The initial reviews of Camtasia 7 are in. Generally I would have to say that the reviews agree with my first judgement, Camtasia 7 is a great upgrade. But as I am a bit biased (love Camtasia and all that) I thought I’d let some other reviewers have their say.

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Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration is a professional blogger and personal technology columnist. The review is published on Digital Inspiration.

Amit says: “If you are already using an older version of Camtasia, the first change that you’ll immediately notice in Camtasia Studio 7 is the revamped UI — they’ve moved from the classic XP like blue design to a black glass-like but non-transparent interface. The vertical task bar is gone and instead, you have a tabbed horizontal bar that gives you quick access to all the various editing tools but you can no longer hide this area.”

Amit goes on to mention the new features of the Library and that finds the new feature cursor effects one of the most useful features. On the negative side Amit mentions: “…the built-in title editor is very basic and there’s absolutely no support for rollovers and closing credits. As a workaround, you can produce title videos in Windows Live Movie Maker and import them into Camtasia Studio.”

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. His review is published on blogcritics.com.

Michael cover the new functionality of Camtasia Studio 7 in depth and I am quoting his final judgement here.

“I think that with all of the improvements to the prior version like the SmartFocus technology and improved recording engine that running Camtasia Studio 7 was very crisp, clean, and had a noticeable improvement in the final video rendering.

Then when you add the new library capabilities, the sketch motion feature, all of the new callouts, the improvement to the audio capabilities, the answer to my initial question is that TechSmith has made the premier video capture program even better. If you are looking for a complete product for creating and editing video casts then I highly recommend Camtasia Studio 7.”

Travis Campbell of Marketingprofessor goes through the seven reasons why he thinks you should upgrade to Camtasia 7. Here is his bottom line: “Software companies often push things out the door without adding enough value add features to justify it for customers. I’m glad to say this is not the case for Camtasia 7.

The huge time savers for me will be:

• YouTube integration
• Media library
• Improved controls for audio editing (background music).

Couple these with the:

• Revamped user interface
• Post recording motion callouts
• Improved screen recorder, and
• Improved cursor effects…

…and this could be the best version released yet.”

Nice review Travis.

And last, but not least, Screencaster Lon Naylor from Screencast profits has done an extensive review and in which he grades all the new features. Lon likes the new interface change although seasoned Camtasia users will have to get used to a few changes. Library, new callouts and keystroke callouts get several thumbs up. Lon hasn’t seen my SuperCallouts yet, I wonder what he will say about those :-0

Lon goes on to comment about getting control of the fading in and fading out audio controls. He loves those but isn’t so keen on noise removal and volume level affect all tracks. That gets the only thumbs down.

And with that I end this Reviews overview.

Happy Screencasting,

Peter – Your Camtasia Guide