Camtasia continues to excel as a do-everything video editor that anyone can feel comfortable using. Now with Camtasia 9, you’ll edit faster, with greater resolution (up to 4K,) and with a new interface that makes everything easy to find.
With most of the better laptops on the market now using 64-bit processors, you can now make quick work of 4K video footage from your DSLR or your Go-Pro. Sprinkle that with a prudent amount of annotations, transitions, and video effects and your video is bound to shine.
Camtasia has always been about capturing screen video, but I think a lot of people will be surprised about its capabilities as a regular video editor as well. Bring in just about any kind of popular video or graphics format, as well as popular audio formats and begin editing. Unlike some “bargain” editors, you won’t have to be converting formats before you start working.
New behaviors let you quickly animate your text, your graphics as well as your video. New callouts let you easily set font color, size, style and other attributes along with background shape, color and border. Don’t want a background or border? Just set their opacity to zero. Now your text can float free.
Voice narration may be my favorite upgraded feature. Simply set the timeline indicator to your desired starting point, press Record and start talking. You can watch the video play as you record your voiceover. The WAV file is immediately saved, and as long as you checked the “Import into project” box, you can immediately drag it onto your timeline. There’s even an area for you to paste your text so that you are looking directly at the screen as you record.
Green screen is something I really enjoy as well, and Camtasia 9 makes it easy to quickly pull a decent key. Pick a color and then with the three or four sliders, you can pretty well pull any green screen background, substituting your original video in its place.
The only disappointment I encountered so far is the lack of a reverse or flip setting for the video. If you have a clip of a curtain opening, it would certainly be nice to be able to close it as well. I tried doing a reverse time change, but it won’t accept negative numbers.
Mac and PC users will be happy to know that they can share files back and forth in whatever work flow suits them best. You can also package your projects, zip them up and share with other Camtasia users.
Once your file is complete, without even leaving the program, you can upload it to one of many video streaming services like YouTube, Vimeo, Screencast or your Google Drive.
Techsmith heard your comments and created a great new package that makes video editing possible for just about anyone. With all their tutorials and free media assets, you can be turning out videos that people will actually enjoy watching. Download a trial copy for free and see if it doesn’t do exactly what you need. Who know…maybe yours will be the next to go viral.
Disclosure: Techsmith provided us with a copy of the program so that we could review it. Opinions however are always our own.