TechSmith Camtasia is an all-in-one screen recorder and video editor program compatible with both Mac OS and Windows, featuring customizable video templates, device frames, intros/outros/motion graphics/themes that may be uploaded directly to Panopto for upload.
Camtasia allows users to add gesture effects (double tap, pinch pinch pinch swipe and other actions) easily when editing videos on Mac but not PCs.
Powerful Screen Recording
Record and edit videos easily to engage your audience with polished content, from software demonstrations and visual presentations to polling/quizzing sessions and beyond. Create high-quality recordings using voice annotation, image and text manipulation tools, audio annotation, audio annotation, images/text manipulation tools, graphics eLearning modules music animation video overlay callout polling quizzing etc… Easily share finished videos via various formats including YouTube or an LMS.
TechSmith Camtasia is a powerful yet intuitive video editing and screen capture software solution, making professional-quality videos effortless to create. Rated highly for ease of use, functionality, and versatility on G2 Crowd. Camtasia boasts both simple yet advanced screen recording features as well as an impressive array of editing tools that makes it the best option for creating high-quality videos.
Camtasia 2022 provides a user-friendly interface, making it perfect for both novices and experts. It includes built-in templates and motion backgrounds, powerful cursor effects, customizable export settings, as well as a robust library of free video clips.
Other features available in the latest version include interactive quizzing, PowerPoint integration, on-screen annotations and callouts. It also comes equipped with many new mouse cursor effects like smoothing, path editing and cursor replacement to emphasize and customize movement of their computer mouse cursor.
Camtasia allows users to choose which area of their screen to record, before selecting from various capture options – from fullscreen capture, window capture or just the mouse cursor – as well as audio recording (system audio or microphone input). Users can save their video file directly onto their computers or shareable links that can be posted online such as YouTube and Vimeo.
Camtasia provides weekly tutorials, how-to guides, and helpful blog posts designed to familiarize users with all its functions and features. In addition, the Camtasia community forum serves as an invaluable source for getting answers to any queries users might have. Furthermore, TechSmith maintains a team of customer support representatives available 24/7 should anyone require help using Camtasia.
Easy Video Editing
Camtasia starts off with a straightforward welcome screen that gives you access to recent recordings, templates and the option for creating new projects. From there you are taken directly into its editing suite – an immersive non-linear video editor featuring timeline bars full of features as well as an extensive library of effects, animations, behaviors and cursor effects.
With its drag-and-drop interface, editing video or audio content has never been simpler! Simply add, delete, trim or move sections as required – plus quickly access commonly used tools and effects while saving custom styles or configurations for quick use!
TechSmith Camtasia features several video-making capabilities that can make your videos more effective and engaging, regardless of their purpose or intended audience. You can easily add closed captions to videos so they are accessible and inclusive for all learners; alternatively, use its green screen recording feature to record in front of an image or video background and make them visually more appealing.
Camtasia can help you create and edit HD videos and images, then combine them in pre-made templates for creating job aids or how-to documents. Furthermore, Camtasia makes PowerPoint presentations into videos by either recording directly onto its Add-In, or import slides directly into Camtasia.
Camtasia offers powerful video editing features to highlight important information on-screen, such as callouts, arrows, shapes, lower thirds and sketch motion. Annotations such as callouts, arrows, shapes, lower thirds and sketch motion help draw the eye directly to specific elements or text on screen while effects like highlight magnify spotlight and smooth mouse cursor movement can add an elegant finish to any video.
Finally, you can edit the sound in your videos to improve speech clarity or reduce background noise. Audio editing software offers tools such as amplifying/decreasing/equalizing/normalizing as well as selecting specific frequencies to focus on/highlight specific portions of audio. Furthermore, adding a VU audio meter allows you to continuously monitor and adjust your audio level as you go along.
Interactive Quizzes and Polls
Interactive quizzes or polls added to videos can make them even more effective learning tools, enabling teachers to evaluate students’ understanding of key concepts while ascertaining which material was missed. By inserting such elements, educators can assess students’ comprehension and identify areas where additional instruction might be necessary.
Camtasia makes creating these features straightforward; simply click Interactivity in the Toolbar and choose either Add Quiz to Timeline or Attach Quiz to Selected Media to add them. With either option, quizzes can be moved freely around the timeline while other features remain attached permanently to a piece of media you attach it to.
Both quiz options provide their own properties panels, where you can configure the types of questions to ask and the answers available for selection. You can set how many multiple-choice or open-ended questions will appear per quiz round; when correct answers should be shown immediately after user submission of a response; aggregate quiz results versus how you want them displayed to viewers; etc.
We like how you can display quiz results in different forms – tables, bar graphs and pie charts are all great choices – as well as pop-up windows for each quiz to display results or overview of answers. Furthermore, you can select default text that appears on user buttons to adjust how they look in preview window.
Camtasia has recently improved the quality of its outputs, supporting a range of formats suitable for uploading to online platforms or embedding into web pages. You can even save videos as SCORM-compliant files to use within an LMS system or send them via email directly to participants.
This program does an exceptional job of aligning cuts across audio, video, still images, on-screen text and graphical callout layers, etc. However, its lack of an option to enter exact timing for cuts can be frustrating when working with short clips or need to sync it precisely to music soundtrack beats.
Cross-Platform Support
TechSmith Camtasia was designed to work seamlessly across both Mac and Windows platforms, using identical recorder and editor software in both versions. One license covers use on either platform. While recorded videos and edited projects may be cross-platform compatible, editing on different platforms may produce different results due to differences in file storage systems; Camtasia for Mac uses bundles (folders on disk that appear like files) while Camtasia for Windows uses zipped project files that only reference media used within videos.
To ensure that all content and media required for a project are accessible when using Camtasia, it is best to utilize local hard drives instead of network or cloud storage solutions. Network drives or cloud storage may lead to crashes, projects not opening properly or poor performance of Camtasia; similarly read/write access of file systems is key and delays can disrupt editing experiences significantly.
Camtasia provides another helpful method of sharing and backing up projects: using its Export to zipped project option, you can store all media assets together into a single file for easy sharing between desktop computers at work and personal computers at home. This feature can especially useful if working on one project requires switching platforms when editing a different version later.
Camtasia packages (.campackage) allow users to share and reuse video resources across computers. Such resources could include templates, shortcuts, libraries, themes, tool presets and export presets. To create one in Camtasia select File > Export to Zipped Project then enter a project name and file location before clicking “Export.” Camtasia then saves a zipped project file containing all media and assets to that location.
Camtasia for Mac 2020.0.19 and 2022 have become Universal apps, providing full support for Apple Silicon. This enables them to take full advantage of macOS 13 Ventura’s native system audio recording for seamless system recording capabilities.
