By Dale Farris, President
Golden Triangle PC Club
February 2002

Program Overview

Camtasia 3.0.1 is a suite of highly specialized tools that are designed to produce a video of anything you see on your PC screen, and makes it easy to record, edit, and publish high-impact, professional videos of desktop action. Camtasia comes from TechSmith, the same company famous for their highly successful image and screen capture program, SnagIt. With this neat program, creating high fidelity videos has been made very easy for literally anyone.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a moving picture is invaluable for explaining the complicated content on today’s computers. Camtasia captures the action and sound from any part of a Windows desktop, and saves it to a standard AVI movie file or even streaming video. With this program,  you can share Camtasia screen recordings on a Web site, distribute them via e-mail, inside an Intranet, or save (burn) to a CD RW disc. 

The Camtasia suite of tools makes it easy to record, edit and publish high fidelity, compressed videos for computer-based training, technical support solutions, product demonstrations, sales presentations and more. Camtasia is perfect for the training and development industry, educational settings, and especially those involved in online distance learning.

Camtasia supports interest in being able to capture, share and manage knowledge. You can use the program to make and share how-to videos that would integrate well with any company's help desk function, online help desk, or other approaches to user support.

You can also use Camtasia to document and record errors, monitor desktop use and activities, process live content, and to annotate documents with voice and video for applications like CAD designs, medical images and web sites. The program will allow you to preserve and archive desktop activities, and record, share and archive online conference content.

Camtasia's Recorder can capture cursor movements, menu selections, pop-up windows, layered windows, typing, and everything else you see on your screen. Use its ScreenDraw feature to draw on your desktop, while you record a movie, just like television sportscasters. Use Camtasia’s powerful ScreenPad annotation feature to add callouts, logos, and graphics as you record your movie. Also, you can apply real-time effects, such as mouse cursor and object highlighting, graphic and image annotations, watermarks, time stamps, captioning, as well as audible mouse clicks.

Move in for a closer look with Zoom, and then pan the capture frame across the screen to show more detail. Camtasia’s non-linear editor quickly edits, trims and joins AVI clips. You can easily add transition and watermark effects to any video. Include AVI’s you have created with Camtasia Recorder, or incorporate an AVI file from another source.

Produce industry standard movie files, using Microsoft Windows Media, RealNetworks RealMedia, or Apple QuickTime streaming formats, and work with the Camtasia for Real Player Plug-In videos, or animated GIFs with Camtasia Producer. Compress your videos into an e-mail friendly executable using Pack and Show. 

Audio Narrate your Camtasia screencam video while you record your movie, or use TechSmith's DubIt program (included free with Camtasia) to add narration and sound effects to any AVI movie while you view it. The Live Broadcast-Live Output feature supports broadcasting a screen image or video over the Internet in real-time. The ScreenCam simulates a hardware PC camera and works with streaming media encoders, video conferencing and webcam applications. All of Camtasia’s special effects, such as annotations, watermarks and cursor highlighting, are available using this feature.

Camtasia supports the AVI format and standard video for windows audio and video codecs. You can modify videos created by Camtasia with other AVI editors, and use AVI files from any source in the Camtasia Producer. From the vendor neutral AVI format, you can produce Microsoft or RealNetworks streaming media files.

The Camtasia Player, included with Camtasia, is an easy to use, standalone movie player that guarantees high quality playback of any AVI movies. Or play Camtasia screencam movies with the Windows Media Player or RealNetwork's RealPlayer.

Only Camtasia offers exact video renderings of desktop activity and superior file compression in industry standard formats. TechSmith accomplished this by developing the TechSmith Screen Capture Codec (TSCC) expressly for screen recording. Unlike lossy video codecs designed for movies, the TSCC codec provides exact video renderings coupled with excellent compression ratios and performance. Clips encoded by TSCC preserve image quality through multiple decompression / recompression cycles.

TechSmith recommends always using the TSCC Codec for screen recording and editing, as no other codec can give similar results. Camtasia is also fully compliant with the Video for Windows specification, so you can choose the TechSmith codec or any other video codec for final distribution. Camtasia also allows you to use the audio codec of your choice. 

Camtasia is very easy to use and very effective. For use, for example, in creating computer training tutorials, Camtasia’s combination of audio and active visual messages would support this effective training technique even for people who know nothing about computers.

What's New in Version 3.0.1?

Designed for Windows XP
Support for Layered Window Capture in Camtasia Recorder
Produce Apple QuickTime Movies
Camtasia For Real Player Plug-In
Save Audio Track As An Audio File
Save A Movie Frame As A Still Image
Produce Movies For A Target Bit Rate
Enhanced RealMedia Codec Support for Camtasia Producer

Camtasia consists of three primary applications, including the Camtasia Recorder, Camtasia Producer, and the DubIt Audio Editor

Super Included Features

Camtasia’s easy-to-use VCR-style interface makes creating custom videos a breeze. Input defines the area of the desktop Camtasia will record. Four options provide the flexibility to capture exactly what part of the screen you want to include in your video.

