Tutorial 2: How to use Camtasia Studio 7

Welcome to my second tutorial blog. Today I am going to talk about recording your PowerPoint presentation with Camtasia Studio 7. This program is very easy to use and it allows you to record audio as well as video presentations. It was a helpful tool in preparing the Presentation Project for this course.

First of all you need to get the program. You can either buy it online or get a 30 days free test version. I chose the free test version, as it was sufficient for preparing the project. However, as the program is really helpful and easy to use I could imagine buying it.

You just have to go on: http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp and select download.

Then you have to enter your email address and select “Download now”. Next you have to install the program which is very self-explanatory. After doing this you can directly start with recording your presentation. (As a hint, you have to prepare your presentation beforehand with PowerPoint)

A nice thing with Camtasia is that it is actually possible to put it in your add-in toolbar of PowerPoint. Either it does it automatically or you have to open Camtasia Studio and then click on “ToolsàOptionsàPowerPoint Tabàand enable the PowerPoint Add In Button”. Now it should work. To check it you open your PowerPoint Presentation and if you have Office 2007 or higher the recording button should appear directly below your “Office Button in the PowerPoint presentation. It should look like this:

The first button controls whether audio is recorded or not. The second button control video. So you decide if you want only and audio presentation or an audio video presentation or just a video presentation. To make sure on your video presentation is everything you want to see, you can use the camera preview button next to the video button to adjust it. You can further customize your settings with the recording options button. There you can select your microphone, the volume which you want to record and many more. Click ok to save your settings. Now you are ready to record your presentation!

To record the presentation, you click on the record button in the toolbar. Now the presentation will start pauses, so you have time to prepare. A window appears on the bottom right corner where you can finally start your presentation. Click on” Click to begin recording” to start. You now just present your presentation as you normally would do. At the end of your presentation you click on “Stop recording” in the appearing window to finish your presentation. Now you choose a destination on your computer where you will save your presentation. Name your file and then click on “Produce your recording” in the appearing window. You also have the possibility for editing your project but I will not explain this in this tutorial.

Your final step should be to produce and share the video or presentation you did. To do this you have to click on the “Produce and Share” button in your Camtasia Studio.

On the first page of the Production menu you have several opportunities in the drop down menu how you want to produce your video. You can make an MP4 file out of it, directly share it on YouTube or Secreencast.com( a WEB 2.0 tool).

It’s up to you what you want to do with your video. Finally click on finish to rendering you video. That’s all you have to do. So thank you for visiting my blog and I hope to see you next time.

Sources:

Screenshots of Camtasia on my on PC.