Hello, Cristi here.
Welcome back to another video with Camtasia.
Today, I want to show you two ways to create a talking head with Camtasia, and we know
all of those tutorials with the talking head where the head of the speaker is in a circle.
So that's a talking head video, you've got a circle and the person who's presenting the
tutorial or the video is in a tiny circle and that works easily.
You can place it anywhere on your screen, and, you know, it provides a face to look
at during the videos.
But today I want to show you a more interesting way to do that effect, which makes it different
and better, I think in my opinion, and I think it works for certain types of videos where
the talking head actually doesn't stay in that circle, but it pops out of the circle
and it gives it a bit of extra dimension and it pops off the screen really, because it
looks much more interesting like that.
And it gives it a bit more you know, a bit more space to move.
It's not like a little head confined to that tiny circle.
So let me show you.
The first way, I'm going to show you how to do the classic effect.
So I have a video here on my screen.
I recorded it and the classic way to do the talking head in Camtasia by the way, is to
just simply go to the Annotations, and you've got your talking head video right there, but
then you want to make it sit in that circle.
So that's method number one, you just drag an annotation circle on top of your video,
make it as large as you like, so basically I want my head and basically my shoulders
to be inside of that circle.
If it helps you position it, you can turn the opacity down and kind of have a look through
and see if the framing is right.
But it's okay because you can move it later if you don't like it.
So I'm happy with this one now.
And basically, the effect is this.
You go to the Visual Effects in Camtasia and you can drag the effect called Media Matte
in Camtasia 2021.
Or if you have an older version, 2020 for example, you can use the Track Matte to achieve
the same effect.
But with the Media Matte, I'm going to drag the Media Matte effect to this circle that
I've drawn.
So drag it on this circle and you can see immediately, the circle is now showing just
myself in there, or you can drag it onto the timeline onto the clip with the annotation,
with the circle.
Don't forget to make that circle stretch for the entire duration of your project, like
this.
So that your entire video, you can see on the timeline, my video there with myself talking,
then this circle has to be for the entire duration.
Otherwise, it's going to come out of the effect, you're not going to have it for the entire
duration.
So this is your talking head.
If I play it now, you can see me in the circle.
If you select this one and the video clip, group them, Control G.
Now you have a moving object, you can move around the screen and you can maybe put a
background and you can see the effect.
I'm just going to put this video clip with some water here and you can see the talking
head.
Now, if you want something behind that, if you don't have a green screen, like I have
on this video, you're going to see your background in the background there.
So this is your basic talking head effect, right?
Let me now show you a nicer way.
Turn off the video with the background for a second.
And I'm going to ungroup this right there.
So this is the effect that I want to show you today.
Instead of just adding this one circle, I'm going to give it a background, right?
So by the way, this effect will only work if your video has been recorded with green
screen, so you can remove the green screen from your video.
So let me show you what I have here.
This is me, on the video in the webcam.
So if I turn off the Remove Color effect that I have applied, you can see my green screen
behind me.
So this is my actual video clip, right?
So the effect, I'm going to show you with this nice talking head, doesn't work if you
don't have a green screen, because what we need is for the entire space, the whole space
around the speaker to be invisible and transparent, and that you can only achieve with the green
screen.
So I'm going to turn on the green screen effect now here.
So if I put back the background, you can see now the video through it.
So the effect I'm showing you doesn't work without the green screen, because you're going
to see your background in there.
So let me turn this off for a second.
Let me just make this one smaller.
So what I want to do is I want to have myself in the talking head circle but I want my head
to actually come out of that circle and above.
So it makes it look more interesting, like I'm not confined to that circle.
So the way to do this as simple, go to Annotations and grab the circle again.
I'm going to place this on just like before, make it larger, make sure that I'm sort of
covering all of the area that I want.
And if it helps again, turn the opacity down.
So this would be the position for a classic talking head.
But what I want to do is, and I'm going to stretch this for the entire duration again,
because I want the effect to last for the whole thing.
So what I want to do now is, actually I want to pull this down here.
So I want to maybe even make this a bit smaller, like that.
So I obviously want my shoulders and my, you know, the bottom part of my head to be inside
of the circle somehow.
And I also want the top of my head to be in this effect.
But before I do that, let me turn the opacity back up and I'm going to make a copy of this
circle.
Control C, Control V. Make sure it's aligned and I'm going to move this one to the bottom
track right there, because that's going to be like my background video.
So if I turn this off from the top, you can see the yellow circle behind me, that's what
I did.
I put a yellow circle behind me.