Screen captures the entire computer desktop area, Window changes the cursor to a finger used to point to the window to be captured, Region changes the cursor to a crosshair pointer to define a region of your desktop, and Fixed Region sets a specific region in pixels. Output tells Camtasia where to send the images you are capturing with the Recorder.

File saves your screen recording to an industry standard AVI file. The AVI files you create with Camtasia can be imported or edited in any third-party application that supports the AVI format. Live takes advantage of Camtasia’s advanced Live Output feature. Rather than saving your screen capture video to a file, you can send what you capture as you capture it, in real-time, literally sending out a live broadcast of desktop activity.

Camtasia simulates a hardware PC camera and works with streaming media encoders (Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder and RealNetworks’ RealProducer), video conferencing and webcam applications. Camtasia looks like a standard Video for Windows video capture device to these applications.

Single Frame capture mode grabs one frame at a time. Use the record button like a camera shutter button to capture frame-by-frame. Single Frame capture is useful to create a slide show style movie. Designed to enhance the quality of your movie, Quick Capture speeds up the frame rate for the pointer, making cursor movements less choppy on slower systems. This setting is ideal for situations where you have a lot of cursor movement without much background change. Capture frame rates are increased by as much as 2 to 7 times using Quick Capture. 

Select Camtasia's Layered Window capture option to make movies that include translucent and irregular shaped windows that other screencam apps fail to grab. Create AVI files using any of the standard Windows audio/video codecs, or the optional Camtasia TSCC video codec. Camtasia AVI files play back in standard media players without any plug-ins when standard Windows audio/video codecs are used.

Audio Adding your narration to Camtasia videos is fast and easy. Speak into the microphone while you record your screen capture video, or use DubIt to overlay and audio track to any AVI file. Camtasia’s effects offer configuration flexibility to choose the fonts, colors, size and appearance that will enhance the professional appearance of your videos. Effects are easily toggled on and off in the Camtasia Recorder, and most allow you to preview changes before you proceed with your movie making.

ScreenPad adds floating annotations such as graphic shapes and images like arrows, callout boxes and logos to emphasize specific areas in your recordings. Simply drag-and-drop objects from the ScreenPad to your desktop. The annotations will appear to "float" on your desktop and can be repositioned by clicking and dragging them to a new location. Create your own annotation objects or import bitmap, gif and jpeg images to use as shapes. Once you have a collection of shapes positioned on your desktop, save them as a layout, making it easy to place multiple ScreenPad objects in one quick step.

Create an unlimited number of custom object and layout libraries. ScreenDraw allows you to draw on your desktop while you record a movie. Make your movies lively and easier to understand by underlining, pointing and illustrating with the freehand draw tool. Annotate the screen just like television sportscasters. 

Add a Time/Date stamp and/or a Caption to your video. The caption will display for the duration of your movie, while you define the length of time Camtasia will display the Time/Date stamp (e.g., 5 seconds). Brand your videos with a custom Watermark, just like the television networks. You decide whether to overlay, underlay or emboss your watermark and control its size and position on the screen. 

Highlight and AutoHighlight are helpful in drawing the viewer’s attention to an exact area of the screen. Highlight allows you to select a window or portion of a window prior to recording. A colored highlight box will appear around this area in the video. AutoHighlight is similar, except that rather than staying in one place, the highlight follows the cursor as it moves across the screen while you’re recording. You can adjust the color and width of the highlight.

Viewers sometimes find it difficult to find and follow the cursor in a screen capture video. Cursor Highlight adds effects such as circles, stars, rings, etc. that will shadow the cursor as it moves across the video and/or appear when you click the right or left mouse button. Use Zoom during recording to show more detail on screen or cover more area. The plus and minus zoom options zoom the capture area in and out in increments, always maintaining the aspect ratio.

The ZoomTo button will zoom directly to a certain size, or to a specific region, window or the full screen. The Zoom Undo button reverts back to the last zoom size and toggles between the last two zoom sizes. AutoZoom allows you to zoom between two windows, regions, etc., with a smooth, professional appearance. Camtasia’s AutoZoom automatically pans the area and zooms in smoothly.

Panning captures a smaller area of the screen where the action is and ignores the inactive areas. This reduces file size and helps focus the viewer’s attention. To manually Pan, point to the frame of the defined capture area and drag it across the screen. AutoPan keeps your cursor in the center of the capture region and follows the pointer across the desktop. Camtasia Producer

Use the Thumbnail File Explorer to easily select the video clip(s) you want to include in your finished product. Double-click a file thumbnail to bring the clip into the Editor. You can also drag clips directly into the Storyboard. 

The Editor is a viewer and an editor of individual movie clips. You can use the timeline edit bar and VCR buttons to scan through a clip frame-by-frame, making it easy to trim AVI clips with accuracy. Or save single frames as a still image, a great way to make thumbnail links when sharing your video clips. 

