Make Your First Video in Camtasia 2020

hi I'm Jason today I'd like to walk you through making your very first screen recording video within Camtasia let's start with the capture window we're looking at the Camtasia recorder it's best to ask yourself three simple questions what do you want people to be able to see can they see you and can they hear you first let's start with what do you want people to be able to see from the left side of the recorder you can select the area you'd like to record whether it be full screen or something smaller than that the options are available to hear underneath this drop down menu where you can choose different fullscreen and widescreen options today we're going to just record full screen for this example Camtasia can also record your webcam while you're recording if you'd like to toggle on your webcam simply click this button here and Camtasia will look for the cameras that you have plugged into your screen hovering your mouse over will give you a little bit of a preview to see what the camera looks like for today's example we're not going to worry about the webcam so we'll toggle it off here and thirdly do you want people to be able to hear you arguably it's a very important part of your videos so making sure your microphone is turned on by having this green checkmark is crucial you can also see if your voice is being picked up by looking at the audio meter here to see if you are getting input levels now we always recommend if you have a USB microphone available to you to use that because it'll give you a higher quality audio result however whatever microphone you have available to you is the best one that you can use right now now before you hit the red record button I recommend getting what you want to record up on your screen for us we're going to record a simple web interface this is a mock website that we're going to use for our recording now we're going to record full screen as we mentioned before so you should see a dotted green line around the outside of your screen that's going to show you the recording area for Camtasia when you're ready click the red record button to begin your process if it's a process that you're familiar with you may be okay with just hitting the red record button and talking through your process if you're like me it may be helpful to have a small list of No even on post-it notes to give you guidance as to what you're going to talk about let's give our sample recording a try right now when I hit the red record button Camtasia is going to give me a 3 2 1 countdown and then everything I say and everything I do after the fact will be captured by Camtasia when I'm ready to stop recording I can simply hit the f10 key to stop recording and bring it into the editor let's start our recording hello let's walk through adding a person to our process tracking board at the top of the screen we're going to click on the plus button and we're going to add a contributor by clicking the plus button here we'll add in the name and their email and then we'll select our role which for today will be follower when we're ready click the Add button the new member will show up here at the bottom we just need to enable them by clicking on this button here and then when we hit close our new contributor will be at the top of the screen as a member of the board I hope you found this useful and thanks for watching once we hit the f10 key we will see that our recording has been brought here into the Camtasia editor the Camtasia Editor is broken up into four major parts the media bin library tool area over on the left your canvas here in the middle the properties panel on the right and your timeline here at the bottom let's look at each part individually the media bin is where you're going to keep content that's going to be used for this particular recording for our case we only have one piece of media in here which is the screen recording we just captured the library is where you're going to keep content that you may want to use across multiple projects this is also a place where Camtasia has pre-loaded royalty-free assets for you to use in your recordings such as icons animated introductions and lower thirds motion backgrounds music and more the motion backgrounds are great for adding a pop of polish to your video while the outros lower thirds and intros can all be customized using the properties drawer you also have the ability to favorite tools here such as tools within the annotation area transitions behaviors animations and more the canvas is where you're going to see a preview of your video as you create it it's going to show you the media that you have in your media bin that's been added to the timeline and acts as kind of a preview window as you play through your video in fact right below the canvas is a play button that you can click on to watch back your video as it was being recorded and as you make edits to it over on the right hand side you see the properties panel where the options change dynamically depending on the type of media you have selected for example if I click off this area and click on the recording that we just did I see that I have a couple of tabs here across the top of things that I can change about my media everything from the size to some editing of the audio and the ability to change and resize the cursor the properties panel will change dynamically based on the tool that you have selected and we'll see that a little bit later when we add some annotations to our video last but certainly not least here at the bottom we have your timeline the timeline is exactly that it has the playhead and it's where the media is going to be located for you to create your video the playhead starts here at the left and goes along your entire recording as the video was being captured and as your edits are made the video will end when the playhead gets to the end of the media and there's nothing left on the timeline to utilize we will actually use the timeline and the canvas to do some of our edits today first thing first let's save our project if you notice at the top of the screen right above the canvas it says TechSmith camtasia untitled project well we want to save our project so that we can come back into it and edit it later or so we can hand it off to someone else in case more than one person's going to be working on this video to save the project we simply go to file save and give it a name once we've saved it Camtasia lets us know that this particular file this TSC proj file or TechSmith project file can only be open by Camtasia and the new name of our project is located up here at the top of our screen next let's take a quick look at our timeline you'll notice that there are two tracks here on our timeline track one is our screen recording