Understanding the editing workflow

- [Narrator] The real power in Camtasia lies in the built-in editor that empowers you to take your screen recordings to the next level. When you complete a recording, Camtasia will automatically load the recording into a Camtasia project file. Project files have a .cmproj file extension and a green icon. Open a project file by double-clicking it. The editor is where you refine your story. The timeline and the canvas show you two separate perspectives of your story.

The canvas shows you the current frame that is selected in the timeline by the play head. Dragging the play head allows you to scrub through time in your movie to find a place where you want to edit in the canvas. Media in your timeline is represented as individual clips. Click on a clip to select it. Selected clips are highlighted in the timeline and show selection handles in the canvas. You can manipulate the clip scale, position, and rotation in the canvas by using the control handles.

You can change when a clip appears, or for how long, by adjusting its parameters here in the timeline. To make further refinements to a selected clip open the properties inspector by clicking the gear icon. And then adjust the property that you want to change. For media that was recorded inside of Camtasia, you can adjust the look of the video, the sound of the audio, and the appearance of the mouse. Playback is controlled by clicking the play button to start and stop playback.

Although you'll rarely use this button since you can start and stop playback by pressing the spacebar on your keyboard. The assets and effects panel on the left let you add new characters to your story, such as additional media that you import, or use some 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 my timeline. And that clip begins where my play head is currently located. You can now manipulate this clip in the same way as any other clip.

Positioning it in the canvas, adjusting its timing in the timeline, or changing its properties in the properties inspector. Below the annotations are effects that you can apply to clips by dragging a desired effect onto a clip and adjusting its timing. Scrubbing the play head over the clip shows you the effect. Effects that change over time appear as an arrow on the clip.

While effects that are applied the same over time are accessed by clicking on the bottom of the clip to reveal the effects bars for that clip. Notice how this star clip appears above our logo clip here in the timeline. These are called tracks. Clips can be placed on any layer by clicking and dragging the clip to another layer. Think of tracks as stacks of sheets of glass with clips on each layer. In the timeline you can see the order of the stack and which layer a clip is on.

In the canvas you're seeing a composite of the stack as if you're looking straight down through all of the layers. An object on a higher track will cover over an object on a lower track. We'll use this ability to layer content in later movies when we create our own motion graphics. It's always a good idea whenever you're working on a project to go up to the File menu and select Save As. Then give your project a name. I'll call mine Tabs.

And make sure that the check box for Create standalone project is checked. This will ensure that all of the media, including images, audio, and recorded videos are all saved inside of the project file. Self-contained projects are a bit larger, but they allow you to easily make a complete back-up of your project onto an external drive, or share your project with someone else who has Camtasia if you're collaborating on a project together. After you save your project, you can share your story with the world by using one of the options here in the share menu.

Throughout the rest of this course we'll take a deep dive into every aspect of this workflow, so you can tell your story how you're envisioning it.