Do you want to take your videos to the next level by making them interactive?
Well, in this video I'm going to show you an easy way to add interactivity to your
video projects without coding, using the video editing application Camtasia.
Hey, it's Mike with more tips and tools to help you create engaging, informative,
and educational video. And if it's your first time here make sure you hit the
big subscribe button, and don't forget to click the little bell icon so you don't
miss a thing. Interactivity seems to be the holy grail
of online media these days, whether you're making educational videos, or
product demos for your video marketing. But up until now, creating an interactive
video was beyond the reach of most of us. It required coding and some fairly
sophisticated and complex software. Well, that's no longer the case with software
application packages like Camtasia. Camtasia is a screen capture and video
editing application, but it also has the ability to create interactive videos
using a feature called Hotspots. In a nutshell hotspots allow
you to create interactive areas in your video. Let's hop on into Camtasia so I
can show you how Hotspots work. So, here we are in Camtasia. This is Camtasia 3
for Mac. There's also a Windows version of Camtasia that's up to version 9.
Hotspots work exactly the same way in both versions, so whether you're on Mac
or Windows this tutorial will be useful. So, I've created this demo project, here. I
have this video on my timeline and we're going to make it interactive using
Hotspots. So, to get started I'll go over to the Media Panel
and I'll scroll down and select the Visual Effects section, not the
Interactivity section, as you'd expect. If you go to the Interactivity section
you'll only find Camtasia's interactive quiz feature, not hotspots. Not terribly
intuitive, I know. You'd think you'd find Hotspots in the Interactivity section.
We have to go to the Visual Effects section and there at the bottom is
Interactive Hotspots. Okay, let's add a Hotspot to our project. To do that I'll
click and drag a Hotspot onto the timeline and... what's going on here, where
is the Hotspot? Well, what you need to understand is that Hotspots are not an
object under themselves. They don't exist on their own in Camtasia. To make a
Hotspot work you need to add it to another object. You can add Hotspots to pretty
much any type of media object in your project - a shape, a piece of text, an
image, even a video clip. This will make more sense if I show it to you, so let's
back up. Remember, Hotspots need to be attached to a media object, so the first
thing I'm going to do is create an object for the Hotspot. I'm going to
create a button and I'm going to do that using a Callout. So, I'm going to scroll
up in the Media Panel and select Annotations and select the
Callouts section, and we have this wide selection of
Callouts. I'm just going to grab this simple Callout, here and I'm going to
click and drag it down onto my timeline and line it up with the end of this
section of the video. As you can see, a Callout is just some text with a shape
for a background. We can edit the text in this Callout by simply double-clicking
it then I'll enter "Button 1" as my label and I can place this Callout button
anywhere on the screen by clicking and dragging it, here, in the canvas. I'll just
place it, here, for now. To make this Callout button work like a button I'll
add a Hotspot to it. So, I'll go to Visual Effects and scroll down to the bottom to
Interactive Hotspot. I'll click and drag the Interactive
Hotspot and drop it onto my Callout button in the timeline. You can also drag
the Hotspot onto the actual Callout on the Canvas.
So, I'll drop the Hotspot on the Callout button and now this Callout
button is clickable. Okay, so our Hotspot is in place with our Callout button
selected. Have a look way over here at the Properties Panel. Make sure you have
the Visual Properties tab selected and when you scroll down you'll see you have
settings for Interactive Hotspot. This is where we make our Hotspot actually do
something. The first setting is Pause at End and it's checked by default. What
that means is when the playhead reaches the end of the Callout clip containing
the Hotspot the Playhead will stop and wait until the Hotspot is clicked. When
the Hotspot is clicked one of four events can occur and those four events
are represented by these four choices, here. You'll notice the fourth choice
down here Click to Continue is selected by default. This means that when the user
clicks the Hotspot the Playhead will resume playing from where it stopped.
If we select URL and enter a URL or web address in this field, here, when the user
clicks the Callout button that webpage will appear in a new browser window.
Marker jumps the Playhead to a specific marker on the timeline. When the user
clicks the Hotspot. To create a marker, you can go over here to this little
arrow at the end of the Timeline. Clicking that opens this new track in
the Timeline and you can use this new track to place Markers. So, if I select
Marker and run my cursor along this track I get this blue cross icon which
represents a Marker. So, I can drag to a spot click and that creates a Marker on
the timeline. You can also place markers directly on media clips in your timeline.
You just find a spot on the clip and click and that places a Marker. And if
you select your Marker then go over to its properties in the Properties Panel
you can rename it to keep things organized. I'm going to rename mine
"Button 1." To get out of Marker placement mode you
just go back to that arrow at the end of the timeline and click it to close the
Marker track. Now if I go back and select my Callout Hotspot to bring up its
properties in the Properties Panel and select Marker, you'll see this dropdown
menu that displays all the Markers in your project. So, here's the marker we
created: "Button 1." I'll select that so when the user clicks the Callout
Hotspot the Playhead will jump to the "Button 1" Marker. Below marker we have
Time. If you select this option when the user clicks the Hotspot the Playhead
will jump to a specific timecode in your project. And you enter that timecode in
these fields right here. So, how do you know what timecode to enter. Well, you
can find the current timecode of the Playhead right beside it.
