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Camtasia Tutorial for Beginners!
people use Camtasia for two reasons. On one hand, it's an absolutely amazing video editing software, it's user friendly and I absolutely love it And on the other hand, you can also record your screen to do one of those screen capture videos.
How to edit in Camtasia?
You have three important screens here, on the left you have the media bin with a lot of other tabs as well, which I suggest you feel free to explore a bit later On the right where right now it's completely black, we have the preview screen where we're gonna see how our video looks and behaves And on the bottom is basically the heart of any video editing software This is called the timeline And we have multiple tracks and this thing right here, which we cannot drag right now because we don't have anything, but basically, it goes from 0 and all the way to 15s and 30s and so on depending on how long our video is Alright, so first things first, let's import some footage or media files into our project So I already have those two videos selected here, I'm just gonna drag & drop them here in the media bin And as you can see here, to make it super easy for us, Camtasia already generated some thumbnails so we know which video is what And if you hover your mouse over the video and just do this you can actually scroll through it to see, to see what this video is actually about, which is pretty cool Alright,
Camtasia tool |
it looks pretty cool And you use this tool right here called "split" And what it does it's just gonna split the video in half And you can just move this to the right and just right-click delete it And just use this part right here But say, for example, you change your mind later You can just use the end right here and just click and drag to extend it all the way to where it was initially Or for example, you wanna use this clip again in a different part of the video You're just gonna right-click, copy and then move here for example and just gonna paste the media at the play head And now we have two copies of the same video But I'm just gonna delete this one So basically, that's a super-easy way to just make your media files longer, shorter and just play around with them and see... And see what works for you Now a really important concept to understand is the order of the tracks right here The way Camtasia and basically any other video editing software works, is it's gonna use this as the priority in which you wanna see the videos So this one right here, on track #3, because it's on top of everything else, it's just gonna play here before everything else So the way it works it actually Because this video is here on the bottom, it still plays, but it's actually behind this... oops It's actually behind this... this other video on top, right So if you play it back, right, you can see both playing, but only because I resized it So basically that's how the track order works But in order to understand it a bit better, let me just go to the library and drop a transparent icon as well Let's just say... I don't know, calculator Drop it here, alright So again, as you can see the calculator right here Because this one is transparent and it doesn't cover the whole screen Even if it's on top, you can still see behind it, because it's transparent And it's just a small icon However, if we move this track on the bottom, below this aerial shot All of a sudden, we don't see it anymore, even if, technically speaking The calculator is still behind right there As you can see it here And on top of guitar in the background Now as you can see, if you go here, you can already start manipulating the videos by dragging the corner, for example But to gain even more flexibility, what you wanna do is you go here to properties And you're gonna see here on the right Actually, let me just import this guitar video again here And use this as an example So as you can see here on the right, we have two properties Here we have the audio properties for this video, which has the audio as well, you can just play around with the volume, as you can do here at the same time on the timeline, it's the exact same thing And if you go here you have visual properties Which are basically... scale You can play around with this You can play around with the opacity and make it transparent You can just rotate it You can do a lot of things with this... and just be a bit more specific with the position from here But to be honest, it's much easier to just manipulate it like this In order to rotate it you can just use this And it's just gonna snap where it's more natural, like 90 degrees, 45 and that kind of thing Also you can use the corners to drag it around and resize it It's super easy And for example, when you're done with... Those changes and for example,
you don't like them, you can just go here on the right and click this button to just reset all the settings And go all the way to the beginning Also, sometimes,
Camtasia |
you don't like them, you can just go here on the right and click this button to just reset all the settings And go all the way to the beginning Also, sometimes,
you might wanna crop the video and the way you crop the video is by using this tool right here So now you can see if we move this selection it's just gonna keep the same scale but cut everything else So for example if we now have this aerial video in the background, as you can see that's the way this crop works To reveal what's underneath the video so then you can just use this and move it around here for example Alright! One cool thing about the properties for audio, for example, is that you can control this over time, by adding keyframes And the way you do this is you go here for example and you just double click and you start adding a couple of points So now for example, I can just drag this all the way down, for whatever reason and then it's gonna go back to 100% volume So let's see how that sounds like Yeah I mean, you can use this to create a fade in when you start the track and maybe at the end, you want it to slowly fade out, so I'm just gonna add another point here Drop it all the way to 0% and there's just a nice fade out of the music Also, for example, you might wanna play around with the speed of the video for example So the way you do that is you right click on this video and just add clip speed And what's gonna happen is you have this thing right here And you can just drag it to the right Right now at 1X speed it's basically the normal speed But let's say we want that as 2X speed, it's just gonna be double.. Double the speed, but half the time, basically Alright, that looks a bit weird At the same time, you can also make it... You can also make it in slow motion So just drag this to the left But I just need enough space to... Alright, just gonna move things around for a second You need a bit more space So let's just say... Almost 0.5X, which is half the speed And let's just remove the calculator And now if you play it back, it's a bit more in slow motion You can just play around with it and see... See what works for you Another thing that is really cool in Camtasia is that it's so user friendly has a lot of really cool things that you can use, such as a library of elements And just feel free to explore all these tabs right here There's absolutely nothing you can break, but unfortunately,
