Author Archives: Conan Heiselt

About Conan Heiselt

Conan is an Instructional Designer who used to be a Systems Engineer who was originally going to be a Graphic Designer who instead ended up studying Asian languages for a while before moving on to other things. Aside from making tutorials for Camtasia for Mac, creating and maintaining its tutorial viewer, and the hundreds of other things he does at TechSmith, Conan spends time remodeling his house, fixing a garden tractor older than himself, writing mobile apps, and taking apart/making things with his kids. He also has a strange sleep schedule.

Add More Zing to Your Camtasia for Mac Screencasts with Snagit

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Camtasia for Mac gives us a lot of options for capturing and annotating our screencasts: screen video capture, web cam, audio, importing media, callouts, arrows, blur, etc. However, sometimes you need--or just want--more. It's then that you may want to turn to Snagit, Camtasia's beloved sibling, to pitch in. Some of the things I import from Snagit to Camtasia are: Custom annotations (like curvy arrows!) Stamps (cursors, more styles of keyboard keys, etc.) Still screen captures (as-is Continue reading

Make Your Own Transitions in Camtasia for Mac

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Transitions are an important element of film, including screencasts. They provide a way to smoothly jump from one clip to another or signify changes, such as the passage of time, moving to a different application, progression of topics, etc. While Camtasia for Mac only has five built-in visual transitions, I find that 99% of the time I don't need anything else besides the "Fade In/Out" transition. The other 1% of the time, though, it's nice to know that Camtasia gives me the flexibility to Continue reading

An Oldie but Goodie: Using Markers to Make Editing Easier

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Back in the good old days of Camtasia for Mac v.1, I created a tutorial on ways that I use markers while editing to help me work faster and easier. Recently, I ran across it and to my delight, nearly everything in it is still very relevant to Camtasia for Mac v.2. And, as a BONUS, this tutorial also shows how to make your own keyboard shortcuts for Camtasia (or any Mac application) menu items. Without further ado: Can't view the video? Watch it on Screencast.com. What tips do you have Continue reading

Zooming: the often misunderstood half-holy grail of screencast quality

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"Zooming" is one of the things that many, many Camtasia users--ourselves included--want to do with their screen recording, and rightly so. It allows us to record everything to show context, but then get in close to show details (kind of the best of both worlds). Knowing how important it is, we try to cover at least the basics soundly in the Getting Started series for both Camtasia Studio (06: Apply SmartFocus to Zoom and Pan) and Camtasia for Mac (6: Increase viewer understanding: Zoom, Pan, Bam). Continue reading

Adding Reusable Bouncing Arrows in Camtasia for Mac

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Wouldn't it be great if you could animate arrows in your video to point out what's really important? And what about making those animated arrows seem like they bounce to make them more interesting? Then, wouldn't it also be amazing if, after all of that work, you could save those fancy arrows to use elsewhere? Well, my friends, today you're in luck, because that's exactly what this tutorial is about. Now I know it's a bit longer than normal, but hopefully you'll find it chock full of other Continue reading

Camtasia for Mac: Meet The Mysterious but Heroic “Global Edit Mode”

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This is one of those features that you probably would never find on your own, and even if you did there's a good chance you'd have no idea what it did or how amazingly useful it can be when you need it--at least that's how it was for me at first. Here's the scoop: Can't see the video? View it on Screencast.com. Continue reading

Add Voice Narration to your Camtasia for Mac Project

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There are lots of ways to create videos with Camtasia. Here at TechSmith, we generally start with a script and storyboard, record the audio, record the video (while listening to the audio), and then edit it all together. Others record everything at once, with or without a script/outline. Still others record their video first, then record voice narration of that video, and put them both together. This quick tutorial will show one way to add narration to video you've already created: Can't Continue reading