Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio

Transcription

1 [Type here] Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio This workshop is designed for those who want to create movies which record events on a computer screen (a Screencast). This could be a PowerPoint presentation, or simply a How to do an advanced search in Google type tutorial. Using Camtasia studio gives you the ability to record audio and webcam (as Picture in Picture), add images (slides), callout boxes, text etc., as well as allowing you to edit and arrange your movie clips and images. It s an excellent way to produce engaging accessible training and reference materials for online presentation. Last updated 15 th July 2015 Studio offers a lot of options for creating a polished result, but can take up a considerable amount of time. If all you want to do is record the screen capture (PowerPoint or otherwise) with some audio, and get it online quickly, then you should consider Camtasia Relay which is available for all to use within the University. This document and other Information Services documents are held online on our website:

2 University of Brighton Information Services Contents Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio... 3 The Interface... 4 Menu Options... 4 Recording audio... 5 General Tips... 5 Screen resolution... 5 Getting started with a new project... 6 Making a screen recording... 8 Add a transition... 9 Add a zoom...10 Add a Callout...11 Editing your video Split and delete Select and delete...13 Drawing attention to the cursor...13 Adding captions...14 Adding captions with speech-to-text...14 Adding captions manually...15 Adding a table of contents using markers...16 Publishing your screencast...16 Further information...17 Page 2 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

3 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio Camtasia Studio allows you to make recordings of everything that appears on your computer screen, record audio and/or webcam as well, then, by placing your movie clips on a timeline, edit your final movie (or Screencast). You can: Record everything that appears on your screen, or just a selected area of the screen Record an audio voiceover Record a webcam which you display as picture-in-picture Automatically record your PowerPoint presentations with the Camtasia plugin Edit your movie to create a professional screencast Add callouts (boxes, arrows etc.) and text Create title screens Add transitions Add captions for accessibility Add quizzes Publish your movie locally, or upload to YouTube or Screencast.com and much more. Prerequisites: You will also need to download is724e.zip, which contains exercise files used in this workshop from the IS document library. Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 3

4 University of Brighton Information Services The Interface Menu Options The menu at the top of the screen allows you to access project, import and batch options as well as many other important functions. For example: Snapping options, Playback controls, and User-to-User Forums. There is also Help available. The three main areas, numbered and outlined in red above, are: 1. The Media panel. This where you will store all the elements of your screencast, including video clips, single frame images (like the title slide in the example above) and audio. The three buttons at the top allow you to do the most common tasks: - Start recording the screen - Import media (images, movies or audio) from your hard disk or a network drive - Publish your finalised screencast. The tabs along the bottom allow you to access clips and images from the library as well as adding effects such as callouts, zooms and transitions etc. 2. The Preview panel. This is where you can preview your screencast whilst working on it. All the standard play/pause buttons are present as well as a slider that allows you to quickly scrub through the movie. A button at the top left allows you to set the publish size for your screencast. Page 4 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

5 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio 3. The Timeline panel. This is where you place your media files to bring your screencast together. There are separate channels in the example above which show video (or images), zooms, callouts and audio. This gives you a very visual representation of your screencast throughout its duration. Recording audio In order to be able to record audio with your screen recording, you will need to have a microphone plugged into your PC. Some laptop and desktop PC s have a built in microphone which should work well. Alternatively, if you are using a webcam, you could use its inbuilt microphone, even if you do not wish to record video. Note: Camtasia will not record sound that originates from your PC eg system sounds, unless it picks up this audio from speakers via the microphone. So if you had a video (containing audio) embedded in for example, a PowerPoint presentation, the audio element of your embedded video will not be recorded. If you want to do this, the only way is to use a microphone that can be positioned to pick up both your voice and the sound from your PC s speakers. General Tips Try to keep your screencasts as short as possible, no longer than two to three minutes. The shorter the better. If possible, add markers to your screencast to enable a table of contents menu which will allow viewers to navigate your content. Don t rush through your presentation, pace yourself so that your audience can keep up. Speak slowly and clearly (but not too slow!) If your presentation starts to get a bit too long, consider breaking it down into separate screencasts. Don t get carried away with polishing your presentation and adding bells and whistles. It s your own time you are wasting. Screen resolution Most of us tend to work at quite high screen resolutions mine is 1280 x You will achieve a better result in your Camtasia video if you can reduce your screen resolution to be the same as the final movie. So, if you are creating a movie that will be 800 x 600, it is best to reduce your screen resolution to 800 x 600 before you do your screen recording. You can then change it back afterwards. To change your screen resolution, right-click on your Windows desktop background and select: In Windows 7, click on Screen resolution Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 5