this was what was captured on our screen earlier and we have our audio track which is all of my spoken word that I use to describe the action of which was happening on the screen what I'd like to do first and foremost is what I call wholesale cuts these are cuts to my video perhaps removal of errors possible load screen times just anything that's gonna help tighten up our video if we look underneath the canvas over here to the right we will see that our video is currently 48 seconds long well once we're done with a few cuts we'll be able to see that that time has lowered so first I'm gonna take my playhead and notice that here on my timeline there is an area at the beginning of the video where there's no audio that's been recorded and I can tell that because there's no audio wav files being drawn it's just kind of quiet and that was us playing our video and seeing what was ready to go let's play back our video and see how it starts out hello let's walk through adding a person to our process tracking board okay so what that has shown us is that that area at the beginning is blank meaning there was no speaking done and there's no action that's happening on the screen so we can probably cut a good section of that out here's the easiest way to do it if you notice on our playhead down here on the timeline there's a green tab and a red tab that's actually the selection tool within Camtasia and it lets us make really precise cuts and edits to use a selection tool you simply click on one of the tabs either the red to the green in this case I'm going to click on the green to drag it to the left and I'm gonna make a selection of my video and the area that I'm selecting is where I didn't do any speaking whatsoever when I've made that selection I'm gonna simply hit the scissors button which provides a cut action and when I cut it it removes that part of the video completely and if we look over here to our timeline right above it we'll see that the time has changed from 48 seconds down to 45 meaning we've cut 3 seconds of video off of our video which was not needed so to complete those wholesale cuts I can go through with my playhead and find sections of the video where I can cut sections out for example here's a section at the end which can easily be removed because there's no speaking going on and no action on the screen once I make those wholesale cuts I start making edits to take my video to a more polished State something as simple as adding intro and outro transitions can be a powerful way to polish your video up here within Camtasia we have a series of transitions built in and they're easy to add first we'll click on the transitions button and we'll select the transition that best suits our video for me I'm going to use the fade transition to add it to my video I simply click on it and drag it down to the media and you'll notice as I drag down there's a yellow space on the left side and the right side of my media that shows where this particular transition would be applied if I drag it to the left it'll turn green and create a fade in if I drag it to the right it'll create a green area that's going to fade out but I want it to fade in and out so in order to have that happen I simply drag the transition down to the middle of the media let go and now both a fade in and a fade out action has occurred and I can check that by bringing my playhead back to the beginning of the video and hitting play hello let's walk through a beautiful fade in and then if we place the playhead at the end we will see it fade out and thanks for watching so just like that we made a couple of quick edits that add a little bit of Polish your video with very limited effort the next thing I typically do is utilize Camtasia as cursor effects specifically our cursor smoothing effect that takes a jagged movement on the screen by the cursor or for someone like me who talks with their hands and smooths out that action with one simple movement to apply cursor smoothing to this video I simply click on it drag it down onto that same screen recording and now my cursor will have a nice smooth effect to it next let's use some call-outs to draw attention to certain parts of our screen in the video there's a portion when I click on the plus button in the upper part of the screen and then bring it down to where we're going to add another plus button to add a managing member of the page so let's place the playhead where I start talking about clicking on the plus button to add someone in I believe it's right here at the top of the screen we're gonna click on the plus button ok so at the top of the screen we're gonna click on the plus button let's do something really helpful for us and that is right above the timeline there is a magnifying glass button if I click on that button it's actually going to take the timeline and give all the viewable area available to me for my entire project meaning I can see the beginning of the project all the way to the end at the right hand side that also gives a little bit more detail on the timeline so we can make very very precision movements by placing things on the timeline without having to guess where things are so let's go into the our toolset and we're going to go over to annotations and we're gonna add something simple we're gonna add this red arrow to our video when I click on the arrow and drag it onto the canvas and place it where I'd like to be I can do a couple things with it right away first what I want you to notice is while we've added this to our screen the properties drawer on the right hand side has changed where we can control colors sizing text you name it the properties panel always changes dynamically based on the type of media that you have selected so for us let's make some simple changes one I don't think I need any text on this particular call-out so I'm gonna double click in that area and just hit the lead on my keyboard to remove that text next this arrow is comically oversized for me so I'm just gonna use these adjustment handles and resize it to the point where I think I'm happy with it and then I'm simply going to position it on the screen where I want it pointing in this case we're talking about this plus arrowed area now I'd like you to notice something at the bottom of the screen here on our timeline when I dragged the arrow onto the canvas this call-out appeared on the track track number 3 in this case this is where the arrow is going to show up on our video now because it's a piece of media in this case it's a still image of an arrow it can be adjusted as well I can reposition it by dragging it left or right putting it wherever I need it as well as lengthening the time it's on the screen or shortening it by dragging on either end of the call-out to make changes to its duration that's