Camtasia-Guide

12 Top Camtasia Tutorials and Resources

peter — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:38:02 +0000

I know a lot of people are looking for references on how to use Camtasia Studio software. As a new user, you would want to know the basic features of the product. As an experienced user, you want to know if there are product upgrades or new tricks for you to use. I have stumbled on a few good websites that should be good sources for Camtasia tips.

Please include any other references you find helpful in the comments section below and I will be sure to include them.

This list is in no particular order. OK, here we go - websites that offer Camtasia Studio tutorials and tips.

1) Help may be closer than you think. Just bring up Camtasia Studio on your desktop and press your [F1]-key. Up pops the Camtasia help file. It covers many of the topics we get questions on a day to day basis.

2) Camtasia Forums - a great way for fellow users to interact. Users could help each answer each others questions by discussing it here at TechSmith forum.

3) TechSmith FAQ Page - Check this page out for some common questions that users ask about the product.

4) Camtasia Video Tutorials - Step by step video tutorial about the software.

5) The Visual Lounge - A Camtasia community. Great source of information.

6) Camtasia Guide - Not a complete guide if we didn’t mention yours truly We have a lot of plans to increase the content, especially with more Camtasia tutorials and good stuff. Sign up to the newsletter and I will keep you posted.

7) Camtasia Tutorial Video Compilation - A video compilation uploaded by different users. It has a lot of great videos on how to use Camtasia.

8 ) Video tutorial from webreference - A video tutorial from webreference site. Very detailed video tutorials divided in 6 parts.

9) E learning at Virginia Tech - An online distance education. Offers lessons on How to use Camtasia Studio.

10) Instructional Technology Development Program - More on Camtasia tutorial topics

11) Camtasia Tutorial by Joe Liaw - A detailed tutorial made by a high school teacher. It is an audio and video tutorial.

12) Pierce College Tutorial on Camtasia - Another informative site about Camtasia.

Camtasia Studio is screen recording software with full-motion recording capability. It records the screen, voice and camera video. It is a great tool for making tutorials, presentations and advertisements and really good demonstrations.

If you don’t have this software you can buy Camtasia here.

I hope this information is helpful to all Camtasia users. If you have additional references and other websites that have great Camtasia Tutorials/Guides, please include them in the comment area below.

Until next time

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia 5.1

peter — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:23:22 +0000

Camtasia version 5.1 was just released. It includes some great new features.

Read on to find out all the details…

The New Juicy Camtasia 5.1 Details

New callouts shine the spotlight on your content
Add background music with a third audio track
Deliver screencasts to millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users
Customize Flash FLV videos with TechSmith ExpressShow
Build a Web menu for your videos with Camtasia Theater

Special Offer - Upgrade to Camtasia 5.1 (You’ll need a previous license)

Focus attention with Spotlight and Highlighter callouts

You have two new options for drawing attention to areas of the screen. Spotlight dims everything on the screen except for the part you want to emphasize. Highlighter is like applying a bright, bold highlighter pen to the screen. Both callouts grab attention…and look great!

Add callouts faster, edit them easily

Now you can add callouts with fewer clicks and edit them more intuitively. And if you want to add a lot of callouts with the same style, one after the other, that’s much easier, too.

Set the mood with a music track

Open and close your screencast with a theme…or use music to segue between sections. With a third audio track now available on the timeline, it’s easy to add background music to your videos.

Put your screen recordings on the iPhone

Steve Jobs plans to ship 10 million iPhones this year. Now you can produce your videos for iPhone and iPod touch users, at just the right dimensions, using a simple preset. Your viewers are on the go, so let them bring your videos along!

Customize FLV videos with ExpressShow

The Flash FLV format is best suited for longer screencasts that contain more motion or camera video. You can now wrap FLV videos in the sleek ExpressShow template. They’ll look fantastic…and benefit from full-screen playback, a floating table of contents, custom “about” box, and more.

Organize and present Flash videos with Camtasia Theater

Have a handful of related videos? Here’s a great way to present them online! The rebuilt Camtasia Theater makes it super easy to create a customizable Web menu for any of your Camtasia Studio-produced Flash videos. ExpressShow, SWF, FLV, with or without quizzes or hotspots—Camtasia Theater can handle them all! And your viewers will appreciate how easy it is to jump between videos using the table of contents.

Special Offer - Upgrade to Camtasia 5.1 (You’ll need a previous license)

Until next time

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia 5.02 and other News

peter — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:06:38 +0000

Camtasia 5.02
TechSmith just released a new minor upgrade - Camtasia 5.02. If you have version 5 you can upgrade to this new version from while running Camtasia Studio. Just choose Help / Check For Upgrade in the menu to download the new release.

Camtasia 5.02 fixes a production crash that can occur at the end of production when you are producing to SWF with MP3 audio in version 5.0.1.

If you don’t have version 5 yet you can go here to upgrade Camtasia.

