Camtasia Guide

Hello Friends,

I’m back with another Tutorial series for Camtasia Studio, answering the frequently asked questions from Camtasia Studio fans!

Have you tried recording an on-screen video and  when you played it back, the video appears blurry or has poor quality?

What Causes Blurry Screen Video in Camtasia?

There are two general causes of blurry videos in Camtasia Studio, but first a little  about  Camtasia Studio Codec….

Codecs are the algorithms being used to compress a video, most of the time installed as a software embedded within a hardware. They are of the same idea as in compressing files using a program like WinZip.

Video codecs are categorized into two types of compression:

Lossless codecs/compression - you lose nothing, but you can’t compress much.
Lossy codecs/compression - you lose quality in return, you achieve great downsizing.

Camtasia is equipped with a TSCC video codec that is lossless, thus, compressed videos with TSCC have great quality!

Having said that there is no reason why your Camtasia Videos should lose any quality unless you are doing something wrong.

Moving on, here are the general causes of blurry videos.

SCALING YOUR VIDEO IN A PLAYER OR IN THE CAMTASIA DURING VIDEO PRODUCTION

• If you scale the video during playback to other sizes than the original size, quality will lessen.

• If you use the default setup of Camtasia Recorder and produce videos with the TSCC codec, the playback should have a very good quality and looks similar to the screen.

• If video is played in a Media Player, the quality is lessened due to the “skins” mode of Media Player causing the video to be played back at a different size than the required 100% original size. Trying to change the video size will still not work.

How to Fix Camtasia Studio Blurry Screen Videos

SOLUTION 1 – Configure Media Player to avoid videos from scaling.

For Media Player 11:

1. Open Windows Media Player.
2. Go to View.
3. Choose Video Size.
4. Fit PLAYER to video on Start.

For Media Player 9 or 10:

1. Change your Media Player’s skin mode to “Classic” mode, to do so, just press Skin Chooser button and select “Classic”.
2. Go to View.
3. Choose Video Size then set it to 100%
4. Run the player to Compact mode.
5. Select View, then choose Skin Mode.
6. Run it in 6.4 mode.

How to use Media Player in v6.4 mode:

1. Go to Program Files, then choose Windows Media Player.
2. Run MPLAYER2.EXE file.
3. On v6.4 mode  select View > Options > Formats, select All > Apply > OK.
4. Select View > Options > Playback , then set the Zoom level to 100%.

SOLUTION 2 – use  Camtasia Player or other player that doesn’t scale videos.

PRODUCING THE VIDEO USING A “LOSSY” CODEC

By default, Camtasia Studio will now scale the video. For you to be able to produce video with the same good quality,  simply follow these steps:

1. Once you’re done with your captures screencast, click on Produce.
2. Choose your desired output, click Next.
3. Select your desired format, click Next.
4. On the Fit in field, click on the drop-down arrow and choose the largest video size, click Next.
5. Click Next.
6. Select the output location, click Finish.

That’s all there is to it. I hope this has been again helpful to you!

Until Next Time

Peter – Your Camtasia Guide