Chapter 11: Editing Effects

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Overview

In the first chapter of this unit, you were introduced to the Camtasia Studio interface, and learned both basic and advanced editing techniques for combining your recorded clips and paring them down to get rid of unwanted footage. So, we take a mass of raw clips, with a few gold nuggets buried deep within a mountain of junk, and then we refine refine refine. We end up with a lean, efficient, hard-working video. Well and good. But skillful editing pertains not only to what you take away, but also to what you add. In the last chapter, you got the opportunity to fill in some additional content by adding audio and camera video streams, and even title screens. These are important additions, but perhaps not enough to really set your world ablaze. In this chapter, we’re going to complete the editing process. You’ll learn how to sex up your edited content by adding a variety of special effects for a polished, professional end result.

Not that I’m a fan of implementing special effects for their own sake, mind you. Far from it. As you may have already read in Chapter 6 on Recorder special effects, adding some pizzazz is a great thing to do, but it’s also easy to overdo. Haphazardly dumping a sackful of effects into your project stamps the word “amateur” in big, bold letters on your forehead in permanent ink.

However, a smattering of effects, meaningfully and tastefully done, can elevate your work to a more professional level and leave your audience wondering, “Whoa. How’d they do that?”

Note 

Keep in mind that all these effects (with the noted exception of transitions) only work in the Timeline view. If you happen to be in the Storyboard view when you choose one of these effects, then the Timeline view will open for you automatically.

To get started down the path to professional productions, look no further than your own Task List.

Under the Edit heading, all your special effects are lined up like the Rockettes.

Take a look at your Edit heading. In this chapter, we’ll focus on these six commands. (Yes, I know there are actually seven, but I’m excluding Audio Enhancements, as we’ve already covered it.) Before we dive into the details, here’s a quick synopsis of each effect and its capabilities.

• Picture-in-Picture (PIP). We’ve already learned how to create a PIP video, both during the capture phase as well as after. Well, here you can edit that PIP video content, along with any other video you placed in your PIP track.

• Audio Enhancements. These are the splendid volume normalization, noise reduction, and vocal enhancement tools that we discussed in the previous chapter.

• Transitions. Fades, wipes, and slides are but a few of the tricks you can pull out of your sleeve once you’ve mastered the art of adding film-like transitions between your scenes.

• Callouts and Flash Hot Spots. Place arrows, callout bubbles, highlights, and even custom graphics all over your video content. You can also add text to each shape, and even make it a clickable hot spot when exporting to Flash.

• Zoom-n-Pan. Zoom into a window to give your audience a more detailed view. Or zoom out to show your entire screen. Even gently glide from one place on the screen to another with the Pan feature. With Zoom-n-Pan, these Hollywood-style camera effects are a cakewalk.

• Flash Quiz and Survey. Ever create a video, and then wish you could test the viewer’s knowledge of what you just covered? Camtasia Studio lets you set up a multiple-choice quiz for SWF or FLV output, specifying such things as the allowed number of tries as well as feedback for right or wrong answers. You can also ask survey questions. If desired, you can even upload results to a learning management system via SCORM or let the user e-mail the results to an address that you specify.

• Captions. Would you like to create captions for your hearingimpaired viewers? How about foreign language subtitles? Captioned videos are a snap to do: Simply type or paste them in your script, set the timing, and you’re done.