Using Camtasia to create a portfolio entry
Camtasia is a fully featured system that lets you record the voice and screen in real time, and to produce a video in various formats from it (including a flash movie). You can then include this video in your web portfolio. Note that you can only do this on your own computer - we do not have it installed on our University computers.
Camtasia allows you to download a 30-day free trial. After the 30 day trial, you will not be able to use it again unless you buy a license. (Deleting and installing it again does not work).
NOTE: Some freeware equivalents are available, although unlikely as powerful.
Now back to Camtasia...
- Download Camtasia 5.0; you should also read the product overview tab on that page to see its features.
- Documentation / tutorials are available at Camtasia Learning Center. It will also suggest that you watch some documentation before you start - I suggest you do so, especially the overviews of the following topics:
- Using the Recorder
- How to Edit
- How to Produce
- How to Share
- Basic operation.
- From the startup dialog box, select New Screen Recording..
- Decide if you want to use SmartFocus, or a fixed screen size. Also decide if you want to record voice (to do a vocie over).
- In the effects menu, you probably want to select the opions for Sound/MouseClick Sounds and Sound/Keyboard Sounds, and for Cursor/Highlight Cursor & Clicks.
- Before you start, know what you are going to say and do. Practice it. This can save considerable time later when editing. I really mean this - a bad script can add several hours of editing time. Practice, practice, practice.
- Record it, and look at the preview. Don't be scared of throwing it away and trying again.
- If it makes sense to do so, do it as a set of several videos (or scenes) that can be played separately.
- After recording, edit as needed. Put in titles / captions / transitions as needed.
- Produce the video in web format
- Load it onto your web site. Make sure you have all the other portfolio entry completed, i.e., a good screen snapshot, etc. with an option to play the video. If you can, see if you can embed it into your own web page as a flash movie.