Camtasia 2020 is two separate applications that work seamlessly together. After watching this movie you will be able to navigate the user interface of the Recorder and Editor.

Original Script

Camtasia is two applications that work seamlessly together. The editor and the recorder. When you first open Camtasia you’re generally taken to the editor since this is where you will be spending most of your time as you refine and craft your story.

To capture your story you’ll need to open the Camtasia Recorder by pressing the red Record Button in upper left of the Editor Window or Pressing Command or Control R. With the Camtasia Recorder you can capture your Screen based content from your computer, Your Webcam, Microphone and any other sounds coming out of your computer. We’ll step through this process in detail in later movies; for now let’s close the window and go back to the Editor.

The Editor is divided into multiple regions. On the right is the Canvas, think of this as the stage on which your story will take place. Below the Canvas is your Timeline, think of this as the entire script for your story. You can jump to any point in your script by moving the Playhead, notice that your cast of characters instantly take their positions for that point in the story.

To the left of your Canvas are your Assets and Effects panels. Think of these as your cast of characters and your special effects departments.

There are 2 primary tool bars. The one at the top of the window gives you quick access to the Recorder, Canvas and Project Settings and Share button. Between the Canvas and Timeline are the main editing controls. In the middle you have playback controls and on the left you have the most commonly used editing tools.

On the right of the toolbar you can open the Properties panel where you can change specific parameters for whatever object is currently selected.

At the top of your window is Camtasia’s Main menu bar. Under the Edit or Camtasia Menu you can access the Applications Preferences or press Command or Control comma. This Preferences window allows you to customize Camtasia to work the way that you want it to work. We’ll look at these preferences when appropriate throughout this course. The Preferences is one of the key places where the Mac and Windows version of Camtasia are somewhat different and I’ll point those out when appropriate. For now let’s close this window.

Whenever you open a new application for the first time, take a minute and look through each and every Menu options. Start getting the names of the features set in your mind. That way when you do run into a question about how to accomplish something, you already have a rough idea of what the Programmers have called many of the functions. This will give you a better chance at figuring out what’s the right question to ask or answer to look for.

Speaking of answers, the far right menu item here is Help. Camtasia provides a nice built in help system, access to some video tutorials, and an option to Check For Updates, so you can always make sure you’re running the latest version of Camtasia. Finally is an option for Keyboard Shortcuts that will open a page which details all of the shortcuts you will want to wrap your fingers around for your platform, Learning and using the keyboard shortcuts is the fastest way to learn to become a more efficient video editor.