This tutorial will give you a quick tour of the editor to help you get started.
The three main areas of the editor are the Clip Bin, the Canvas, and the Timeline. Let’s start with the Clip Bin.
Along the bottom of this area you’ll see a set of tabs. The Clip Bin tab is selected, and I like to think of this as the “home” tab.
The Clip Bin holds all of the video, audio, and image files that are being used in the current project.
Import additional media to use in your project by clicking this button.
Drag individual clips from the Clip Bin to the Timeline to add them to your video. The next tab is the Library.
The Library holds a variety of title clips, video segments, animations, callouts, audio and other media that can be used from project to
project -- and you can add your own at any time. The rest of the tabs are for adding or editing special effects to your video.
Click on More to view additional features you can use. To make a new recording, click the Record the screen button.
And when you’re finished editing your project, click the Produce and share button to produce your video into a number of different shareable
formats. And just like most other applications, all features and settings for Camtasia Studio can be accessed from the menu bar.
The next stop on this tour is the Canvas. You may also hear this area referred to as the Preview Window at times because this is
where you preview your video as it’s playing back on your timeline. The Canvas gives you total control over how your video is displayed
for your viewers. Let me give you some examples of what I mean. Right now the video fills the entire canvas.
If you click and hold on top of the video, you’ll see some yellow gridlines. You can drag the video and position it wherever you want and
the gridlines help snap your video to specific areas or quadrants. If you’d like to resize your recording to be smaller, or larger, within your
final video, just grab one of the corners and drag to resize it. You can even rotate your video to customize the appearance even more.
For more details on working with the canvas, check out our Canvas In-Depth tutorial.
Before leaving the canvas, there are a few more things to note. Here are the playback controls and a helpful time code to show the
current position of the playhead and overall duration of the video. Scrub through the video to quickly locate a specific segment.
Expand this menu to change the view percentage of your video on the canvas; or choose Shrink to fit so everything is sure to be
visible. But please note that this doesn’t change your editing or production dimensions for your video.
It only changes how the video looks on the canvas to help with editing.
If you do want to change your editing dimensions, which will change the size of your produced video, click here.
This will bring up the Editing Dimensions dialog. By default, Camtasia uses the “Maximum 720p HD” option.
This is a versatile standard that’s comfortably viewed on large monitors, laptops, and tablets - even the small ones.
For more on editing dimensions and the default option, check out our Editing Dimensions Basics tutorial.
The last area we are going to cover is the Timeline. This is where you assemble and edit your video.
There are an unlimited number of Tracks for you to build your video projects. You can place video, audio, or images on any track
and at any position. Click the plus button to make new tracks and right-click a track to rename it, remove it, or choose other options
from the menu. Adjust the height of a track by hovering over one of the edges until you see a double arrow.
Or adjust the heights of all tracks by using this slider. You’ll notice the playhead has a green in- point and a red out-point connected to it.
These are used for making selections on your timeline to help you delete, copy, or perform other actions.
The quickest way to clear a selection made with these points is to double-click the playhead.
The timeline toolbar contains a zoom-in and zoom-out slider, which really helps with editing as it lets you make more precise cuts and
selections. There are also buttons to cut, split, copy, and paste media on the timeline.
There is so much more I’d love to share with you about the timeline in this tutorial
but hopefully this editor overview covered enough to get you started and ready to explore on your own.