Get videos off your device with this easy app

Attention screencasters! This could save you a ton of time. For all of you using Camtasia to produce your screencasts, there’s a new app that can import your videos from an iOS or Android device directly into Camtasia.

Meet Fuse

Fuse is an app for the iOS, Android and Windows environments that does exactly one thing: it connects wirelessly to your Camtasia program so Camtasia can slurp all your videos off the device in seconds.

Take a moment here if you need to catch your breath, because all us iOS users just breathed a honking big sigh of relief. That’s a lot of breathing.

Yes, Fuse works on very large videos.

Yes, Fuse works wirelessly.

And yes, Fuse works on iOS devices even if they’re supervised by everyone’s favorite nemesis iPad-management software, Configurator.

Yes, Fuse is magic.

Here’s a short screencast showing how to import videos from your iOS device directly to Camtasia:

Ways this could be useful in education:

• Student techdesk folks could process videos in a 1:1 classroom on a rolling basis while other students continue filming / go film some more;
• Overworked tech support could process videos from a reservable iPad cart as it comes in, saving them for the educator;
• It’s a great alternative for when Reflector + Camtasia isn’t a viable solution, such as capturing video from field trips and in-class activities;
• So many fewer educators who make how-to videos will yell at their iPads when they go home this evening.

I don’t see this replacing on-the-fly digital storytelling tools such as Touchcast or 9Slides, but for folks like myself, who use Camtasia regularly to make how-to videos, it is a much easier way to make use of mobile devices as movie cameras. And let’s face it: no matter what you use it for, Fuse speeds up video transfer on the iPad, and that’s huge.