Five Reasons to Upgrade to the New Version of Camtasia - and Three Features That Seem to Be Missing
February 25, 2008 by Kenton Newby
I put this off for long enough but finally upgraded to the new version of Camtasia Studio. Even though their webpage goes over a lot of new features, there were still some surprises…but maybe I just didn't read closely enough. Anyway, the question is…"Is it worth it?". I say YES, and here are at least 5 reasons why, roughly in order of importance. There are also a couple of things missing I'd like to see, so I've included those too.
1. Easier Audio Editing
This is one of the best parts of the new version of Camtasia. The audio editing is way easier now! I was just editing a clip and noticed that now the timeline marker pretty much "snaps" to each individual word…or at least it SEEMS that precise. It's even easier now to cut out those little goofs that always seem to end up in recordings.
2. Noise Cancellation
I admit, I haven't played around with this feature yet, but I know I saw it in there as an option. Again, another good add-on for getting better final results from your videos.
3. Built-In Window Sizer
This was a long time coming. To get better results in Camtasia, it's best to record in a screen resolution that's the same as what your final output will be, or at least one that easily scales to that. So something like 1024×768, 800×600, or 640×480 for instance (all 4:3 aspect ratio).
With older versions, if you needed to record just a certain window, it was a bit of a hassle to size the window to the correct dimensions. I've used a free program to do this until now, because now Camtasia comes with this little time-saver built in.
Just select the window you want, then select the "lock" checkbox, then size the window a little bigger if needed (if you can't fit everything in one of the standard screen dimensions). It'll automatically adjust the width and height as you make the window bigger so that your final recording will still easily scale down to the correct aspect ratio.
4. Produce in IPod Format and MP3 in Addition to Selected Video Format
Minor for some, but if you're repurposing your content in multiple places, may as well have videos (and perhaps audio) on iTunes too, right? Now you can output your videos to iPod friendly format and plain old MP3 audio file format right along with whatever video format you selected. Not too shabby, aside from the obvious limitations if you're using audio but reference a lot of visual stuff in the audio. Hey, that's just a reason for people to come visit your website, right?
5. Built-In FTP
Again, a bit minor, but a time saver. Now Camtasia has a built-in FTP program so you can upload your finished products right to your server.
Features I would still like to see:
1. Export to multiple formats all at once
I'd really love to be able to take an edited project and kick it out to a couple different formats all at once (different screen sizes and file formats). Depending on where I'm placing my videos, it's nice to have them in one format or another. Right now, you have to do those one-by-one, other than the iPod thing. Yes, I want to be able to save a profile with all the formats I want videos in, then push a little button like those guys on the Staples commercial.
2. Easy copy and paste code snippet to add videos to blog
I still haven't found an easy way to copy and paste Camtasia snippets into a blog post or other website. I know, you can just create a separate HTML file and copy and paste the code and some other stuff from there, plus you have to make sure the files are in the right place on your server. But it would be nice to be able to specify where all that stuff is going to be saved, then get a little snippet of code I can paste into my site and be done with it.
3. Easier integration with Amazon S3
I'm a big fan of Amazon S3 for hosting most videos, especially the large ones. I think my current bill is about $1.15 this month so that pretty much works for me. And even though Camtasia 5 has the built-in FTP feature, it would be great if there was a way to shoot those files over to my S3 account instead of just to my server. I guess it'll just have to be manual for now.
If you upgraded recently, what do you think?
Worth it or not?
Favorite feature?
What's missing?
Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
~Kenton Newby
Popularity: 9% [?]
Kenton,
thanks for the suggestions. FWIW, there is a little known Batch production feature in CS 5 under the File menu. You can choose the project file (multiple times for multiple outputs) choose the desired formats and away it goes.
Copy and pasting clips: We're in the process of redesigning the Editor. First step will be revamping the audio in CS 6 so you can edit that with greater flexibility… editing audio 1 separately from video 1. In CS 7, you'll have greater flexibility with the video editing — like a traditional NLE, hopefully copying and pasting will be part of that as well.
S3. Good suggestion. What upload options does S3 support?
Troy Stein
Camtasia Studio Product Manager
Troy, Thanks for stopping by and for mentioning those tips. As far as S3 is concerned, the easiest thing I've found is a Firefox plugin.
I can't make heads or tails of how S3 works behind the scenes but I don't think it's a straightforward FTP type of thing. It has something to do with using web services, SOAP, WSDL, etc.
Maybe this will help the techies on your end:
Q: How do I interface with Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 provides simple, standards-based REST and SOAP web services interfaces that are designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit. The operations are intentionally made simple to make it easy to add new distribution protocols and functional layers. (Source: Amazon S3 FAQ)
Thanks for the tips and S3. We're rewriting our production wizard for CS 6 to provide greater control. We're mostly focused on the encoding and HTML templates. We'll see what w can do in the area of sharing/uploading.
Troy,
I've been playing around with this a bit today and here's an idea.
Background:
As best I can tell, Camtasia uses a handful of files when you produce a video that's already placed into an HTML page. For example, the SWFs, XML files, HTML file, JS files, etc. These files are all referenced within that HTML file that's created and within the config.xml file too I think.
The idea:
What would be great (and probably less work to do on TechSmith's end) is to allow us to choose what the default path is during the production process. So if I know I'm going to upload to S3, as one of the production options, I could enter:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/myvideos (or whatever location)
as the default path. Then, all the references to the files that Camtasia creates will point there once they're produced, with the understanding that I'll be uploading them to that location and nothing will work until then. This would be useful both when using S3 and in any situation where the videos are hosted one place and shown somewhere else.
It also looks like there are some calls in the
section for the JS file(s) and of course the actual code for the video itself in the section. If all of that could be placed in a text file with some quick instructions on where people should add that code within their own websites, that would be AWESOME.It's simple enough to do manually, but many people may not know how and it would be a lot faster to have this as a production option if we want to embed videos in existing pages or host them someplace other than where the video will be shown.
Just a thought. I'd love to know what you guys think.
Kenton