Introduction

What is Camtasia?

Camtasia, also known in the Windows platform as Camtasia Studio, is a video editor and computer screen recording tool that allows you produce video content in several formats. The main purpose of this tool is to create tutorials using the output displayed on the computer’s screen.

Camtasia is a product from TechSmith Corporation, a company settled in Okemos, Michigan, in the United States. The company was founded in 1987, and provides business and academic software intended to improve collaboration and communication for people based on digital content.

Overview

Camtasia is primarily a video and audio editor. It gives the user total control over production by means of a series of advanced features, such as an editing timeline to control every frame in the video, animation-adding capabilities, chroma key effects to remove background colors, and a precise screen recorder that allows you to capture full or partial contents from the computer’s screen.

Camtasia’s main features

• Edit audio and video separately: After every recording, Camtasia will import system audio, screen video, cursor, and microphone audio onto their own tracks. This allows you to edit each one of them separately.
• Webcam incorporation: If you turn on a webcam when screen casting is started, Camtasia will automatically add all content coming from it into a separate track.
• Unlimited tracks: The multitrack timeline can hold as many tracks as you need, and you can change among them with a single click.
• Split and delete: The user can split clips, remove portions of a clip, or delete one entirely, with one mouse click.
• Noise removal and leveling: The audio tools can clean up the sound of any screencast or adjust the levels for any track the user wants.
• Captioning: Camtasia supports both open and closed captioning, and captions can be exported for translation.
• Green screen: Camtasia can remove the background color of any video with its chroma key effect, allowing you to employ the commonly used green screen effect.
• Zoom, pan, and SmartFocus: Camtasia allows you to employ panning and zooming to direct viewers’ attention to what’s important. The SmartFocus feature can do the work for you.
• Importing footage: The user can import existing videos, photos, music, and more. Also, with TechSmith Fuse, the free mobile application from TechSmith, the user can add in real-world footage.
• Multiformat exporting and saving: Camtasia can save or export video projects to MP4, WMV, MOV, AVI, etc. Also, the user can share videos using YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, and more.

Camtasia’s applications

• Marketing videos: The user can promote a product by creating compelling content and sharing it on a website or social media sites.
• Training and consulting: Camtasia helps the user create interactive training videos that can be viewed on nearly any device, so they can be shared to make them available for those who need them, no matter where they are or what device they are using.
• Customized learning: Adding clickable hotspots (links) helps to create an interactive experience within a lesson. Search options and a table of contents can be added, too, allowing students to choose which topics they want to watch.

Camtasia for Windows or Mac?

Camtasia does not share all the same features and functionality in each platform version. Some of them overlap, but each product offers unique features in order to solve specific problems for PC or Mac users. The following table displays a comparison between the two products.

Table 1: Camtasia for Windows and Camtasia for Mac comparison table

Chapter summary

Camtasia, also known as Camtasia Studio, is a video editor and computer screen recording tool that allows you to produce video content in several formats. Camtasia is a product from TechSmith Corporation, a company settled in Okemos, Michigan, in the United States. Camtasia primarily offers a video and audio editor, which gives the user total control over production by means of a series of advanced features, such as an editing timeline to control every frame in the video, animation-adding capabilities, chroma key effects to remove background colors, and a precise screen recorder that allows you to capture full or partial contents from the computer’s screen.

Some of Camtasia’s applications have to do with marketing, training, and consulting, or customized learning. There is a version of Camtasia for Windows and for Mac, but it does not share all the same features and functionality in each platform version. Some of them overlap, but each product offers unique features in order to solve specific problems for PC or Mac users.