going to be really helpful to us because we're actually going to animate this arrow to come in and move around for us don't worry animations are pretty easy to do first let's have this arrow fade in on the screen and we can have it fade in the same way we had our screen recording fade in by going up to the transitions choosing fade and clicking and dragging it down here onto the call out and remember dragging it to the middle gives us both a fade-in and a fade-out action so now let's play this video back and see how that arrow shows up on our screen board at the top of the screen we're going to click on the plus button and we're going to add a contributor okay so we had it fade in nice and neat and then we're actually talking about this plus button down here at the bottom of this area so what I would like to have done is I'd like this same arrow to move from here down to this plus button well I need to extend how long the arrows on the screen so I'm going to come down to my timeline and I'm going to simply drag the arrow out a little longer and to animate that arrow what we're going to do is we're going to create a custom animation first we're going to place the playhead exactly where we want the animation to end which is right here I want it pointing at that plus button at the same time that my mouse gets there to add an animation we come up to the animations tool and we're going to click on the tab at the top for our Windows users called animations and there's lots of pre-built animations in here but I'm going to teach you right now how to use the custom animation to apply a custom animation we click and drag it down onto the timeline and it will actually form this arrow on the piece of media I'm going to drag the arrow so that the head of the arrow hits the playhead right where I want the animation to stop so the way animations work in Camtasia is this when the playhead hits the tail of the arrow the animation begins and then as the playhead goes along the body of the arrow the animation happens and then ends right at the head of the arrow what's neat about animations is you can actually change how fast or slow they happen by clicking on either end of the arrow and dragging that animation out or shortening it up now to get that arrow in a position we want it to be we simply double click on the head of the arrow so it snaps the playhead right there right to the end of that animation we come up to the canvas and we simply click on our arrow here they call out and drag it into the position we'd like it to be in in this case we were having it move from here down to this plus button and as we come down to the timeline and drag the playhead back across that animation you'll actually see the arrow move up on the screen because we've created an animation that tells Camtasia at this point we'd like you to start moving the arrow and slide it down to this plus button so let's play that entire arrow sequence out by moving the playhead ahead of the call-out itself and hitting play at the top of the screen we're going to click on the plus button and we're going to add a contributor by clicking the plus button here we'll add in them so what we see now is it did the animation just wait clue it like we liked and I'd actually like the arrow to fade out a little bit before this add a new member screen pops up so gonna bring my playhead right to the point where it stops right before it shows up and then I'm gonna take the media here down on the timeline and I'm gonna click and drag the end of it back here so that it lines up with right at the moment where the playhead is so that when I play this back the arrow will drop down and then right before that screen pops up the arrow will have faded out and I can move on with the rest of my video so you can actually do this sort of action with many different types of annotation tools here in Camtasia everything from standard call-outs which are shapes with text to arrows to basic shapes you have blur tools across the top as well as highlighting in spotlights you even have sketch motion costs that look like they're being drawn on the screen as well as the ability to capture keystroke call-outs so in case you're showing someone how to do something with keyboard shortcuts you can do those as well so you can do a series of other animations and other call-outs but let's pretend for right now that we're done with this video when you're done with it you want to share it outside of Camtasia so others can view it remember right now it's in this TSC proj files format which means the only thing that can open it is Camtasia so what we're gonna do is we're gonna save it out to a format that anyone can view to share your video outside of Camtasia you're gonna click on the share button in the upper right hand corner and when you do that you have several different options available to you saving it as a local file a couple of cloud destinations like techsmith's screencast.com or video-review you've got Vimeo YouTube Google Drive and more for our example today we're gonna save it as a local file and since the dimensions of the video are 1280 by 720 we're actually going to use this drop down menu and produce a 720p mp4 we choose mp4 s because those are the most ubiquitous playback formats which means most devices should be able to watch it without any problem so we'll click on that choose next we can name the video whatever we'd like however Camtasia always takes the name from the current project name as it is which for us is just my first video and then we can locate wherever you want to save it for us we're just gonna put it on our desktop today and we hit save and when we're ready we click finish and Camtasia begins to render out our project now the time it takes to render depends on your speed of your computer length of the video and a few other things but once it hits 100% we can go right to our desktop or wherever we save that video and we will see my first video hello let's walk through adding a person to our process tracking board at the top of the screen we're going to click on the plus button and we're going to add a contributor by clicking the plus button here as you can see we were easily able to watch our video and see some of those wonderful edits that we made I hope you found this useful remember you can always learn lots more about Camtasia or any other product at TechSmith makes by visiting us on our web page at techsmith.com slash tutorial good luck and enjoy making your first videos with Camtasia

Channel: TechSmith

Views: 76,439

Keywords: TechSmith, Screencast, Video, how do I, how to, capturing, demo video, recording my screen, training, documentation, explain a process, show someone how to

Id: uoRG7zivQYw

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020