The Storyboard contains clips that will go into the final produced movie in the order in which they appear. You can join any number of clips together by simply dragging them into the Storyboard. You can even add still images (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF) to your movies on the storyboard, a great way to add titles and credits, or create a slideshow. Add Transition effects between AVI clips by selecting the clip you want the transition to lead into. Select from over 78 different transition effects. An arrow will mark the clips that you have added a transition effect to.

Camtasia lets you save your unfinished work as a Project File, or you may save your completed work as a new movie. To create a new video from the storyboard, choose Produce Movie from the file menu. Camtasia Producer creates standard AVI files, Microsoft ASF, Microsoft WMV, RealMedia and Apple QuickTime streaming video files, Camtasia for Real Player Plug-In videos, or animated GIFs.

A wizard walks you through all of the possible options for customizing your movie, including watermarking, frame size, compression and copyright information, and then prompts you to save the video. Videos can be produced using any of the standard Windows audio/video codecs, standard streaming media audio/video codecs, or our optional TSCC video codec.

Use the Camtasia TSCC video codec during capture and editing to preserve 100% lossless quality, even over multiple editing cycles. Play your movies with Camtasia Player - an easy to use, standalone movie player that guarantees high quality playback of your AVI movies. 

Camtasia videos also playback using standard media players without any plug-ins when standard Windows or streaming media audio/video codecs are used. Pack and Show allows you to package your movie and the TSCC codec and/or Camtasia Player as a Windows-executable file (.exe). When users receive the .exe file, they simply double-click it to unpack it, install TSCC and/or Camtasia Player, and show the movie. 

There are several advantages to Pack and Show: Users get everything they need to view a TSCC-encoded movie. Camtasia Player guarantees high quality playback The packaging process may reduce the size of files to be distributed without affecting the movie quality. For example, when the movie contains uncompressed audio, the audio quality will be unaffected by packaging.

Targeted Customers

Besides the significant interest in Camtasia of the avid digital video camera users and still camera hobbyists, Camtasia provides and important and effective tool for most all businesses. After time invested in using Camtasia to create necessary training videos, then companies can begin to take advantage of the program as they distribute these in-house training videos to their employees, while not having to pay staff to present these training sessions over and over.

Companies that sell products can use Camtasia to produce videos explaining their products and service, and of course information systems tech support staff can use Camtasia to help users with software tutorials they customize to fit their particular needs.

You can also use Camtasia to record interactive discussions, net meetings, and live demonstrations of all sorts. With the continual reduction in price and increase in features in digital video cameras, this is opening a larger market for these tools, and now with Camtasia, you can begin to organize these digital video files into meaningful learning opportunities in most all organizations.

The posting of the files on the Internet, or inside an Intranet, means companies can assure more of their external and internal customers get the information the companies need distributed.

Price

$149.95 single user license
$499.75 5-user license
Free upgrade - users of versions 2.1, 2.2, or 3.0 (s/h fee to mail disc)

$169.95 special bundle price for Camtasia, SnagIt, and DubIt

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

Windows 95 OSR2, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP
P-90 MHz processor (400 MHz recommended)
16MB RAM (64 MB recommended)
12MB free hard disk space for program installation
Windows-compatible sound card and microphone (recommended)

The Windows Media Tools bundle is required to produce Microsoft Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) videos. It is available for download at Microsoft's web site. Camtasia requires a Windows supported sound card to record and play back narration.

About TechSmith.com

The TechSmith Corporation develops practical screen capture software, and video screen recording and production tools to capture and manipulate images, video and voice. Applications for TechSmith products range from technical documentation and software demonstrations to developing streaming content for web sites and broadcasting desktop activity over the Internet.

SnagIt is their very successful and quite popular advanced screen capture software, introduced in 1990, that has a large and loyal following. SnagIt has become "The Screen Capture Standard" in the Windows world. Camtasia, their multimedia video screen capture and production tool, was originally unveiled in the 1999 Fall Comdex. Camtasia quickly established itself as a must-have tool for people who want to capture the action from the Windows desktop and save it in industry standard video formats.

Established in 1987 and located in East Lansing, Michigan, TechSmith initially provided custom Windows software development and local area network remote access consulting and solutions. The shift to product development was completed in the early 1990s. TechSmith is a privately held Michigan corporation rated 3A1 by Dun & Bradstreet. 

TechSmith holds several registered trademarks and domain names, including techsmith.com, snagit.com, dubit.com and camtasia.com. TechSmith's co-founder and president is William Hamilton.

Contact Information

Cindy Fuhrman
Jeremy Van Wagnen
Betsy Weber
TechSmith Corporation
1780 E. Grand River Avenue
East Lansing, Michigan 48823-4907
517-333-2100, ext. 173
FAX 517-333-1888
c.fuhrman@techsmith.com
j.vanwagnen@techsmith.com
b.weber@techsmith.com
www.techsmith.com

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