Who's using Mimic?

[dwag]

Just wondering, does anyone out there use Mimic routinely? A perusal of this forum would suggest the product isn't a big seller. Do you incorporate Mimic movies in your help? As Flash files? Silverlight? If you use the product routinely, what version do you use? Very curious. Thanks.

[nickatwork]

Hi,
Yep I use Mimic, mainly because we purchased MadPak and it came included - I have used Adobe Captivate in the past and they are pretty similar products though I found Captivate to have a richer feature set.
For me, I am recording 1-2 min short clips walking users through simply processes and procedures in our application. Using click-to-proceed, on screen prompts and speech bubble text.
As for exporting them, I have been using flash for mine, silverlight seems to be a bit less midely used as flash and I need to hit as many users as possible.
I just take the swf file itself, it includes playback controls and put that in to my online help. Works pretty well so far.

Happy to answer any other questions you might have.

Nick.

[dwag]

Appreciate the response. One more question: What version of Mimic are you using? We purchased a license to v2 long ago, and the product was maddeningly buggy, so we gave up on it.

[nickatwork]

I'm using version 6.

[JohnB]

I am also using Mimic in a way identical to Nick. It's a nice way to put short 'show me' type videos into Help topics.

We have version 6 as part of MadPac, and it has a few nice improvements over the previous version, which I had found difficult to use. There is a bug with drag-and-drop sequences not rendering correctly when viewed in IE9, which support said is an issue with the way Flare outputs the video to IE. Hopefully it'll be fixed in a future Flare release.

- John

[DocuWil]

I am also using Mimic since a few months.
With flash I ran into problems because some movies do have some short FMVs (Full Movie Videos).
So, I output to Silverlight, which can handle longer movies and FMVs (some of them are about 18 minutes long).
As it is important also to run the movies on Linux systems, we just tried Moonlight and so far it looks fine.
What I would like is also a kind of executable to run a movie.

[nickatwork]

That is where captivate was a little better I seem to remember. You could make exe files and I'm pretty sure that 'live recording' could be put in to flash videos too.

[dwag]

I'll be surprised if Mimic ever becomes more than a bit player in the marketplace of software simulation tools. Too many other products seem to get the job done with a lot less fuss.

[JohnB]

I found that with Flash output, you can get a high resolution output. I'm embedding flash movies in togglers so when a user clicks a "Show me" link, the movie appears and immediately begins executing. But then there's the problem I mentioned above with loss of resolution during drag-and-drop sequences (Full Motion Video) in IE9.

The Silverlight format has a lower resolution, and I don't see a way to improve it in Mimic. (With Flash, you have resolution options.) Last I tried inserting a Silverlight video in a topic, it creates a link that navigates the user away from the current Help topic. There doesn't seem to be anything in the link properties to control this behavior.

[schultza]

Nick, thanks for your feedback. Our company also has Captivate, which is used more widely across our company.

The writing department is just starting to investigate using Mimic; we have V7, and it looks like HTML5 is the best output option to choose in terms of mobile compatibility. We are looking to develop short tutorials that we can upload to our client Web site, upload to YouTube, and/or embed in our help files.

Would you agree with using HTML5, or have you not had experience with this yet?

[jknasinski]

I've been using Mimic 7 for a couple months now. I do a series of video tutorials that are included in my help file. I do Flash output.
I tried the HTML 5 output but I need to support a wide variety of browsers and and that didn't work. So far the Flash outputs are working well.
Once I got used to Mimic it works fine for me.

[ccardimon]

I have Mimic installed, but I rarely use it. I would like to reverse that situation and learn it.

[KLAstry]

I have Mimic 6 but I haven't used it yet. I want to record a software simulation with it and hand that off to a producer, who's going to include the clip in a live-action movie (video footage, stills, title slides). Would I save the simulation as a Flash movie or a SWF?

Then I want to include the finished video in my HTML5 help as a topic or a link in a topic. Is this even possible?

[RamonS]

As far as the format to save in goes, ask the producer what she/he prefers.

Including the movie in your help is possible, that is to some extent the point of Mimic. Select in Flare Insert > Multimedia > Mimic movie....

[doc_guy]

In fact, you can use Variables and Conditions from your project in Mimic. Mimic was specifically designed to work with Flare.

[Richard Ferrell]

. I do Flash output.
I tried the HTML 5 output but I need to support a wide variety of browsers and and that didn't work. So far the Flash outputs are working well.
Once I got used to Mimic it works fine for me.

Flash outputs are really the way to go for almost every browser type out there. but the html5 is nice...

[straygoat]

I bought it but have never launched it! Maybe I should give it a try sometime.

[Madcap Guru]

Mimic is great, I have used it a a lot in the last few months for projects for a few freelance clients...