Camtasia Player


When playing back AVI files in a standard media player such as Windows Media Player, if the player window doesn’t have adequate space to display the full dimensions of the video file, it will scale the video down so that it fits in the player’s window. For cinematic or real-world video, this isn’t really an issue (in fact, you probably don’t even notice most of the time). For screen video content, such as Camtasia Studio recordings, this convention of scaling content becomes a big fat blurry deal. Icons lose their clarity, text becomes nearly illegible, and the overall result looks, well… crappy.

This is where the Camtasia Player comes in. This media player does not scale content. If the video dimensions are too large for the screen resolution to accommodate, Camtasia Player provides scroll bars to scroll the content. This ensures that your videos will always play full size, and will therefore always look as intended.

The Camtasia Player is a simple AVI player, and it is this simplicity that makes it so useful. In addition to the aforementioned “no scaling” rule, the Camtasia Player offers the following advantages:

  • Convenience. The TechSmith Screen Capture Codec (TSCC) is built into Camtasia Player. As mentioned in earlier chapters, this codec is highly recommended for compressing your screen videos. However, your viewers usually must have the codec installed on their machines to view your content. Running the video with Camtasia Player removes this restriction. Everything you need is baked right in.

  • Simplicity. Most other media players bloat their application with adware, skins, unneeded features, and other distractions that divert your viewer’s attention from where it should be, namely on your video. Camtasia Player’s clean, simple interface is a welcome break from these chaotic and user-unfriendly players.

  • Small size. When you cut down on the bloat, you cut down on the size. Camtasia Player weighs in at a svelte 476 K, meaning that you can easily include the application with your videos when e-mailing your content to someone else.

  • No install necessary. The camplay.exe application can be run without any kind of installation. It relies on no external libraries in order to function, which means that you can run Camtasia Player even in a completely locked-down (no installations allowed) environment, which many large corporate and government institutions employ these days. It doesn’t make any use of the registry or any configuration files, and doesn’t require DirectX.

  • Compatibility. With such a small footprint, Camtasia Player can easily run on any 32-bit Windows-based operating system (starting with Windows 95). If the user’s computer was made any time in the last decade or so, it can run this player.

  • Free! Camtasia Player is totally free and freely distributable. It’s included automatically when you install Camtasia Studio, but anyone can download the player from TechSmith’s web site, no strings attached.

In case you can’t tell, I’m something of a fan. In fact, I use Camtasia Player as the default media player for all my AVI files.

image from book

If you would like to make Camtasia Player your default player of AVI files, just follow these easy steps:

  1. Right-click on any AVI file.

  2. Choose Open With… > Choose Program….

  3. Locate Camtasia Player on the list of available programs, and select it.

    or

    If Camtasia Player does not appear in this list, click the Browse button and navigate to camplay.exe. Provided you installed the software into its default directory, camplay.exe is in Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 4. Click Open.

  4. Click the check box Always use the selected program to open this kind of file, and then click OK.

image from book

Now that we’ve discussed what’s so great about this little app, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of using it.

The Camtasia Player Interface

The Camtasia Player can be opened in several ways:

  • Choose Start > All Programs > Camtasia Studio 4 > Applications > Camtasia Player.

  • From one of the main Camtasia Studio applications (Studio, Recorder, MenuMaker), click the Launch other tools button and select Camtasia Player.

  • From one of the main Camtasia Studio applications (Studio, Recorder, MenuMaker), choose Camtasia Player from the Tools menu.

  • Depending on your settings, Camtasia Player may also be automatically launched upon conclusion of recording or production.

Camtasia Player’s user interface is simple and elegant. It normally includes a title bar, menu bar, toolbar (playback controls), the actual video window, and a status bar at the bottom that shows the playback state, current elapsed time and total duration. When I say that the interface usually includes these elements, I mean that you can turn one or more of these elements off, if desired, by adding some command line parameters (more on that later). But out of the box, your video should look roughly like the following figure.

image from book

image from book

Below are a few simple ways of opening your AVI video with Camtasia Player:

  • From the File menu in Camtasia Player, choose Open…. Then browse to your video and click the Open button.

    or

  • Click and drag your video icon over the camplay.exe icon, and release. Alternatively, you can also drag your video icon onto the Camtasia Player program window.

    or

  • If Camtasia Player is set as your default media player, simply double-click the file.

image from book

Obviously, most users will control the playback of your video through Camtasia Player’s toolbar. Each of these commands has a corresponding menu option and hotkey. This handy table tackles all our toolbar commands, going in order from left to right:

Open table as spreadsheet

Button

Menu Command

Hotkey

Description

Play

Play > Play/Pause

Spacebar

Sets the playback head in motion. The menu command and hotkey toggle between play and pause.

Pause

Play > Play/Pause

Spacebar

Pauses the playback head at its current location. The menu command and hotkey toggle between play and pause.

Stop

Play > Stop

Ctrl-S

Stops the playback head, returning it to the beginning of the video.

Beginning

Play > Beginning

Home

Returns playback head to the beginning of the video. Only available when paused or stopped.