PC Key Icon Set

If you are doing tutorials on how to work with computers or software it can be a good idea to include images showing which keys to use on the computer desktop.

Alan from Alanwho.com has created no less than 104 Standard PC Keyboard Key Icons that you can freely download and use. Go here to download the icon set.

Online Video Ads

Using video online is growing by leaps and bounds. And I am sure very few people will contradict me when I say that 2008 will be the year when online video and ads in this format will have a complete break-through. Camtasia Studio will naturally be a big part of this development. Software Marketing Secrets, a website on how to sell software has an interesting article on this. Read more about: Sell software with online video ads.

That’s all for now, see you soon

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide.

Camtasia 5.01

peter — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:37:42 +0000

A new maintenance release for Camtasia Studio 5 has just been released - maintenance release 5.01.

This is a minor release with some 34 minor bug fixes. I have used Camtasia Studio 5.0 a lot so far and have come across very few problems, but it’s always nice to see that TechSmith is on top of things and are releasing these minor upgrades.

Read on to find out what the upgrade is about.

The upgrade is free for all Camtasia Studio 5 users. You can simply access the upgrade interface through your software. Just choose “Check for Upgrade” and follow the on-screen instructions.

The upgrades included are:

General:

Fixed an issue that could display “fatal error” during install on Windows Vista.
Fixed an issue where the Audio VU meter was not working as it should with the Samson CO1U USB microphone.
Fixed an issue that would cause audio to be recorded and not use the correct mono or stereo setting.

Recorder:

Fixed a window focus issue with the main Recorder window.
Added a new hotkey option for “Last Recording Area”.
Improved the method used to “Force popup dialogs into the recording area.”

Studio:

Fixed an issue that would cause produced Flash SWF files with MP3 audio played in the the newest version of the Flash Player to sound garbled or have a high-pitched “chipmunk” sound to them.
Fixed an issue that would cause Apple iPod produced files to fail when trying to transfer them to an iPod using Apple’s iTunes with QuickTime 7.2 or later installed.
Fixed an issue that would cause an iPod production created with the production presets to not upload to Screencast.com.
Fixed an issue that was causing Screencast.com uploads to use the name of the .camproj file instead of the output video name.
Fixed an issue that would cause non-HTML output to not upload to Screencast.com properly.
Fixed an issue where the Flash TOC link during production preset creation would display the incorrect settings tab.
Fixed an issue where teh custom TOC dimensions would not be remembered for an ExpressShow production.
Fixed an issue with some Polish characters not working correctly in Callouts, Captions and Title Clips.
Fixed an issue with old projects imported into version 5 would have garbled audio.
Fixed an issue with double clicking on a zoom-n-pan keyframe on the timeline would cause the keyframe to go to full screen.
Fixed an issue with some Flash playback media not beginning playback on initial load in the browser.
Fixed an issue with long .camrec files failing to produce and causing Camtasia Studio to lock up.
Fixed an issue with F1 not launching help within the Production Preview Manager.
Fixed an issue that was causing the PiP opacity slider to not respond properly when using a mouse scroll wheel.
Fixed an issue that would cause a watermark to appear in the preview window after cancelling a production.
Fixed an issue thatouwould cause custom callouts to not be imported correctly when importing a zipped project with custom callouts.
Fixed an issue that would cause FTP profiles to disappear if production was cancelled.
Fixed an issue with custom callout names getting messed up when selecting and deselecting items in the custom callout manager on Windows Vista.
Fixed an issue that would cause the production wizard to act strangely when producing over a one hour WAV file.
Fixed an issue in Voice Narration with timeline audio becoming silenced incorrectly.
Fixed an issue that would cause callouts to become fixed in size in certain combinations of callout and captions use as well as scaling the timeline.
Fixed an issue that would cause Hotspots to not work as expected when used in ExpressShow productions.
Fixed an issue in Title Clips that would cause the green resize rectangle to disappear after adding a video to the timeline.
Fixed an issue that would cause FLV productions created with Split at Markers to not seek properly during playback.
Fixed an issue that was causing zoom keyframes to not be placed on the timeleine after extending a frame in a zoomed clip.

Audio Editor

Fixed a crash that would occurr when trying to open a PNG file in Audio Editor.

Powerpoint Add-In

Added an option to turn off/on the ability to record layered windows with the PowerPoint Add-in.

Theater

Fixed an issue where the video controls would be obscured by the scroll bar in the produced video.

Let me know if you have any comments to this latest release by posing below.

Until next time

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia 5 New Features

peter — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:53:19 +0000

Just downloaded my new Camtasia 5

Oh boy does it look nice. The new version 5.0 was released today.

