Saving Your Work | Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide (Wordware Applications Library)

Saving your video project is a relatively straightforward process. When you save, a project file with the extension .camproj is created. It contains data on the placement and editing of all the material from your original clips. Remember how I said that the files referenced by the project aren’t actually altered in any way? This is because the project file keeps track of all the Timeline information and its organization. Every callout, every marker, every everything related to your project is somehow tracked in this file.

But the project file isn’t the only way of saving your work. You can also export your project to a ZIP format, thus making it ready for travel. You can even save off the Timeline’s audio to its own file or save a frame of video as a still image. I’ll show you how in the following sections.

Saving a Project

To save your video project, do the following:

Click the Save Project button ( ) on the Main toolbar.

or

Choose Save from the File menu.

or

Press Ctrl-S.

or

Choose Save As… from the File menu. Whereas the first three options will only present the user with a dialog for choosing a file name and location for the project if the project hadn’t been saved previously, Save As… will always bring up this dialog. This will allow you to save off a new version of any project you’ve saved previously, under a different name and/or location.

If saving for the first time (or if executing the Save As… command), the Save As dialog appears. You are prompted to enter a file name as well as specify a directory. This is a standard Windows dialog that will look slightly different depending on your specific operating system. Once you’ve navigated to the correct directory and typed in a file name, click Save, or choose Cancel to exit the dialog without saving your changes.
If you have saved previously, choosing any Save option (other than Save As…) will simply write your changes to the current file, and no further action on your part is necessary.

Caution

Your video project file contains all the editing data for the external video data files that it references. The project file doesn’t actually copy and hold onto any of your video data; otherwise, your project file would be extremely large. The downside of this is that if any of your referenced video files are deleted or moved, your project will be essentially broken. If Camtasia Studio cannot find a file referenced either in the Clip Bin or on the Timeline, it will display the following dialog, asking if you wish to go find it:

image from book

If you choose Yes, a dialog will appear that will allow you to navigate to a replacement file. If you merely moved or renamed a file and didn’t actually remove it, navigate to and click the appropriate file, and then click Open. Your project file will open, and you will notice that the file name reference will change within the project if you had renamed the file.

If, however, you really deleted the file in question, then choose No. The file will then disappear from the Clip Bin and/or Timeline. Note that you may have to click through this same dialog twice or more in reference to the same file: once for the Clip Bin and once for the number of times the clip appears on the Timeline (keeping in mind that a split clip technically constitutes two clips).

Creating or Opening a Project

After teaching you how to save off a project, I suppose I’d be remiss in not telling you how to open it again, though I’m confident you’d be clever enough to figure it out all on your own. While I’m at it, I’ll also show you how to start a new project from scratch. Since these functions are pretty similar if not identical to every other Windows program you’ve ever used, I’m not going to spend too much time on it. But let’s go through the motions just for the sake of completeness, shall we?

This is how to open a Camtasia Studio project file:

From the File menu, choose Open Project…. or Click the Open Project button ( ) on the Main toolbar. or Press Ctrl-O.
The Open dialog appears. Navigate to the folder that contains your desired project file.
Click your project file, and then click Open.

If you already have the file’s directory open in Windows Explorer, a simple double-click of the file will also open it. Keep in mind that you can open both Camtasia Studio Project (.camproj) files and the older Camtasia Producer Project (.cam) files. When opening .cam files (or even .camproj files created with earlier versions of the software), you may need to convert the old file so that Camtasia Studio 4 can read it. You’ll see a dialog that looks like this:

image from book

If you click Yes, Camtasia Studio completes the conversion and opens it as a new .camproj file. The original file is renamed (with the word “_backup” appended to the original name) and preserved, should you need it for archival purposes.

Caution

Note that some features of the earlier versions may not convert exactly as you’d like. For example, the Camtasia Producer (from Camtasia Studio 1.0 and earlier, back when the product was simply called Camtasia) used a different library for transition effects. These effects will not convert accurately to your new project. No biggie, though - just replace the placeholder transition with one of the available transitions in Camtasia Studio 4.

These little speed bumps aside, I’ve found the conversion from an old project to a new one to be a relatively quick and trouble-free process. Of course, if you’d rather start all over from scratch, you’ll need to create a brand spanking new project.

Here’s how to start a new project in Camtasia Studio:

From the File menu, choose New Project….

or

Click the New Project button ( ) on the Main toolbar.\

or

Press Ctrl-N.
A new, untitled project is created with nothing in the Clip Bin. Either record the screen or start importing your previously created clips to get started.

Also, don’t forget that the Camtasia Studio Welcome dialog you get when starting up Camtasia Studio can help you open a project or start a new one (either by recording content or by helping you bring some pre-existing content into the new project’s Clip Bin).

Importing or Exporting a Project

With all those blasted media files that your Camtasia Studio Project file has to reference, it goes without saying (though I will, anyway) that a project file doesn’t travel particularly well. For example, when putting the project on a CD-ROM to give to a client, port to another computer, or file away for archiving, it’s astoundingly easy to forget about a file or two in the process. Even if you managed to keep track of all your clips, other files such as custom callouts could (in fact, probably would)goby the wayside.

