Ambrosia Software 04/22/12

This week’s interview is with John Champlin, the self-described ‘Information Dissemination Specialist & ShmoozeHound’ of Ambrosia Software, the makers of Snapz Pro X and WireTap Studio.  Snapz Pro X let’s you effortlessly record anything on your screen as a QuickTime movie or a screenshot.  WireTap Studio is a professional audio recording, editing, and management solution that allows you to manage and manipulate your audio with ease.

And make sure to enter our giveaway at the bottom of this page. It’s your chance to win Ambrosia software!

 

How did Snapz Pro X and WireTap come about?

The story of how Snapz (the original version of the product) came in to existence was a rather simple one.  Ambrosia had been making games and various other products and we needed to take screen shots for our site to help market them.  To accomplish this, our versatile developers here actually made a relatively simple version of the product to capture the images.  We instantly realized there was a need for that sort of thing by a wide range of users.  Since then, the product has evolved to what you see today, one that not only captures screen shots, but full movie capabilities all in a simple to use interface.

As for WireTap Studio, it was another product that was spawned from a simpler earlier product in Ambrosia’s past. It’s predecessor was WireTap, a free product that we had created because we thought it was something the Mac community could use.  It quickly became quite popular, and people kept requesting more and more features, which gave way to WireTap Pro, and then eventually WireTap Studio.  This allowed you to not only capture audio in Quicktime lossless file, but allowed you to edit it, add effects, all without fear of losing the original, thanks to the non-destructive editor. Another great feature added was the fact that the sound files are stored in a built in library to keep it organized for you.

How is Snapz positioned compared to other screen capture software on the market?

At one point in time, Snapz Pro X was quite literally the only game in town.  It set the bar for Screen Capturing software.  Even today, with the competitors out there, our Snapz Pro X 2 is still a favorite and being purchased by a lot of people, as well as large companies, universities, etc…

What are some well known companies that use Snapz Pro X?  How do they use it?

Well, we have companies such as Apple, Adobe and even federal agencies have used Snapz Pro X 2.  Sometimes they use it to capture product shots for tutorials or media kits.  We had an interesting letter from a doctor, he works for an NFL team and uses Snapz Pro X 2 to capture images from the X-rays to send the coaches/players.   One of the coolest stories we have ever heard was that the crew from South Park actually used Snapz Pro X 2 to capture the in-game footage of World of Warcraft In the episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft”, which was an episode that later went on to win an Emmy!

What are some of the interesting and inventive use cases for Wiretap Anywhere?

I have been amazed at the usages of the product.  I would get emails from people who have used the software to replace giant wired monstrosities in radio stations, to having WireTap Anywhere used on stage performances to reduce the number of machines down to a single laptop.  It’s one of those bits of software that seem to fill in the weirdest of places and is really loved by audio engineers.

The LivePreview feature in Wiretap is quite a breakthrough.  Was this a feature request or was it something you all had been working on for a while?

Thank you, it’s seriously an amazing feature, and one of the coolest selling points of the product.  LivePreview™ was thanks to the owner of the company, Andrew Welch.  He’s quite good at envisioning clever features that the users will like, and LivePreview was one of them.  What a lot of people don’t know is that the way in which it’s handled is so unique and original that Ambrosia actually has patents and a trademark on it.

Does Snapz support or integrate with other 3rd party apps or hardware?

Snapz tends to work above everything else, in regards to the computer operations, to be an unobtrusive part of your machine.  It opens at start up, and runs quietly in the background waiting for the chance to capture what you need it to capture.  So, by design it doesn’t really need to be integrated with anything else, it’s just there to capture the raw images from your screen.  The user is then free to bring those files into other apps to work further with them.  But, there has been products that have used the Snapz technology in their hardware.  For instance, the Mimio Interactive Whiteboard team worked with our developers to utilize capturing of images in their own software.

Does WireTap Studio support or integrate with other 3rd party apps or hardware?

WireTap Studio definitely supports a vast many types of 3rd party hardware.  From USB microphones to Griffin radio SHARK.  If the audio can be routed into your Mac, then WireTap Studio can capture it.

Can you map macros to WireTap?

If you are curious if there can be a global hot key for the product, then yes.  Simply look in the WireTap Studio general preferences settings.

Are they any new features in the pipeline for the next version release that you can talk about?

Unfortunately nothing has been announced yet, and el Presidente of Ambrosia has taken tips from Apple and doesn’t like to give out hints.

And now’s your chance to win Ambrosia Software!

We’re giving away copies of Snapz Pro X, WireTap Studio and Soundboard to 3 lucky winners.

Using the Rafflecopter widget below, spread the word about Ambrosia Software, keeping in mind each action is worth different points:

• Splice Vine Newsletter signup (3 points)
• Ambrosia follow on Twitter (2 points)
• Re-Tweet this blog post on Twitter (1 points) (this action can be done only once a day)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This contest only lasts for one week, so don’t miss out on your chance to win. We will be announcing the winner on Mon. April 30 so stay tuned.