6 University of Brighton Information Services In Windows XP, click on Properties and then select the Settings tab Getting started with a new project Here we will look at how we create a new, blank, project in Camtasia, and see how to add a title clip to the clip bin. 1. Select File from the menu bar at the top of the screen and click on New Project. A new project appears with an empty timeline and no clips. 2. Now look at the row of buttons below the media panel. Click on the More button, then click on Title Clips (see image on right). You will see two buttons appear at the top of the media panel. 3. Click on Add title clip. The Title clip editing tools will appear in the media panel. You may also see the following dialogue box as we are about to add our first media clip to the project: 4. This is the Editing Dimensions dialogue. This is where we set the size that we want our finished video to display at. In this case, we will use 640 x 480 so just click OK. This box can be opened at any time by clicking on the button on the top left of the preview panel. 5. In the media panel, click the Image checkbox in the Background box, then click the browse folder on the right. 6. In the File Open dialogue, locate the folder where you placed the workshop files (or, if in a workshop, the trainer will tell you where to find them) and double click on the file Camtasia Title Background.png Page 6 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

7 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio 7. Now click the Fill button to the right of the browse folder button and select white to set the background colour to white. Close the box that pops up, then click on the text colour selector at the top right and select a colour for your title screen text. 8. Click in the text box below and type: How to perform a simple search using Google. You will see that it is centred, so click on the left justify icon above, then, if you wish you can apply a different font, change the size etc. 9. In the preview panel you will see that your text has appeared over the image you imported. It appears in a box with little handles on the side and corners. These can be dragged to resize the box. Do this now until your title is positioned something like this: 10. Now click on the clip bin button at the bottom of the media panel. You will see that your title clip appears in the clip bin. Click on it and hold down the left mouse button, then drag it down to the timeline, to the Video 1 channel and then release the button. You will now see your title screen has been added to the timeline. Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 7

8 University of Brighton Information Services 11. Roll the cursor over the right hand edge of the image marker you have added to the timeline. The cursor will change to a double headed arrow and you will see a fly-out which gives you information about that piece of media. This includes filename, start and end position on the timeline, duration on screen and Frames Per Second (FPS). 12. With the cursor in the same position, hold down the left mouse button and drag to the right along the timeline. A box will appear giving you information about the new duration. Drag until the readout is 7 seconds (0:00:07;00) then release the mouse button. You have now increased the time this clip will appear on screen from 5 seconds to 7 seconds. Making a screen recording 1. Minimise Camtasia by clicking on the minimise button on the title bar, then open a web browser (IE or Firefox) and go to Leave this open on the desktop and maximise Camtasia once more (click its icon on the windows bar at the bottom of the screen). 2. Click the Record the screen button on the top left of the media panel. Camtasia will minimise and you will see the Capture controls, as follows: 3. A selection box with a dotted outline and white square handles at the edges and corners. By dragging the white squares, align the selection box with the area you want to capture. Then, in the Select area section, click on Custom. Then select 640x480. Now, resize your applications window (in this case a browser with Google open) to fit the resized selection box. 4. Now click the little down arrowhead on the Audio on button and select the microphone device you are using. Page 8 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

