Before you can edit your screencasts in Camtasia Studio, you need to have a solid understanding of how the timeline works.
Even if you’ve used Camtasia Studio version 7 or prior, a lot has changed to give you more flexibility and power.
This tutorial will cover the biggest concepts and skills you’ll need to understand to be successful,
as well as a few tips to make working on the timeline much easier.
Digital videos, just like old-style film-based movies, are based on a series of images that play so fast our eyes see motion instead.
In Camtasia Studio, what you see displayed in the canvas is the frame (or picture) at the moment in time where the playhead is.
The timeline, on the other hand, shows you how long things like video, audio, images, and callouts will show up in your video.
Before something appears on the timeline, it doesn’t show up in your video…and after it ends in the timeline, it also doesn’t show up.
One of the great things about the new timeline is that you can use unlimited tracks and that there are no media-specific tracks.
This means that you can put your video, audio, callouts, and images on any track you want.
However, even though you can put any piece of media on any track,
the track you choose does affect how the media appears in your final video.
That’s because while the timeline shows when your media appears in the video,
it also shows the order in which media is stacked on top of each other in the video.
You can think of the timeline as almost a side- ways view of the media…while the canvas is a top-down view of the timeline tracks.
So, because the timeline shows the stacking order— this is sometimes called the “Z”-order
— placing any media on a higher track on the timeline will move it higher in the stacking order will move it higher in the stacking order…
and thus moving media up in the timeline will move it forward on the canvas.
..and moving it down in the timeline will move it backward on the canvas.
You may notice that some of your recordings have both video and audio in the same clip in the timeline.
This is to keep them in sync and make them easier to work with.
However, if you need to edit either separately,
and choose “Separate video and audio” from the menu.
I want to keep them together, so I’ll just undo that action by clicking here.
Also on the timeline, you’ll notice that some of the clips have these little triangles.
They’re animations, and if we zoom in using this slider, you’ll see that the triangles are actually arrows instead.
Now that they’re not all squished up, you can see where the animations start...and where they end.
If you find that any animations are too fast or too slow, just drag an end to stretch it longer – which will slow down the animation –
or shorter – which will speed it up.
Next, let’s make a selection on the timeline.
Simply put the playhead where you want the selection to start…and drag the red out-point to the right.
You can always adjust your selection with the green and red handles.
Notice how a playhead selection includes all of the tracks on the timeline.
If you only want to edit one or two tracks, click the locks to the left of the tracks you want left alone.
Be sure to scroll up and down to make sure you don’t miss any and unlock the tracks before trying to edit them again.
From here, you can do a few different things. You can hit the delete key, which will simply remove the section of media from the timeline.
You can click here to cut it, which will remove the selection and stitch the remaining parts together.
Or, you can click here to copy the selection. Once you’re done with the selection, you can clear it by double-clicking on the playhead.
If you choose to cut or copy the selection, you can now paste it…
and the clips will be added to the timeline at the playhead, above what you already have.
You can also split selected clips right at the playhead by clicking this button.
Before we finish, here are a few tips to make working on the timeline easier.
At times there may be a lot on your timeline, both horizontally… and vertically.
You can use the scroll bars, but it’s nice every now and then to see everything.
To show more vertically, you can make the tracks shorter by moving this slider to the left…
and to zoom in (horizontally) on the timeline, drag this slider to the left.
Many of the most common actions are available in the context menus,
which appear when you right click on the very left of the tracks, clips and empty areas on the timeline, and on the playhead.
Well, that wraps up this tutorial.
In the next one, we’ll dive into some of Camtasia Studio’s most useful editing features.
Click here to watch that now. And click here to leave feedback about this particular tutorial. Thanks for watching!