Rewind

Play > Rewind

Page Up

Scrolls the playback backward by a small percentage. Only available when paused or stopped.

Forward

Play > Forward

Page Down

Scrolls the playback forward by a small percentage. Only available when paused or stopped.

End

Play > End

End

Sets the playback head at the end of the video. Only available when paused or stopped.

Scrubber bar

-

 

This playback slider can be dragged to any point in the video, and the video will commence from that point. You can also click on any point on the video’s Timeline, and the playback head will jump to that point.

Volume up

Play > Volume > Up

Ctrl-Up

Click the Volume button, and then drag the slider up to raise the volume.

Volume down

Play > Volume > Down

Ctrl-Down

Click the Volume button, and then drag the slider down to lower the volume.

Mute

Play > Volume > Mute

Ctrl-M

Click the Volume button, and then check the Mute check box.

Note that there are a few additional commands the viewer has to control their view of the video:

Full Screen

Play > Full Screen

Alt-Enter

Changes the display to full-screen mode, which places the video display in the center of the screen, surrounded by a colored background. All other parts of the window (as well as everything outside the window) are obscured by this background.

Repeat

Play > Repeat

Ctrl-R

Places the playback in repeat mode. When the playback head reaches the end of the video, it will return to the video’s beginning and play the video over again. The video will loop for as long as repeat mode is engaged.

Frame by Frame

-

Left arrow, Right arrow

Moves the playback head forward or backward by a single frame. Only available when paused or stopped. You can hold down one of the arrow keys to scrub forward or backward.

Open table as spreadsheet

Camtasia Player’s Command Line Parameters

While the player’s basic functionality is pretty easy to grasp, there are also extended functions that will allow you to stipulate how it opens, what components are available to the user, and how the video actually plays. These are controlled by command line parameters, little switches in the form of an alphanumeric code that get tacked onto the command to run Camtasia Player.

image from book

Confused yet? Try the following simple example:

  1. From your Start menu, choose Run….

  2. Enter camplay.exe and a space.

  3. Enter /F and a space.

  4. Type (or copy and paste) the file path to one of your AVI files. Press Enter.

image from book

And voilà! Your video opens in full-screen mode. Command line parameters can do much more than that. A full list of these parameters is available below. Remember, the syntax for your command line parameters is as follows:

camplay.exe <options> <file path> 

Note that both the <options> and <file path> arguments are completely optional.

Open table as spreadsheet

Parameter

Description

/A

Launches with the “Always on top” option. The video window will always remain on top of other windows on your desktop, even if it loses the focus.

/BC RGB(255,0,255)

Sets the background color. This background color is visible only in full-screen or maximized modes. While the background color is black by default, this can be changed by altering the values of the parameter’s “RGB” argument. Those three numbers stand for the colors red, green, and blue, respectively. These values can range from 0 to 255. To find out the RGB value of your favorite color, use a graphics utility such as Color Cop, which is included on the companion CD-ROM.

/D

This launches the video as per usual, but prohibits the user from dragging the video window by the video area, which is normally allowed.

/E

This commands forces the video to exit after playing through once.

/F

This parameter launches the video in full-screen mode.

/M

Launches the video without the menu bar. In addition to aesthetic reasons, removing the menu bar can help prevent the user from controlling the view of your video (for example, switching to full screen). Of course, the corresponding hotkeys will still function.

/MX

This launches your video with the window maximized. The video window will take up the entire screen, with the video content in the center, enveloped by your chosen background color. Unlike full-screen mode, the title bar, menu bar, toolbar, and status bar all remain visible.

/open

This parameter opens the specified video, but starts the video in paused mode. It will not begin until the user clicks Play.

/play

This immediately plays the specified video. It is the opposite of the /open parameter.

/R

Repeats the video over and over until the viewer stops it by choosing Pause or Stop, or by closing the video window.

/S

This launches the video without a status bar, meaning that the viewer will no longer be able to see the elapsed time or total duration of the video.

/ST

Adding this parameter will cause the video to remain on the final frame of the video after playing, rather than returning to the first frame.

/T

Removes the title bar from the video window. This can be used in conjunction with the /D parameter to prevent the viewer from dragging the video window.

/TB

Launches the video without a toolbar. Be warned: This will remove the user’s predominant means of navigating your video.

Tip 

At this point you may be thinking, “Big deal. Opening up files from the command line is a pain. Besides, how does this influence how my viewers will see my videos?” Well, friends, you can easily use these handy command line parameters in batch files, multimedia authoring applications, or scripting languages. Of course, if the thought of working with scripts and batch files makes your eyes glaze over and your palms begin to sweat, keep in mind that you can also attach command line parameters to each and every AVI file in your comparatively user-friendly Camtasia MenuMaker projects. Just start a new MenuMaker project, add some files, choose to open them with Camtasia Studio, and set your parameters. For full details, please see Chapter 13, “CD-based Videos with Camtasia MenuMaker.”




Camtasia Studio 4. The Definitive Guide
Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide (Wordware Applications Library)
ISBN: 1598220373
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 146
Authors: Daniel Park

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