It's these numbers right, here. So, you just drag the Playhead to the spot on
your timeline that you want to jump to, make note of the timecode, then enter
the timecode over here in the Time field. Now, you've probably noticed this
Test button down here. You use this to make sure the Hotspot is linking to the
correct destination. For example, we currently have Time selected and this
timecode that we want the playhead to go to when the user clicks the Callout.
Well, let's see if the Hotspot actually goes to that timecode, and we can do
that by clicking Test and the Playhead jumps to the timecode we entered. We can
test it with the Marker option. Let's select the Marker option and select our
one and only Marker, "Button 1" from the dropdown list, and we'll go down and
click Test and the Playhead jumps to our Button 1 Marker.
Let's try URL. I'll select the URL option and enter the URL of my website.
I'll move down and click Test and a browser window opens up and there
is the homepage of my site.
The testing feature is really useful, but how can we be sure all of our Hotspots
are working properly, how can we really test the interactivity of our project?
Well, unfortunately you can't preview your interactive project here in the
Camtasia editor. All you can do is use the Test button to test the targets for
the Hotspots. To truly test the interactivity of your Camtasia project
you need to publish it, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pause the
video so I can build out this project with a few more Hotspots and when I come
back I'll publish the project so we can test it out.
Okay, I'm back. I added a few different types of Hotspots to our project with
additional Markers as you can see. So, let's publish this to see if everything
is working. To publish your interactive project be sure to save it first then go
up to Share on the top menu bar and select Local File from the dropdown.
You'll get this export dialog window. So, I'm going to name our project
"Interactive Test."
We'll export it to the desktop. We'll leave everything set to the defaults,
except we'll select Export as Web Page. You need to have this option selected in
order to export interactive projects out of Camtasia. You'll see why in just a
moment. In the Windows version of Camtasia the export process looks a bit
different. When you go up to the top menu and select Share and then select Local File
you get this Production Wizard Panel. You want to click the dropdown
arrow and select mp4 with Smart Player up to 480p, mp4 with Smart Player up to
720p, or mp4 with Smart Player up to 1080p, depending on the final resolution
of your video. The key is the Smart Player. It's what makes the interactivity
happen in your exported video. So, I'm gonna select mp4 with Smart Player up to
720p because that is the resolution of my demo project.
You get a description of the export preset you selected and if you look down
here in the description area you can see that it says Interactive Features such
as TOC, which is Table of Contents, Closed Captions, Quizzes and Hotspots are
included in the video. Then you just go down here and hit Next
and then on this screen you give your project a name, select or create a
destination folder and hit Finish.
Back over on the Mac, I'll hit Export and Camtasia will generate the necessary
files.
Once Camtasia is done exporting, I'll go find our published project on the
Desktop. So, here's our published project. It's a
folder and if we double-click it to open it we'll find a webpage called
"index.html" and a folder labeled "media." If we open the media folder
we'll find a collection of files - JavaScript files, video files, all kinds
of different scripts. These files make up our interactive project. So, if you wanted
to share your interactive Camtasia project online you'd need to grab this
folder, containing the "index.html" webpage and the "media" folder and upload it
to your web server, or Amazon s3, or Screencast.com, which is a hosting
service offered by TechSmith, the makers of Camtasia. Once your project is
uploaded you'd create a link to this "index.html" page and that link will
launch your interactive project in a browser window. However, you don't need to
upload these files to a web server in order to test your interactive Camtasia
project. You can test it right on your computer,
locally by just double-clicking this "index.html" file.
Your interactive Camtasia project will load into your default web
browser and you can test the interactivity. So, let's see what we've
got. I'll hit the Play arrow to start our
interactive video. "A good quality webcam can be a versatile
and cost-effective tool for creating high quality learning videos if you know
how to use it properly. If you want to get the best possible video out of these
little cameras follow these four steps."
"I'm recording right now using the blue Yeti Pro USB microphone placed just not
a shot."
"If you want to drastically improve the quality of your webcam video invest in a
good external microphone."
Just one last really important point regarding Hotspots. I'm just going to go
down on a Timeline, here, and zoom in a bit so that you can see better. Now,
remember this Pause at End setting in the hot spots Properties Panel? It causes
the Playhead to stop when it reaches the end of the Hotspot object on the
Timeline. Well, in order for this setting to work properly in the final video the
Hotspot object on the timeline needs to be at least half a second or 15 frames
long. Any shorter and the interactive video player won't have enough time to
register the pause properly and your video won't pause at the end of that
Hotspot. It'll just keep going right through or it'll pause a few frames late. Just
something to keep in mind when you're creating Hotspots. The ability to add
interactive Hotspots to just about any media object in Camtasia opens up a lot
of creative possibilities. With some solid planning and a bit of imagination,
you could create a pretty engaging and immersive video experience. Well that's
it for this video experience. I hope you found value in it. And if you want to
discover more tips and tools for creating engaging, informative, and
educational video, be sure to hit the big subscribe button on the screen, so you
don't miss a thing. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.