9 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio 5. You must now prepare what you are going to do next. As soon as you start recording, everything you do on the screen will be recorded, including everything you say. We will: - Enter Camtasia Relay into the search box and press the Google Search button - We will click on the first link whilst holding down the Ctrl key, to demonstrate how to open the link in a new tab - We will click on the new tab to view the website - We will scroll down to a video and click the Play button - We will close the tab and press F10 to finish recording 6. When you are ready, click the large red Rec button on the right. A countdown window will appear for about 3 seconds so you can prepare. It also tells you that you can stop recording by pressing the F10 key on your keyboard. As soon as this box disappears, follow the instructions above. 7. Once you have pressed F10, a preview box appears and plays you back the screen recording. If you are happy with it, click the Save and Edit button underneath the preview on the right. Browse to a location where you would like to save your clip, rename if required, then save. Camtasia Studio should reappear with your clip visible in the media panel. 8. Camtasia will have already inserted the new clip in the timeline below. However, it will have added it in the position of the Timeline Position marker As we had it at 00;00 our screen capture will have been added before our title screen. To sort this out, scroll right along the timeline using the scroll bar below it, find your title screen, then click and hold the left mouse button over it and drag to the start of the timeline. Add a transition 1. Click the Transitions button at the bottom of the media panel. If it is not there, click the More button and select Transitions. 2. You will see in the media panel a wide range of transitions that can be applied between clips. You will also notice that the timeline display has changed and there is a box with an arrow in it between the clips. 3. By right-clicking on your chosen transition (eg Fade) you can bring up a popup menu. This allows you to add the transition after a particular clip, or Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 9

10 University of Brighton Information Services apply it between all the clips in your movie. Click on the screen to close the menu and we will look at another way of adding the transition. 4. Left click on Fade and hold the button down, then drag down to the box with an arrow between your two clips and release the mouse button. You have now applied a fade transition. 5. Click on the Clip Bin button to restore the timeline. Make sure that the Time Position marker is at the start of the movie if not, drag it to the start of the timeline. Then, in the preview pane, click the Play button. you will see your screencast in the preview panel. Now Add a zoom Sometimes, especially if working on a large screen, you may need to zoom in to an area of the content to make it easier to see. Let s try that now: 1. Move the Timeline Position marker to the start of the timeline. You can do this by dragging it, or you can drag the dark grey slider under the movie in the preview pane. 2. Now drag the marker of your choice to the point in the movie when the search results appear, then stop. 3. Click on the Zoom-n-pan button at the bottom of the media pane. The zoom tools appear. Drag the handles that appear in the corners and sides of the preview until the box outlines the top search result. This denotes the area that will be zoomed in on. Now drag the Timeline Position marker to the right until the new tab first appears in the movie. Then, in the zoom tool pane, click the Add keyframe button 4. The default behaviour at this point is to automatically zoom out to the full screen again. If you wanted to, you could reduce the size of the box again and move it to another part of your movie. This would create a pan. But for now, we want to zoom out, so just leave that as it is and select the Clip bin button. Page 10 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

11 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio 5. Drag the Timeline Position marker back before your zoom markers, which you can now see in the Zoom channel in the timeline, and click Play to see your zoom in action. Add a Callout A callout allows you to add more information to your screen recording at the position of your choice. A callout could be: A box with some further information (as text) An arrow or animation to point out something on screen An image Highlight or blurring effects Button graphics to show keystrokes used And more Drag the Timeline Position marker to the point in your movie when the cursor rolls over the link that is about to be clicked, then release it. 2. Click the Callouts button in the media panel. The callout tools will appear. 3. Click the down arrow on the bottom right of the Shape box. You should now be able to see all the options. 4. In the Shapes with Text area, click on the blue rectangle. 5. A rectangle will appear in the preview panel. You can move it by left clicking and dragging it. You can resize it by dragging the circular handles on each side and corner. You can change its colour, border etc. by clicking the Border, Fill and effects buttons. 6. The white circles are for resizing the box. The green circle allows you to rotate the box. The yellow circle allows you to increase the rounded corners by dragging it to the right, or reduce them by dragging to the left. 7. Drag the box down below the link that will be clicked, then, in the media panel, click in the Text entry pane and type: By holding down the Ctrl key when we click the link, we can make the new page open in a new tab. Then, resize the box in the preview pane so all the text appears and position it. Note: You may need to select a colour for your text so you can see it (white Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 11