Here are a few of the many new features:

Streamlined Camtasia Recorder
Snap-to-App windows sizing tool
Cross-hairs region/window selection
Inactive area dimmed during recording
Mouse returns to same position after pause
Customizable toolbar
Power-saving features of operating system can be disabled
Refined task list
Project settings with real-time preview
Industry standard 30 frames per second
AutoSave feature
Improved FLV production
Additional production presets
Right-click naming for callouts
Crop to selection option in the context menus
Camtasia SmartFocus™
Seven additional transitions
3D Edge callouts
Screen targeting option for zoom-n-pan
Optional automatic transition insertion
Precise zoom-n-pan control
Onyx controller for Flash video
TechSmith ExpressShow™
FTP output
File uploading to Screencast.com or FTP site

Click here to read more about New Camtasia 5.0 Features!

Sorry, gotto go play with Camtasia. Until next time

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia 5.0

peter — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:06:08 +0000

“Pssssst…I’ve got a secret to share” says Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s Chief Evangelist.

The Camtasia Studio team has been hard at work and we’re gearing up to release Camtasia Studio v5 on October 9th!

Want to read more?

Betsy is releasing a few new details of the new major features of Camtasia Studio 5.0.

But before we go into that I also wanted to let you know that we now include version 5.0 when you order Camtasia Studio 4. That’s right, you will get a free upgrade to the new version 5.0 on the release date!

Click here to buy Camtasia 4.0 with Free Camtasia 5.0 Upgrade!

SmartFocus

One of the goals for Camtasia 5.0 is to make it easier to use for everyone. By incorporating SmartFocus, a function that lets Camtasia follow you around the screen and easily focus in on details they are moving towards this goal.

See a video on SmartFocus here

New Snap-to-App Feature

This looks like an incredibly useful feature. For anyone that has been using Snagit you would now how useful the “window capture profile” is. This is something similar. You can basically by a click of a button choose to record the application you want to record without the hassle of trying to get the frame in the correct place. Camtasia just “snaps to the app” so to say.

See a video on snap-to-the-app here

Further Enhancements

TechSmith promises a lot of enhancements in version 5.0, both in Recording, Editing and Production.

Boy, I can’t wait for the next post from Betsy.

Until next time

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

The Definitive Camtasia Guide

peter — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:21:15 +0000

Well, I would like to say that Camtasia-Guide is the definite Camtasia Guide.

But there is another guide: “Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide“. The definitive guide is the second book by Daniel Park that goes into depth on how to get the most out of using Camtasia Studio. It’s well worth a read.

Reader reviews

“A valuable book for those interested in getting the most out of Camtasia 4.”
Ken Circeo “Media Specialist

“If you’re using Camtasia Studio to produce instructional or sales videos - or considering using it - this is the book you need.”
Jane Fleming

“I bought several books and read “how-to’s” on the internet, but this book turned out to be my savior.”
J. Ellis

SketchCasting

peter — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:20:52 +0000

Ever long for some variation to all the Powerpoints in your Camtasia presentations?

Longing back to the Whiteboard or even the Blackboard if you’re as old as I am?

Today I came across an interesting new concept, sketchcasting. As far as I have been able to work out the concept was introduced just recently by Rich Ziade of Basement.org.

Basically what you do is use a drawing software, on your computer or more powerful on a tablet PC. It is easier and you will get a more professional result using a tablet PC or a computer drawing table, because it can be quite difficult to draw with your mouse.

Here is a video introducing Sketchcasting by Rich Ziade, Basement.org. Enjoy.

Until next time,

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia 4.02 Released

peter — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:49:30 +0000

18th of July a new maintenance edition of Camtasia Studio was released - Camtasia Studio 4.02.

The new release which is a minor release (free if you own Camtasia Studio 4.0 or later). includes a number of bug fixes.

Among them:

• Fixed a crash during the initialization of the Screencast.com plug-in which prevents the automatic updating of the plug-in on some systems.

• Improved detection of sound cards capable of recording speaker audio. (A very welcome improvement as this is a support question we often receive on Camtasia support.)

• Fixed an issue where side-by-side PIP may stop playing unexpectedly.

• Fixed a timeline update issue which could cause project corruption when transitions were used on the timeline.

• Fixed a problem on Vista where a CAMREC on the timeline may report a framerate of 0fps.

You can buy Camtasia 4.02 here, or if you previously own Camtasia Studio 4.0 you can contact us to download Camtasia 4.02 here.

All the best,

Peter - Your Camtasia Guide

Camtasia in User Group Meetings

peter — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:27:50 +0000

Camtasia Studio is an incredibly versatile software and every day I read about different and creative ways to use Camtasia. I will try to cover many of the different Top uses of Camtasia Studio and have set up a Category covering that same topic.
Roy Osherove describes one way to use Camtasia in his blog ISerializable. He tells us how you can improve User Group Meetings by recording the sessions using a lapel microphone.

“Record your sessions! Use Camtasia and lapel microphones to record it. The problem is you still need to sync up the audio with the video, but if you do a lot of people will find value in this.”, he says. He also describes several other ways to improve group meetings.

Other exiting ways to use Camtasia as a Slide Show creator, but more on that shortly.

Until next time

Peter - Camtasia Guide