1 Camtasia Cheat Sheet You will need: Camtasia, a computer, and a microphone. Instructors can use Camtasia to record audio lectures, provide voiceovers for PowerPoint lectures, edit such lectures, and even change audio and video files from one type and/or size to another. Getting Started Recording Editing Producing Setting Audio Loading onto Blackboard What Can I Do with Camtasia? One of the most common uses of Camtasia at Tech is as course content capture equipment to take content an instructor might generally present in a traditional course and render it into electronic form so that the content can be made available to students electronically, for example, on Blackboard. How Do I Get Started? Perhaps the easiest way to get started with Camtasia is to create a PowerPoint lecture with voiceover. If you generally lecture with PowerPoint, then this activity makes sense you ll record your voice lecture with the PowerPoint slides. If you hate PowerPoint and would rather create a video of yourself teaching, Camtasia can do that. There is a small consideration the video of you teaching will be huge. It may be so huge that your students can t download it. If you would rather create a video of yourself teaching than create a PowerPoint, consider a compromise. Snap a few seconds of video and then put a picture of yourself on a slide, and record an audio lecture. Your students will get to see you, and the file size will not be negatively impacted. To begin the voiceover PowerPoint, open up your PowerPoint file. If you have recently installed Camtasia, you will get a screen alerting you to the Camtasia add-in. You will also get some graphics helping you to get started recording. Give those a look, if you wish. Once you close the welcome information (if you got any from Camtasia) and are looking at your PowerPoint program, you will notice that Camtasia is available. If you have PowerPoint 2003, you will see Camtasia in the upper left hand corner. Its presence is verified by the Record button:
2 You should also notice that you can choose the microphone or camera. For this exercise, just choose the microphone. If you are in Windows 2007, you will see Add-ins in the upper right hand corner. Choose Add-ins, and you will see the following screen: Notice the Record button. You should also notice that you can choose the microphone or camera. For this exercise, just choose the microphone. You are now ready to start recording.
3 Recording 1. To begin recording your PowerPoint, press the Record button. You will see a window on the lower right hand corner of your screen alerting you that Camtasia is activated. You will see the microphone bar, and if sound is being made, the green microphone bar should respond to the sound. If it does not, make sure your microphone is installed. You may need to check it in Camtasia. (It may be that Camtasia does not recognize your microphone.) To check your microphone in Camtasia, see Setting Audio, later in these instructions. You may want to jot down the commands Ctrl + Shift + F9 to Pause and Ctrl + Shift + F10 or ESC to Stop. If you are ready to begin recording, Press the Click to begin recording button. 2. Once you press the Click to begin recording button, your presentation will begin recording. If you have an earlier version of Camtasia (Camtasia 4 or 5, for example), you may see a large red REC image on your screen. Camtasia 6 begins recording immediately. Simply talk through your PowerPoint presentation as you normally would. TIP: Keep your recordings under 20 minutes to keep file sizes manageable. If you have a forty minute lecture, break it into two lectures so that students can watch the first one while the second one downloads. 3. When you get to the end of your slideshow, you will get a Camtasia screen that asks if you would like to stop recording or continue recording. Camtasia automatically stops recording when click past your last slide. Therefore, it is advisable that you finish your lecture before you click past your last slide in your PowerPoint. What that means is, although Camtasia asks if you would like to stop or continue, Camtasia has already stopped. Click Stop Recording.
4 4. After you have stopped recording, Camtasia will ask you where you wish to save your recording. As a default, it will ask to save the recording under My Documents > Camtasia Studio. If you ever lose your Camtasia recording, look there. You can choose to save it in the Camtasia Studio folder, or choose another file. 5. Once you choose to save the file, it will process. Then, it will ask you whether you would like to produce your recording or edit your recording. Editing Your Recording Tip #1: Although I don t generally do a lot of editing, I do like to choose Edit Your Recording first. Sometimes the microphone doesn t work, or there is a glitch. Before I spend time producing the recording, I like to make sure there is sound, and everything has gone okay. Tip #2: Something else to look for is the Smart Focus feature that Camtasia will offer. With Smart Focus, the Camtasia program will narrow its view to your mouse on the screen. For my teaching style, this feature renders the PowerPoint voiceover worthless to my students, so I am always careful to reject this feature when it is offered. You may wish to test it out to see if it will suit your teaching style. 1. Choose Edit Your Recording and click Okay.
