.
In the past, my workflow involved using Quicktime to record my screen and iMovie to edit the videos. This was clunky and time-consuming. Since switching to Capto a few months ago, I’ve seen a massive improvement in efficiency.
For example, a typical video on finding the determinant of a 3×3 matrix took me around 20 minutes to record and edit. With Capto, I can produce the same video in under 5 minutes thanks to the annotation tools, stock media library, and easy exporting features.
I also love that Capto saves all my videos and assets in the cloud. Recently when my hard drive crashed, I didn’t lose any of my Capto videos unlike files stored locally on my computer.
As a math teacher, it’s crucial that I can write equations, highlight points, and diagram concepts in my video lessons. Capto’s annotation features are easy to use with a tablet stylus and make it effortless to add visual clarity for students.
Compared to other screen recorders I’ve tried, Capto provides the best mix of recording options tailored to educational content. Small touches like the ability to hide student names and profile pictures from screen recordings show that they had educators like me in mind when building this software.
Creating Online Courses with Capto
In addition to creating content for my students, I also have a side business selling online courses on Udemy and my own website. Before Capto, I used a patchwork of tools like OBS Studio, Audacity, and Filmora to record and edit my premium courses.
Once again, Capto has proven to be an invaluable all-in-one tool for course creation. Being able to record my screen, mic audio, webcam video, and annotations all in one program speeds up content creation tremendously.
The stock media library has also been a game-changer. For most courses, I use a mix of my own slides, software simulations, and stock photos/videos pulled from Capto’s library. This keeps my courses looking professional without needing to purchase stock assets.
Having taught online courses for over 5 years, I’ve learned that collaboration is key. For one of my recent machine learning courses, I brought in a data science expert to guest lecture on neural networks. We used Capto’s multi-editor workflow to seamlessly blend our content into a cohesive course.
Finally, Capto’s LMS integrations have made my courses easier to distribute than ever before. With a few clicks, I can upload my finished course videos directly to Udemy or embed them on my website for students to access.
Capto’s Value Proposition for Educators
Considering its robust feature set catered specifically to teachers and course creators, Capto offers exceptional value. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the key benefits:
Cost – At $9/month for individuals and $19/month for teams, Capto is affordable for most educators. They also offer custom quotes for larger institutions.
Time Savings – Between quicker recording and editing, Capto saves me at least 2-3 hours per video. This adds up to dozens of hours saved weekly.
Privacy – Blurring sensitive data, hiding student info, and automatic transcripts make Capto videos privacy-compliant and accessible.
Adoption – With easy LMS embeds and sharing options, it’s simple to distribute Capto videos to students across various platforms.
Production Value – Capto’s templates, stock media and tools give my video content a polished, professional look without much effort.
Support – So far, I’ve had a great experience with Capto’s customer support resolving any minor issues I’ve encountered.
Security – Cloud backup of all my videos and assets gives me peace of mind against hardware failures and data loss.
Taking all these factors into account, I believe Capto to be an incredible value, especially compared to cobbling together various tools for recording and editing.
The time and efficiency gains alone are worth the subscription cost in my experience. When you add on all the other benefits, it’s a no-brainer for teachers and online course creators.
Final Thoughts
As an educator for over 10 years now, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance my teaching. After thoroughly testing out Capto for the past few months, I’m confident in recommending it as an indispensable tool for teachers and content creators.
The combination of robust recording options tailored to education and powerful collaboration tools for creating premium online courses makes Capto a must-have in my workflow. It has saved me dozens of hours compared to my previous video production process.
While the software has a few minor rough edges here and there, the developers are continually releasing updates to smooth them out. And the customer support team has been very responsive whenever I’ve encountered issues.
For the amount of time and efficiency it brings me, Capto easily pays for itself many times over with the subscription fees. I’ll continue relying on Capto to produce all my educational video content and online courses going forward.
So if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to create videos as a teacher or course creator, I highly recommend giving Capto a try with their free trial. It has become an indispensable tool in my content creation toolkit.
Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions! I’m happy to provide more details on my experience using Capto as an educator.
Also Read – What’s the difference between Screencast-O-Matic’s free and paid versions?