Unit III: Recording with Camtasia Studio

Chapter List

Chapter 5: Recording Your Screen

Chapter 6: Special Effects of the Camtasia Recorder

Chapter 7: Recorder Tools Options

Chapter 8: Recording Your PowerPoint Presentation

Part Overview

The Camtasia Recorder is the part of Camtasia Studio that captures all your screen activity and saves it as a video file. It is these files that make up the components of your final video presentation. As such, the Camtasia Recorder is generally considered the backbone of the application. Unfortunately, this can lead many users to believe that the Recorder is pretty much all there is to Camtasia Studio, when in fact the application offers so much more. This unit is devoted to recording your screen content. While it is only the first step to taking your storyboard and giving it life, it’s a critical step. No matter how refined your editing skills, a world-class product comes from world-class footage, and with the Camtasia Recorder, that’s exactly what you can provide.

This unit is divided into four chapters:

• Chapter 5: Recording Your Screen. This is the nuts-and-bolts introduction to using the Recorder. It also provides a step-by-step guide for recording different kinds of content, and concludes with a series of “best practices” tips I have honed through years of working with the program.

• Chapter 6: Special Effects of the Camtasia Recorder. This chapter expands upon the basics by teaching you how to add great special effects to your recordings. From autohighlight to zooming, you’ll learn all about techniques that give your videos some added zing.

• Chapter 7: Recorder Tools Options. This chapter is devoted to setting the Recorder’s various options according to your needs and preferences. Adjusting audio and video settings, hotkeys, program preferences, and the addition of camera video are all discussed here.

• Chapter 8: Recording Your PowerPoint Presentation. This chapter focuses on the Camtasia Studio add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint. While not about the Camtasia Recorder per se, the add-in is based on the same Recorder technology, and gives the user an alternate (and improved) means of recording PowerPoint presentations.