5 Camtasia may then ask you about Project Settings and Editing Dimensions. You can select a present width and height. Unless you are showing fine details in your PowerPoint, Width: 640 and Height: 480 are adequate. This setting will give your students enough visual to see your lecture without the production being so big that it will increase file size. If you explore your options in the Project Settings box, you can see that in addition to Web, Camtasia offers presets for many different types of output. Choose the Editing Dimensions and click Okay.
6 2. To make sure your recording looks and sounds the way you wish, you want to test it. At this point, Camtasia has probably moved your recording into the Timeline. You will see your PowerPoint sitting in the lower left hand corner of your screen in Camtasia. To test your recording, hit the Play button on the view screen on the right hand side of your screen. If it looks and sounds the way you wish, then you are ready to produce your recording. Keep in mind, after the recording, you can skip straight to the production. 3. If you wish to cut a portion of your show perhaps, for example, the phone rang in the middle of your presentation, and you want to cut that 30 seconds out, all you have to do is figure out what you want to cut, and in the timeline, move your cursor over the seconds you want to remove. The section will be highlighted in blue, and the beginning and ending times will be highlighted with green, triangle markers. When you are sure you have marked what you want to cut, select the scissors. That s it it s easy to edit out problem spots in Camtasia. Camtasia can also assist you with more sophisticated editing, but this tutorial doesn t cover that information.
7 Producing Your Recording Perhaps the most difficult part of creating a voiceover PowerPoint is producing it. 1. If you chose Produce Your Recording right after creating it, it will put you right into the production mode. If you are currently in the editing mode, the choose Produce Video As in the Task List on the left side of your screen. 2. You will see a screen that says, Welcome to the Camtasia Studio Production Wizard. The default option is Web. If you click on the arrow to the right of the selected option, you will see that you have many options for production.
8 3. Camtasia offers many different options for producing your voiceover PowerPoint. This tutorial recommends wmv. First, the wmv player is standard on PCs, and it is a free download at www.microsoft.com. Second, unlike true streaming media, such as Tegrity or MediaSite, the wmv files are downloadable. That means students can download them from Blackboard (it s helpful to instruct students to right click on the link and choose Save Target As, and then save them to their desktop or jump drive). Students can then listen to and view the wmv files without any problems that are associated with streaming media such as stalling or skipping. Also, although wmv files take a little longer to download than streaming media, even a student on dial up can access the wmv file, while students on dial up have a very difficult time with streaming media. To create the wmv file, choose Custom Production Settings, the last option on the Production Wizard panel, above. You will get a warning that Selecting a different preset than the preset in Project Settings may cause the look of the video to appear different than previewed during editing. Do you wish to continue? Answer Yes. Then, on the Production Wizard panel, select Next. 4. You are then asked, How would you like to produce your video? Choose WMV-Windows Media Video.
9 Notice at the bottom you have Additional output options. If you wish, you can create an audio only file in addition to your wmv vile. To create the audio only file, check the box beside, Create MP3 File. Notice that you have options regarding the quality of the MP3 file. The higher the quality, the larger the file. If you wish to create an M4V or ipod file in addition to your wmv file, check the box beside Create M4V File. If you create the M4V file, students with ipods can download your lecture onto their ipods. Again, the higher the quality, the larger the file. M4V files are much larger than wmv files, so ipod medium will create a large file. Select your options and choose Next. 5. You will arrive at the Windows Media Encoding Options. If you click on the arrow to the right of the options box, you will see that you have many options here. To create a smaller file size that still has good quality audio and video, choose Camtasia Studio PowerPoint Video and Audio Medium. Choose Next.
