Review: Camtasia Studio 8 and Camtasia 2.5 for Mac

Effects and Animations

And if you plan to do more than just basic editing of the video capture itself, I suggest you look carefully at the effects and animations that Camtasia has to offer. Just as in a typical video production where you wouldn’t want to stay on a wide shot during the whole program, you will also want to zoom in on particular aspects of your screen capture to draw attention to important details.

In my book, here is where Camtasia really shines for a video producer. There are automated effects such as SmartFocus and “SmartFocus at time.” These effects can automatically or manually zoom in on things such as new windows, drop-down menus, or a scrolling mouse to direct your viewers’ eyes.

There are other effects like Tilt which will allow you to move the screen back and over in Z-space in order to fit other titles or imagery onto the screen (Figure 3, below).

Figure 3. Camtasia’s Tilt effect lets you move the recorded screen along the Z-axis. (To see this screen at full resolution, click on the image.)

Additionally, you can add things like a spotlight over a certain portion, have a keystroke combination flash on the screen as visual reinforcement to the audio instructions, or create a custom mask to obscure other parts of the screen.

Sharing Options

After you’ve finished editing, there are simple sharing options included in Camtasia such as YouTube, Screencast, and iTunes. I typically choose Advanced Export so I can select custom encoding properties for my audio and video tracks.

I do several projects each year for a national trade organization’s conference. They have multiple speakers presenting over 3-4 days. Each of these speakers has a slide show that they use along with their session. My main job is to go through each one-hour session and add the slides to the video each time they advance. Since I can’t see the screen, I have to listen to the entire presentation to figure out where the slides advance.

If I have Camtasia recording the computer during each presentation, I can simply synchronize the Camtasia timeline to the video of the speaker to locate each slide advancement.

If you find yourself needing to add compelling screen captures to your videos, Camtasia’s $99 price tag (for Mac) is a bargain worth looking into as part of your production and postproduction toolbox. Camtasia 2.5 is now available for Mac, while Camtasia Studio for Windows can be purchased here. Both products offer a free trial.