Video

Camtasia Adds 'Professional-Grade' Video Features

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/13/16

Video creation platform Camtasia has been updated with new features designed to enable educators to make their videos more professional looking. Camtasia 9 for Windows and Camtasia 3 for Mac from TechSmith include new assets, support for 64 bit and cross-platform support.

Among the new features, according to Product Manager Troy Stein, are these:

• Access to an asset library that has animated backgrounds, icons and music tracks for integration into videos;
• The use of "behaviors," which allow the user to apply animations to text, images and icons;
• Motion graphics to set off visual content;
• "Canvas" editing, a WYSIWYG capability that lets the user view edits and modifications directly on the workscreen;
• Support for quizzing in the Mac edition, which allows the user to have the video pause, issue a quiz, and then continue; quizzing already existed in the Windows edition;
• An upgrade in the rendering engine to 64 bit, which, noted Stein, improves performance and stability and provides the capacity for "richer" videos; and
• Cross-platform support through a common project file that allows users on both Windows and Mac to collaborate on video projects.

The latest version of Camtasia is priced at $199 for Windows or Mac. Upgrades for existing customers are $99.50.