From the course: Camtasia 2019 Essential Training: The Basics

Camtasia Editor basics - Camtasia Tutorial

From the course: Camtasia 2019 Essential Training: The Basics

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Camtasia Editor basics

- [Man] The real power of Camtasia is in the built in editor. Now, in this chapter, you're going to learn the ins and outs of video editing with Camtasia. How the timeline and the canvas show you two separate perspectives of your story. The canvas shows you the look of the current frame that's selected in the timeline by your playhead. Dragging your playhead allows you to scrub through time in your movie to find a place that you want to edit. Now, media in your timeline is represented as clips. Click on a clip to select it. Notice how the selected clip highlights in the timeline, and new selection handles appear around the clip in your canvas. You can then manipulate the clip's position, scale, and rotation using the grabber handles on the canvas. You change when a clip appears, and for how long, by making adjustments to the clip in the timeline. To make further refinements to a selected clip, open your properties inspector by clicking on the green icon, and adjusting the properties for that clip. Now, for any media that was recorded with Camtasia, you can adjust the look of the video, the sound of the audio, and the appearance of the mouse. Playback is controlled with the play buttons that are here on the main toolbar. You can also start and stop playback by pressing the space bar. Now, if you only memorize one keyboard command for the editor, it should be the space bar, for starting and stopping your video because you're going to use this constantly. Now, the asset and effects panels over here on the left allow you to add new content to your story, such as additional media from your Media Bin, content from your Library, or one of the built in annotations. I'll drag this star onto my canvas. Notice that a new clip has appeared on a new track in your timeline, and the clip begins where your playhead is currently located. You can now manipulate this clip the same way that you would any other clip in your project. Now, since this star clip is on a higher track in your timeline, it will appear on top of, or in front of all of the other clips on your canvas. Now, below the annotations are a variety of transitions and effects panels. You can add an effect to a clip by dragging the effect block onto the clip. Then scrub your playhead over the clip to look at the pre-built animation. If you want to change the timing for that effect, drag either end of the arrow to set a new in and out point for that effect. Now, other types of effects will be added to your clips effects tray, that you access by clicking the small icon at the bottom of the clip. Now, these are generally effects that do not change over time, such as this drop shadow effect.

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