7 Reasons to Consider Camtasia 7

Video is bigger than ever, in fact, since the YouTube video case study posted here, the conversion numbers continue to grow over Google search 4 to 1. Readers and subscribers sometimes ask me, “what software do you use to make your videos?”, I gladly tell them, Camtasia. Now, making videos quickly and easily just got better with the launch of Camtasia 7. Let me share with you the 7 reasons I think Camtasia 7 should be in every marketers toolkit.

7 Reasons to Consider Camtasia 7

Having been a user of Camtasia since version 3, it has been great to see them continue to mature the product into what it is today. No software is perfect, yet whenever I’ve had questions or issues, their support has made up for any shortcoming with the software. Camtasia 7 moves things one step closer to perfection, here are the seven things I’m most excited about, and plan to get started with right away.

One- New User Interface

Since seeing the Camtasia for Mac interface (updated today as well) last fall, I was a big fan of a user interface revamp, and Camtasia 7 delivers just that. It now has an improved and intuitive user interface. Here is a partial screen-shot, out with the gray in with the black.

Two- YouTube Upload

This will be a huge time saver when producing internet marketing videos for YouTube, as it will render and upload a video all in one step. If you are a YouTube marketing phenom, you know that naming, description text, and tagging videos is essential to getting targeted traffic to your video and ultimately your website (as taught here). These areas typically edited right on YouTube are now available in one screen from Camtasia.

Three- Sketch Motion Callouts

Like any content, videos need to stand out. Getting the viewers attention in video is important, one way to do that in Camtasia is using the screendraw effect. This allows you to draw on the screen while recording.

The problem for me is, I often forget to use this feature, or realize how it would have been helpful after the recording is done and I was on to editing. Essentially, I was out of luck, until this version. Now you can sketch these similar screendraw effects while editing the video to focus viewers’ attention.

Four- Improved Screen Recorder

They have boosted frame rates up to 50% which makes for smoother recordings of video intensive software, or full motion video. More about Camtasia here

Five- Media Library

Now you can save various media assets you create for easy reference and reuse in the future. This will save me time as I regularly need to hunt for intros, outros, and segway videos for nearly each video I create. Here is a shot of the media library (arrows for emphasis).

Six- Better Volume Controls and Audio Editing

Now you can isolate a track, say if you have background music, and introduce fades, mute, or adjust the volume. Before this was a pain to do, and I had to use a second program to make it work. It’s hard to see in the screen-shot, arrows call out how users can click on areas of the audio track to adjust volume, fade and mute. This will also be a big time saver.

Seven- Improved Cursor Effects

Like item number three, building on capturing your audience’s attention is important. Now with extended cursor effects this becomes easier to do. You can increase the mouse icon size on your screen, create a ring, ripple, or warp effect when you click, you can even specify audio whenever you right or left mouse click, and do this uniquely on the time-line as needed. More about Camtasia.

Bottom-line on the Latest Version of Camtasia

Software companies often push things out the door without adding enough value add features to justify it for customers. I’m glad to say this is not the case for Camtasia 7.

The huge time savers for me will be:

• YouTube integration
• Media library
• Improved controls for audio editing (background music).

Couple these with the:

• Revamped user interface
• Post recording motion callouts
• Improved screen recorder, and
• Improved cursor effects…

…and this could be the best version released yet.

References:

• Checkout the latest version of Camtasia here, and overview video here, save a few bucks by buying here.
  
• I learned YouTube Marketing from these two
  
• YouTube Video Marketing Case Study