Hang-in-there! There are excellent positives in 8.01 (when converting from 7.1)

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Near the end of June 2012, I upgraded to Camtasia 8.01.

After upgrading, I converted a version 7.1 project to 8.01. Then I "produced" the video and ran into runtime issues. The Techsmith staff initially stated that they were collecting information re upgrading issues 7.1 to 8.01.

A little later, Techsmith closed the ticket stating that my system was borderline compatible. I began reading the other support threads abut the conversion issues (7.01 to 8.01) and became concerned. That said, there were no other "runtime" specific problems.

What follows is what I did and what I determined:
My system is a Dell Centrino Duo 2Gh with 2Gh Ram. (Clearly marginal)
I re-produced the project with 7.1 and noted via TaskManager a CPU utilization of 98 to 100% and 1.8 of my Ram used. The process took 1 hour and 22 munutes. The Camrec filesize was 396Mb.

Thinking I needed to reduce the CPU utilization, I called msconfig.exe and removed some of my Startup programs and disabeled the Services related to those same Startup Programs. My thought was maybe I might sneek under Runtime-error tripwire.

Well I did and was very surprised as to what I determined. My system is compatible if I carefully manage the CPU load and memory utilization.

With Camtasia V8.01: The production time took 25 minutes vs 82 minutes - huge improvement! (I should mention, that I did have to manually reposition every callout as they were out of position by about 10%). Also positive, was the CPU usage went down from 95-100% to 80-95% and my Ram usage from 1.8Gh to 1.3Gh.

There are definite positives in version 8.01!