Fortunately, Camtasia Studio offers a built-in solution to the portability issue. You can quickly and easily export your project to a ZIP file, which includes all elements of your video, including video clips, audio, images, callouts, etc. In addition to conserving file space (it is packed into a ZIP file, after all), your exported project is now but a single file that can be easily dropped onto whatever disc, flash drive, etc., you have handy. A special XML file included in the export, called a manifest, is used to coordinate all this (e.g., myfilename.manifest). The manifest contains a roster of all your project elements, so that Camtasia

Studio knows what goes where without having to parse the entire contents of the ZIP file. For example, it’s the manifest that tells Camtasia Studio whether an image file is in fact an image clip or actually a custom callout.

Bottom line, this function is a very welcome addition if you ever need to move a project from one computer to another, and its execution is pretty straightforward as well.

This is how to export a Camtasia Studio project:

Make any needed edits or adjustments to your project, saving the project file after you’re finished.
From the File menu, choose Export Project as Zip….
A dialog appears, prompting you to choose a name and location for the ZIP file. You can either enter a file path into the New zip filename field or click the Browse button ( ) and navigate to it. At any rate, your ZIP file need not reside in the same directory (or have the same name) as your actual project.
If you leave Include all files from Clip Bin in zip unchecked, the exporter will ignore any clips sitting in your Clip Bin that haven’t yet been added to the Timeline. This does not mean that your exported project won’t have any files in its Clip Bin - those clips that have been added to the Timeline will still reside in your zipped project’s Clip Bin.
Click OK. A brief progress dialog appears as the contents of your project are being packed up.

The resulting file can be read with any application that can extract ZIP files, such as WinZip or WinRAR (in fact, Windows XP has this capability built right into the operating system). However, with Camtasia Studio on the destination computer, unpacking your project is even easier. Camtasia Studio sports a corresponding Import feature that can automatically extract everything and even open up the extracted project for you when finished.

This is how we import a zipped project back into Camtasia Studio:

Place the exported (zipped) file in a location accessible to the destination computer.
Open Camtasia Studio. From the File menu, choose Import Zipped Project….
The Import Zipped Project File dialog appears, with two file path fields that you’ll need to fill.
In the Zipped project file to import field, we need to specify the location of the ZIP file. Either type in the file path directly or click the Browse button ( ) and navigate to it.
Next, you’ll need to decide where you want your new project to reside. It’s advisable to start a new directory just for that project, since the normally high number of files imported can really clutter up a root directory. I mention this because the program defaults to importing your project data directly into your Camtasia Studio directory of you're my Documents folder. Even if you want things in the Camtasia Studio folder, it behooves you to add a new folder name onto the end of the file path (e.g., \myfoldername). When you click OK, it’ll ask if you want to create this new folder. Click Yes.
If you want to dive into your project right away, be sure to leave Open project after import checked.
You’ll get a progress dialog as the file unpacks. Provided the option in Step 6 was enabled, your new project will open in Camtasia Studio, ready for editing and production.

Since the exported project is basically just a garden-variety ZIP file, it can also be unpacked (using the Extract function) with any file compression application that supports ZIP, and, of course, pretty much all of them do. But I recommend using Camtasia Studio for importing, just to make sure everything winds up in the right spot (e.g., custom callouts get imported as such, etc.).

Saving an Individual Video Frame

Should you ever desire to make a screenshot of your video, you don’t need to fire up SnagIt and set up all your capture options. You can actually save off a frame of your video as an image file. Why would you want to do this? Here are a few common scenarios:

You’re creating written documentation to go along with your video, and want to spare yourself the extra work of creating screenshots just for the text portion.
You want to advertise your newly created video on your web site.
You’re assembling a library of video links on your web site, and you want a thumbnail image of each one to accompany the title and description.
You want your colleague to proof a particular screen, and a static image will do.

Saving a video frame is as easy as it is useful. Here’s how it’s done:

Move the seek bar to the exact frame you want to save, either by clicking a location on the Time Reference area or by using the various keyboard hotkeys.
Choose Save Frame As… from the File menu. or Press Ctrl-F.
A Save As dialog appears, where you must choose a location and file name for your image. By default, you have a pre-filled file name consisting of the project name and time location of that frame within the project (example: MyProject (Time 02:49.18).bmp).
Also, you need to choose a file type for your image: BMP, GIF, JPG, or PNG. Select the appropriate file type from the drop-down list and click OK.

Saving Just the Audio

In addition to saving a frame as a separate image, you can also split off your audio into its own file. This can be useful for importing audio into high-end third-party applications such as Adobe Audition or Sony SoundForge. It’s also handy if you want to retain a video’s audio track while discarding the video content itself (for example, to attach the same audio to an updated video).

This is how to save the audio track as its own file:

From the File menu, choose Save Audio As…, and then choose either Mp3 or Wave as the desired output format.

or

Press Ctrl-U (this saves to Mp3).
A Save As dialog appears, prompting you to select a location and file name for your audio file. Do so and then click Save, or choose Cancel to exit the dialog without saving.

Note

Do keep in mind that executing this command will save all your audio tracks in a single WAV file. There is currently no way of selecting which tracks to save or of splitting tracks into multiple files. The only way around this is to delete the audio segments that you don’t want to have in the exported file, save your audio, and then undo the changes to your project until all the audio tracks are restored.