we're not gonna be able to cover all of them in this short 15-minute video But let's have a quick look For example, you can use a couple of music tracks right here Like this one, you just drag & drop it here If you need some music for your videos But what's really interesting about Camtasia is that it has those things that you can actually edit, like a lower third, for example, So if I just drag & drop this here, it's a basic lower third As you can see, it's gonna show up here But if I select and go here to properties, I can actually edit this and say... "Camtasia Tutorial" And also I can change the logo to something else I can, I don't know, change the shape Just do that, whatever I can change the color to black or white, whatever I can change this other color here to red And this white here, I can change it to black And all sorts of things I mean black doesn't look that good, but you get the point, right? And it just makes it so easy to use You just drop it, do a couple of quick edits and it just animates automatically, super, super useful I'm just gonna remove it Another thing that you wanna look at transitions, because those are absolutely amazing Well, in most cases, you wanna use a fade, because it's pretty much the most elegant thing you can use, but for example, You know... Just play around with this Let's say we wanna have a look at "flip", right So the way you use this is you drag & drop it to this clip on top, aerial for example And as you can see here it already created the transition and I can just make it longer or shorter In this case, it even tells me how long it is, let's say it's two seconds So let's have a look at how that actually behaves So we start with this video in the background and I just click play and we're gonna see the other video flipping There you go, pretty cool stuff And of course, if you wanna add a fade out at the end, I mean not a fade-out, but like another animation, whatever you're into I don't know, just say cube rotate I'll just move it here Let's see how that behaves There you go! And there's a lot of other cool things as well that you can add Just feel free to explore,
we're not gonna have time to cover them all here For example, you can just play around with this, let's say you wanna add this... This visual effect right here, so I'm just gonna drop it here and as you can see it changed the color of this video And you can play around with the settings here, just adjust the intensity, maybe you wanna ease in, which basically means it's gonna start after 2 seconds So for example, let's remove the transition to see how this effect is gonna start now So it starts as a colored video, as you can see, but after 2.8s it's gonna slowly start changing color, as you can see And maybe you're not happy with this and you just want to remove it so you just go here and click on this X button to remove this filter Alright, that's all for editing videos in Camtasia It's pretty straight forward, you just have to play around with it And now let's have a quick look at how you can record your screen and do those screen capture videos One way to do it is to use this button right here or if you go to the main open window when you start Camtasia, just click there Let's have a quick look at that Alright, so back to the opening screen If you wanna do a screen recording You're just gonna click here on New Recording And here you can play around with a lof ot settings
If you have multiple displays you can just select them here Or you can just resize this window In most cases, I suggest you just go for a full-screen recording I'm just gonna go back to... what was it... The name of the display If you have multiple displays it's just gonna show up here You can also select what microphone you wanna use to record In my case, I'm just gonna use the Blue Yeti compared to the built-in microphone Because, if you have a separate mic, it's just gonna be a much higher quality Also, you can select to record the audio of the computer as well or not Just disable it or enable it according to your needs And if you wanna do one of those screen recordings Where it records the webcam as well on the bottom right You can do so here as you can see So let's just do a quick recording and see how that's gonna behave Alright, I'm just gonna move this around Open this Alright, and then when we are done, I'm just gonna right-click here and stop recording Alright, so now we are back in Camtasia and as you can see, we already have those two video tracks here on the timeline And the cool thing about doing this in Camtasia is that if you record your webcam as well, it's gonna add it here as a separate track, which basically allows you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want with it You can just resize it, make it larger, change the corner Maybe you wanna put it in the top left corner for whatever reason But most people just do it here, bottom right Just because..
I don't even know actually, it just looks good there But basically it gives you a lot of freedom to do that And that's pretty much it, you're gonna edit the video If you need to edit a couple of parts out, maybe you wanna remove, I don't know, whatever part here, you do it the exact same way that I taught you a few minutes ago And now let's talk about saving the project and exporting the video You gotta understand the difference between saving your project in Camtasia, by using this Save tab right here This is just gonna save the project file, so you can continue editing the project later But when you're done and you wanna export the project into a video, what you wanna do is you go here on the top right where it says share And you have a lot of options as well, but we're just gonna stick with local file And just title it Camtasia Tutorial export Or whatever filename Just browse on your computer wherever you want to save it And in terms of settings, I would stick with either MP4 or MOV and for the options, to be honest, unless you know what you're doing, I would just leave everything as it is by default And then you click Export And it's gonna take a while, because exporting videos is not that easy on the processor But that's basically how you do it Alright, I hope you enjoyed this Camtasia Studio 2019 Video Tutorial for beginners.