12 University of Brighton Information Services on white is hard to see!) If so, click on the text colour selection button and choose a colour. Now, we will add another type of callout. 1. Drag the Timeline position marker to the point where the new tab has appeared and the word Camtasia has just appeared in it and then release it. The callout tools should still be visible in the media panel. If not, click the Callouts button. 2. Click the down arrow on the bottom right of the Shape box to show all the options, then, from the section headed Sketch Motion, click on the red circle. 3. You will see that a red circle has appeared in the preview panel. Use the white circles to resize it and move it so that the red circle is around the new tab. 4. Move the Timeline position marker to a point before your added callouts and click play to view. Editing your video Sometimes you may need to edit your video, maybe you made an error when you were recording, or simply want to remove a section which is no longer needed. There are two main ways to remove a piece of your recording. Split and delete or Select and delete Split and delete 1. As an example, let s say we want to remove a short segment from the end of our recorded video. Drag the Timeline position marker to the end of the timeline, then drag it back to the left a couple of second s worth. 2. Now, in the tool bar at the top left of the timeline. Locate the Split icon and click it. 3. You will notice that the end portion of your video has not been deleted, but it is now a separate video clip to the rest of the recording. If you simply wanted to delete it now, you could just click on it and press the delete key. 4. You can also drag it and drop it to another location on the timeline, or if you think you might need this short section again later, you can right-click on it and select Add to library... to store it in your library for later use. Then you can delete it from the timeline. Page 12 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

13 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio Note: Always check the audio track before you split or delete a section of video as this may have some relevance as to where you make the edit Select and delete 1. Drag the Timeline position marker to a point in the middle of your video. 2. Notice that there is a green square to the left of the marker and a red one to the right. You can drag the green marker to the left to create the In point, and the red marker to the right to create the Out point. The selection you have marked can then be deleted by simply pressing the Delete key. 3. We will not delete here, so simply double-click on the grey part of the marker to cancel your selection. Drawing attention to the cursor Sometimes, when moving a cursor around the screen, it can be easy for a viewer to lose it. Camtasia allows you to add Cursor Effects to make the cursor more visible to the viewer, as well as adding animation effects which show when a mouse click is made. These cursor effects can be added to your entire movie or just to a part of it where the cursor is hard to distinguish. 1. Click on the More button in the media panel, then select Cursor Effects. 2. There is already a default keyframe added at the very start of your movie. So any cursor effects you turn on here will apply to the whole presentation. To add the cursor effects to just one part of your movie, you would add a keyframe at the start point and another at the end point. 3. Try clicking on the buttons in the image on the right to see the options available; you can preview the effects in the chequered box to the right of these buttons. Try each one to see how it looks. By clicking on the small arrow to the left of Click sound effect, you can also add audio which will play whenever the mouse was clicked in your recording. Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 13

14 University of Brighton Information Services Adding captions If you have added audio to your recording, you may want to consider adding captions (subtitles) for viewers with hearing impairment. These captions can be displayed over the bottom part of your movie (and can be turned on or off when playing a published screencast). The captions can also be displayed in a black bar underneath your screencast, which can t be turned off. The downside of this option is that it adds to the height of your screencast and some people may have problems viewing it, depending on the resolution of their computer screens. Camtasia now has a speech-to-text feature which will attempt to convert your voiceover audio into text and automatically add captions in the right places in your movie. Like all speech-to-text software, it will make mistakes (lots!), but it does add the captions into the timeline correctly to synchronise with your audio. This can considerably speed up the process of adding captions, but you will still have to go through and correct all the errors made by the software. It is possible, if you have the time, to improve the speech-to-text recognition by performing some speech recognition training. This involves you reading out some text displayed on the screen, one line at a time, to try and train the software to improve the results for your voice. This option is available by clicking on the Tools menu, selecting Speech and then Improve speech-to-text... Adding captions with speech-to-text 1. Assuming that you have recorded an audio track, if the Captions button is not displayed at the bottom of the media panel, click the More button and click on Captions. The captions tools will display in the media panel. 2. Click on the Speech-to-text... button on the top right. A couple of timer bars will appear as the audio is prepared for transcription and then converted to text. 3. You will probably find that the results are not very good without running the training exercises a few times, but at least it has put in all the captions in the right place automatically. 4. Now all you have to do is go through and correct or retype (more likely!) each caption to correspond with the audio in the related segment of your movie. Now we will look at adding your own captions manually. Page 14 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

