Citrix GoView, It's Here (in Beta) and it's Fantastic

Citrix Online, creators of GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC have released their latest product in Beta for all to see and use. It's called GoView and while it may not be the first product to do what it does, I'm hoping it will blow the competition out of the water. From what I've seen so far, it looks very promising.

GoView captures every action you perform on your computer along with your voice from your computer's microphone (or line in source). Once the recording is complete it is immediately transferred to the GoView site where it is stored for playback.

GoView isn't revolutionary but it has one very important thing going for it, ease of use. Creating a recording and sharing it with friends and co-workers takes seconds. There is absolutely no training needed to use this product.


Lets take a more in depth look at the innards of GoView.

After signing up you are taken to a download page where you install a small recording client. After setting it up you click on the newly installed system tray icon and select Record Screen & Audio. A countdown will appear and then you're off to the races. Once you are finished click on the GoView icon again to stop the recording. Immediately a web browser will launch and you're taken to the GoView site where your give your new movie a name and optionally, a password to view it. You are then immediately given a link that you can share via email. Your video was uploaded in the background while it was recording (slick!). Viewers click on the link and it plays right in their browser (provided they have Adobe Flash). GoView's compression is very good, a 10 minute video would probably come out to be just under 60 megabytes. For most people this means they can stream the movie immediately without having to wait for it to buffer. Also, right now you are given one gigabyte of hosted storage which is good for many hours of video.


Most people can stop there but there are additional features worth mentioning. By clicking on the My Recordings link you can view all of your past videos. From there you can perform basic editing functions (e.g. removing sections of your movie and adding titles), delete a movie and export to mp4.


Breaking it down...

Pros

• It's easy, very very easy.
• Online hosting of your videos that can be played in any browser.
  
• You can edit your movie right in the browser.
• You can export to mp4 for playback on your local computer or network.
• The beta is free!

Cons

• You must record your whole screen
  
• You can only export to mp4.
• You cannot do voice overs in the editor.
• You cannot join multiple videos in the editor.

Most of the items in the Cons list are being addressed by Citrix Online engineers right now. It's an early beta product but I like what I see! Sign up for your free beta account at www.goview.com.