So, but what I want to do is I want to make the circle a bit larger.
So I'm going to just increase the size like this, right?
So now, what I have is, and maybe increase myself a bit because I'm thinking now I don't
want to see that bottom part.
Right, so now let me say that these background circle, that's going to be, let's make it
white, you know, just so we can see it.
So that's going to be my background from inside the circle.
And that's going to provide a little bit of a border.
You're going to see.
So now turn on the yellow one, so you can see now the white one is going to act as a
white background, and I need to get my object here and this one instead, I'm going to make
a copy of it again.
Control C, Control V. So I have two yellow circles, and what I'm going to do is I'm going
to make this a bit smaller.
Let me change the color, so you see what I'm doing.
And move this where my head is, possibly a bit larger now.
Right, so this is going to be the area that I'm going to cover with my mask.
So I'm masking myself inside of these two circles.
And the way to do that is select both circles, it doesn't matter what color they have, as
long as their opacity is 100%, right?
So these two circles, I'm going to make a group from them, select both and Control G
to group them.
And finally, I'm going to go to the Visual Effects just like before, go to More, go to
Visual Effects and select Media Matte and apply it to this group that I just created
with the two circles in it.
It's still selected by the way, drag this on top and there you go.
So that's the effect right there.
So I'm now seeing myself inside of that circle, but the head pops out from inside the circle.
So it kind of gives it a bit of more pop.
Now to do even better, I'm going to select my video, the one that's me on the camera,
not the group, and I'm going to give myself sort of a drop shadow behind me, right?
So I'm going to go to the effects, select Drop Shadow and drop it onto the video right
there.
Again, this doesn't work if you don't have green screen.
You notice if I zoom in, I've got a sort of a shadow behind me.
I'm going to make the shadow in the Properties in the middle and offset it a bit, and blur
it and maybe make it a bit darker if you want, just to make sure you kind of see the shadow
right there.
So it kind of gives it a bit more sort of a 3D kind of appearance, cause now I'm not
glued to that background.
I am sort of popping out in front.
So the flexibility here is, you can take that shape on the background, the white shape,
and you can change the color if you want, you know, I want to have a different kind
of color for my background.
Maybe have dark blue or a red or whatever, you know, skin tone, if you want.
I'm just going to leave it white, and this is the effect.
So now if I play the video, you can see, I am kind of moving there, the whole video just
plays fine, but I'm still sitting inside of that circle and the head pops out.
So that's really great.
Now to make this more interesting, I'm going to turn on the background with the water so
you can see now how nicely this whole effect works, but I want to see it pop up even more
of the screen.
So the way to do this is, I'm going to select everything right now, except for the water
background.
Right.
So I select the group that provides my Alpha channel, my mask, I select the video of myself
talking and the background, the white background with my border sort of thing.
Select all three and Control G to group them.
And now, they become a single object I can move around.
You can see, I place it anywhere.
So, you know, people usually put the talking head in one of the corners, so you can make
this smaller if you want, just place it there.
And now you can see everything is playing on top of this water background perfectly.
So to make it pop even more, I can, I'm going to zoom in a bit here and I'm going to add
another shadow to this whole object, go to drop shadow again, in the Visual Effects,
Drop Shadow, drag it onto the whole thing.
And you can see it maybe here, I'm going to make it darker so you can see it really well
and you can move it.
You know, you can see the offset I can move it or I can say it's in the bottom part, you
know, I can move it away like that and make the blur stronger.
You know, you can play with this and make it look very nice, and it really pops off
the screen right now.
So look, if I'm looking at the whole video, everything plays nicely and I'm talking there,
I'm explaining, so I don't know what kind of a use case you would use this for, but
I think it looks really cool and it's a little bit of a departure from the classic talking
head effects.
And all we did was apply two circles, create a group with them, use them as a mask, and
then just provide another circle to give it a nice place holder for the background, you
know.
But that really needs the green screen, as I said, because you need to be able to see
through the video itself.
So there it is, very much more interesting talking head, in my opinion.
Maybe some people think it's weird, I don't know, but I kind of like it.
So there you go, I hope you learned something new today.
The Media Matte again to the rescue is a really nice, and it's my favorite effect in Camtasia,
by the way, since they introduced it in 2020, and the Media Matte was introduced in 2021.
And you can do all sorts of effects with the Media Matte effect, just, you know, your imagination
really is the limit.
It's such a simple effect, but you can achieve so many things.
So I do hope you've enjoyed this tutorial.
Thank you again for watching.
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And thanks again for watching.
I will see you on the next one.