15 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio Adding captions manually 1. If the Captions button is not displayed at the bottom of the media panel, click the More button and click on Captions. The captions tools will display in the media panel. 2. Drag the Timeline Position marker to the point in your movie where you want to add the first caption, and click the Add caption button in the media panel. 3. A caption text box appears. Type in the text you wish to appear on the screen at this point in your movie. The time into the movie is displayed in the blue button on the left. You can use the Bold and Italic buttons to style your caption text. 4. Drag the Timeline Position marker to the point in your movie where you wish to add the next caption. If the previous captions default time duration has overrun into the new entry point, roll the cursor over the right hand edge of the caption in the timeline, then drag to the left until the previous caption no longer enters the new selection point. 5. Once again, click the Add caption button in the media panel. Another text entry box will appear below the previous one, with the new entry time in the blue button on the left. 6. Continue to add captions until you reach the end of the audio. 7. If you want the captions to appear as an overlay on your video, you are done as this is the default behaviour. If you want them to appear below your movie, click the blue On video button at the top right this will change to Under video and you will see a black bar has appeared under your movie in the preview panel. Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 15

16 University of Brighton Information Services Adding a table of contents using markers By adding markers along the timeline, you can allow viewers of your screencast to display a table of contents menu and use it to jump to specific places in your presentation. This can be useful if the viewer just needs to view one task in your screencast and can jump straight to it rather than waiting for it to appear. 1. To add a marker, drag the Timeline Position marker to the point in your movie where you want to add a marker and press the m key on your keyboard. 2. The Marker Name dialogue will pop up. Simply type in a description for that marker and click OK. 3. You will notice that a green diamond has appeared in the marker channel on the timeline. Right click on the diamond to edit, move or delete the marker. 4. The markers you add will appear in a popup list of contents in your published screencast and will allow viewers to navigate around your content. Note: When you add a Title Clip to the timeline, a marker is automatically added at that point. Right click on the green diamond in the Marker channel to edit the name of the marker. Publishing your screencast Camtasia Studio can publish your screencast out to a wide range of formats. It will also allow you to publish to YouTube or to the Camtasia Relay server at the university. One other option offered is to publish to Screencast.com, which is Techsmith s (the company behind Camtasia) own screencast sharing website. There are a whole lot of preset production settings which make it easier for you to publish your work without having to make too many technical decisions, although you can decide everything for yourself if you so wish. The preset choices are: Web (the default and the most used) Blog CD/DVD HD ipad ipod iphone So now, we will use the production wizard to publish our screencast for the web. Locate the Produce and share button at the top of the media panel and click it. The production wizard dialogue will appear. Page 16 Last Updated 15 th July 2015

17 Creating screencasts with Camtasia Studio If Web does not appear in the drop-down box at the top, click the down facing arrow head to the right to display all the options and select Web. Then click Next. Type in a name for your screencast and use the browse (folder) button to locate a folder to save your screencast to. Make sure all three tick boxes below are ticked, then click Finish. That s all there is to it. Your production is now being published and will be opened, ready to play once it has been rendered and saved to the folder you chose. There are some options available at playback by selecting the icons on the right in the bottom bar. These are: Click this to adjust the volume of your audio. Click again to mute the audio. This will display a list of Markers in your movie and acts like a menu. Click to jump straight to that Marker. This will display your screencast as full screen. Press the Esc key to return to normal size. This turns the captions on or off. Further information The Camtasia Studio Learning Centre can be found here: It contains links to many How-to videos, as well as links for downloading further documentation. The official Camtasia User Forums can be found here: Printed Wednesday, 29 July 2015 Page 17