10 6. The next option is Video Size. Again, the larger the video size, the larger the file. A good size for most voiceover PowerPoints is 640x480. 7. The next step is to choose Video Options. As you can see from this screen, you may add author and copyright information; SCORM content (if you don t know what SCORM is, it is prepackaged e-learning content. Also, if you don t know what it is, that means you don t have any to add); a watermark; and html. I always leave all this information blank. 8. The next step is Marker Options. Camtasia allows you to put in a table of contents based on the titles of each PowerPoint slide. This option is incredibly handy if you have multitudes of slides and content. However, creating the Table of Contents makes a larger file. If you wish your students to simply start at the beginning and watch your presentation until the end, you can uncheck all the boxes on Marker Options. You may notice some boxes are dimmed out but still checked. You don t have to worry about them they don t count unless they are black, not a dimmed out gray. Click Next. 9. The final step is Produce Video. On this panel, give your production a title, and then choose a folder to save it in. The next image, with the exception of the unimaginative title, shows you
11 the options you want to select to finish creating your voiceover PowerPoint. Select Finish at the bottom of the panel, and Camtasia will inform you that it is Rendering Project. 10. Rendering the project may take a while, depending upon the size of your project. When it is finished, it will begin playing for you. In addition, you see a screen informing you of the details regarding the rendering of your project. Make sure to notice the size of your project. You want to keep your wmv files under 15 MB. Click Finish, and you are ready to load your production onto Blackboard.
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13 Setting Audio If you have plugged in your microphone and set it up, and yet it isn t working with Camtasia, Camtasia may need to be reminded of the microphone you wish to use. 1. Under Options in Camtasia, Choose Voice Narration. 2. You will be taken to the voice narration panel, where you will see the green microphone bar and the Audio Setup Wizard.
14 3. Choose the Audio Setup Wizard. You will then be directed to Select the audio device and input source. If you don t see your microphone selected, then click on the arrow beside the audio device that is selected. You may see several options, and one should be your microphone. However, if you do not see your microphone, that means your computer does not recognize it. You may need to reinstall it. Choose Next.
15 4. The next screen allows you to Tune Volume Input Levels. Whether your voice is loud or soft, Camtasia can adjust its volume to accommodate you. Simply choose Auto-Adjust Volume and follow the directions. Camtasia will then adjust the microphone levels to best record your voice. Loading Your Production onto Blackboard To load your production onto Blackboard, first create a logical place on Blackboard to put it. If, on your syllabus, you have created reading assignments, quizzes, and course content for each class period, you may want to create a folder for each class period on Blackboard so students know where content is located. 1. Now that you re ready to load your content onto Blackboard, you need to find it. In this next example, the content you are looking for is the wmv file that we created. It is in a file called A.D.D.I.E.1A. The folder looks like this on the desktop:
16 2. When you open the folder, you see several items: Open the A.D.D.I.E.1A_media folder. 3. When you open the A.D.D.I.E.1A_media folder, you will again see several items. You want to load the A.D.D.I.E.1A wmv folder onto Blackboard. You may also have chosen to make an A.D.D.I.E.1A_iPod file. If so, and if you choose to load it onto Blackboard, be sure to let students know that you are giving them a choice of formats, and that the ipod format is a larger file size better suited to viewing over an ipod. However, you do not have to have an ipod to view an M4V file. You can view it with the free itunes player. Load the files up onto Blackboard just as you would a text file. TIP: Because these files are so large, students may not be able to open them the usual way. To stave off emails informing you that your files are empty (when they are not), include instructions for students regarding how to open the files. An example might be, The lecture today is in wmv format. If you do not have the free Windows Media Player, you can download it at www.microsoft.com. This file is large. To download it, right click on it, and choose Save
17 Target As. Then save it to your desktop or portable device. This file contains audio and video, and you must access both. Neither the audio nor the video are optional. If you choose to view this lecture in a campus lab, remember to bring headphones. Getting Started Recording Editing Producing Setting Audio Loading onto Blackboard Back to the Beginning This tutorial was created by Tamara Powell on February 9, 2009. If you find errors or have improvements for suggestions, or if you have questions, please email Tammy at tamaram@latech.edu Copyright 2009. Tamara Powell