This week I am featuring another Bill Myers video for Camtasia Studio. The video touches an important area, how to set up your Camtasia Videos to be viewed in HD on Youtube.
There are several reasons why I think this is important. One is of course the viewer experience is greater when showing your videos on HD. But there is more to it than that.
For one you get the Youtube HD logo on your video, which you will not get otherwise. People also tend to watch videos in full screen mode more and more, and stream videos to their High Definition television sets and for HD TVs it’s great if you have a higher quality of video.
I have included the important take-aways of the video below. My hope is that you can use the list as a quick reference when setting up your Camtasia settings for HD.
The video runs 4:40. OK take it away Bill…
Here are some take-aways from the video.
Before you record
- Set your recording to save as .avi in your Camtasia Recorder Tools/General Options.
- Set framerate to 30 (Tools/Options/Inputs)
- Select area to record to 1280×720
After recording, when editing
- Select HD in settings and if you don’t have this setting, choose the same size as you are recording in, in this case 1280×720.
- Edit your video
Producing Video
- Go to custom production settings
- Choose other formats MOV
- Under QuickTime options set H.264.
- Set your framerate to 30
- Set Keyframe to Automatic
- Set Compression to Best
- Data rate set to Automatic
- Sound settings for production – Set it to 48.000, 16 bit and set it to Stereo so Youtube can recognize it as a HD file.
- Check that video size is 1280×720
And then upload it to Youtube. Youtube should recognize it as a HD file.
That’s all there is to it. Now start creating lots of HD Camtasia files! Let me know what you think about this article/video in the comment area below.
Until next time 
Peter – Your Camtasia Guide
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Great tips! Never thought this could be done in Camtasia with these easy steps. Now we can start sharing our videos in HD.
What if I want my video to be 1080p? I have a 1920×1080 screen, should I record the whole screen? It tried doing that and uploading it, when I click 1080p, it looks like crap..
No, you should set the recording area the same size as your output area for best result.
my HD screen recording video looks good on Youtube, but if the user on Youtube does not select HD, it doesn’t look so good. To cover those that would not watch it in HD, should I use different settings, or always use HD if possible no matter what the viewer will use?
Hi Jim,
This is a very good question. I haven’t done any actual testing about this but I do not think you will get a better quality, at least not any with a substantial improvement. The reason for this is that Youtube re-renders your video to their standard format. So even if you would upload a couple of different formats to get a better quality in a lower resolution you would still have to rely on their re-render of your original file. I also believe Youtube will work more with HD in the future and make it easier accessible.
An important side note is that the quality of your video improves over time. Normally it can take 12 hours or so to get the best quality so if you look at your videos directly after uploading them you can be pretty sure that the quality will improve over the next few hours.
Thanks,
Peter
my screen demo I am recording is actually 800×600. The HD setting tho give a different proportion (it stretches my video sideways). is there a way to alter the presets for HD recording for different dimensions?
thanks.
Hi Jim,
No, if you want a HD output to be possible I recommend that you set the screen recording area for HD already before starting to record. Otherwise it will have to stretch and no matter what you do it will not look great.
Best,
Peter
Thanks for the tutorial. It helps a lot.
THank you for the tutorial..really helpful!