Motivation: Use Camtasia Studio for video screen captures.
Features: This is Camtasia's meat and potatoes - lets see if its a feast.

Camtasia and its software builders, Techsmith, know a thing or two about still and video screen captures having one of the best utilities on the market with Snagit. So it should be no surprise that Camtasia Studio is ready and able to do video screen captures using the File | Screen Recorder wizard or the Tools | Camtasia Recorder menu command that brings up the app shown in the screen. We will use it to capture a great freeware program called ColorMania from Blacksun Software. Before capturing the video of ColorMania in action, it is useful to go View | Audio Toolbar and set the Record Audio button on if you are going to narrate the demo clip directly. Use the Tools | Options menu to have a whole array of capture settings at your disposal. I like to increase the default frame capture rate from 5 frames/second to 8 or 12 for smoother scrolling and mouse movements which are important in some programs like graphics and portal apps.
Suffice it to say, Camtasia Recorder is bristling with capture features that it is worthwhile getting to know well because touch ups and extensions to demos are inevitable. And the Recorder can truly smooth out those last minute demo edit tasks.

Loading and Editing

As for all our multimedia work we recommend that users create a specific directory for the project and record and save all media including video clips, audio clips, and screen shots to that directory. When you start up Camtasia Studio save the new project to that same directory. then before you do any editing work backup the directory to a scratch disk or CD so that you have all the original work and captures before any destructive editing.

Camtasia Studio provides a very useful Task List window which shows the common workflow for most multimedia projects. For example, the first task is to import the video clips and other assets needed on the project. For Colormania this is easy - just the video clip is required. So click on the Import Video command link and Camtasia Studio will import the .avi video into the clip bin. We might have taken a video of using the color codes captured in another program say Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver and taken a live action of that usage.

In general users will find that programs have so many important dialogs( - think of the Liquify and Effects/Filter Browser dialogs in Photoshop CS), it is inevitable to have not just one demo video clip but several even when doing an over view of a program. Such was the case with IBM DB2 table creation and loading demo or Microsoft Visio network diagramming task.

Another important feature of the TaskList is the ability collapse down the TaskList by pressing the chevrons (double hat icons). When using Camtasia Studio in cramped screen space this is very handy.

So now that we have the demo video clip loaded we will want to edit it. Simply drag the Clip from the Clip Bin down to the Video Timeline. Note that Camtasia provides a convenient "How to edit clips" tip in its set of camtasia Studio Tips - each one of these are worthwhile for refreshers or often a new way to approach an old problem.

When doing a demo video I inevitably spend a little time at the start getting organized and dally a bit at the end of the taping session. So the need to trim the clip at start and finish is first task. Fortunately, Camtasia Studio provide the convenience of dragging the Start and End handles of a clip over to quickly trim away these dalliances.

To edit dead spots or excess inside the video clip is equally easy. In the screenshot below we have carefully marked of the portion of a clip that contains a unwanted material. We used the

the Preview Monitor to precisely position the start and end of the miscreant clip (note that the Next Frame and Previous Frame controls are very helpful in this regard). All we have to do is click the Cut Button and the offending clip is cut out.

To add in a new clip is almost as easy. Again use the Preview Monitor to find where in the video clip you want to insert the new clip. Click the Split button to split the clip at this point. Then just drag and drop the new clip from the Clip Bin to the Timeline to this split point. Camtasia Studio automatically inserts the clip and moves the following clip down the timeline.

A word of caution about deleting and inserting clips. If you have added narration to your clip directly, that can be split or inadvertently deleted. Unfortunately, Camtasia Studio does not allow users to move/split out the audio track from the video (but you can edit the audio associated with video - its Audio Track 1). So users may want to defer narration until the video clips are all spliced together.

Audio and Voiceovers

Voice overs and narration are also very simple to do in Camtasia. Just choose the Voice Narration task from the Edit category in Camtasia Studio's TaskList. A wizard pops over the tasklist and Clip Bin as shown in the screenshot at the left.

Just move the Timeline selector over to the point in a video clip where you want to start your narration. Check your microphone's Input Level before recording adjust the slider accordingly. Then click the Start Recording button and talk away. When the recording is done Camtasia Studio will prompt you to save the .wav file with the narration- be sure to save it to the demo project directory. I tend to narrate by clip; but users can narrate to the end of the timeline if they so choose. When done click the Finished command link and the voice narration wizard will disappear.

Again voice narration and audio clips are just like video clips. they can be moved, trimmed and resized in the usual fashion. However, Camtasia Studio also offers a varied assortment of
audio adjustments as can be seen in the screen shot at the left.

Again you mark off/highlight the area of the audio track that you want to adjust in the time line. Then there are six adjustments possible:
Fade-in - ramps up the sound volume
Fadeout - lowers the sound to nil
Volume up- uniformly ups the volume
Volume down - down vol uniformly
Silence - erase all sound in the highlighted area(blue down arrow icon) Delete - deletes clip(red X icon)
be very careful of deleting sound from a clip because all down stream timings and synchs with the video may be knocked off kilter.

In addition, Camtasia Studio has an Audio Editor tool which allows individual .wav files to be edited. For Voice narration we found this to be invaluable. Use Tools | camtasia Audio Editor to access this.

If there is a weakness in Camtasia its the support for Audio. Only one user track is allowed and the Editor tool only supports .wav files. Users wanting to do advanced audio work will have to do so outside Camtasia Studio - perhaps Sony Sonic Foundry or Adobe Auditions.

Production

As usual Camtasia Studio provides a wizard for producing your video - and well it might because there are so many settings available to do final production in Camtasia Studio. we have just begun to experiment with them - and it appears it will have to be separate tip to appear later. Meantime just follow the defaults in the wizard, we found them to be very effective. For example our Color Mania clip took of slightly over a minute took 8 minutes to render and ended up a 1.8MB file using a 2.8MHz celeron with &00MB of memory. Not bad - but with ample room for tuning.

In sum, we found the full flight of tasks in doing a demo video recording in Camtasia Studio very easy and straightforward. Techsmith is constantly thinking of ways to hint and advise to make the task easier to do (extensive use of Windows hints, good help documentation, great Getting Started manual, etc). And it shows - I never felt flustered or lost in Camtasia Studio - they truly earn the crown for being the best video demo recording tool on the market.