The Visual Lounge lets you find out about TechSmith behind-the-scenes. Watch screencasts and videos from other customers, meet up with your fellow TechSmith users and staff, and get more tips and tricks!

Port Camtasia Studio to Mac!

Improve text aliasing in SnagIt.

Standardize callouts between SnagIt and Camtasia Studio (add vector callouts to Camtasia Studio where you can position the individual parts of the callout).

I would like a way for Camtasia to record an area of the screen (call this the "Stage"), but there would be objects or text that I can put in the "wings" of the stage and while recording, click to send them onto the stage in preprogrammed paths.

The simplest idea is to simply scroll text - like a banner. More complex would be to have these elements (text, graphics) sitting in the wings and let me set their entrance and exit from the stage - sort of a visual Ken Burns effect.

Optionally, let me drag something into the stage and have it's movement be recorded WITHOUT the mouse cursor showing - this would be a manual version of the pre-programmed idea.

How about a disk label template, that you could paste a capture on for printable DVD/CD's??

Great feedback! I really appreciate it.

Keep 'em coming!

I hope this isn't there already:
The ability to "invert Selection" in Snagit. Example is I want to select an area and dim the selected area not the background. With Invert selection I could do that easily

In Camtasia, on the timeline, I'd like to be able to assign a color or some sort of visual cue to video items (or a range of video items) so I can distinguish them. See, when zooming in and out, and scrolling left and right, it's hard to orient yourself back to a specific item because all the segments *can* look the same depending on what you're filming.

Maybe if we could control the shade of the (currently always) black background on the video "thumbnails" on the Video timeline, that would really help.

I hope this isn't there already:
In Camtasia crop a video after recording it. Guess who just recorded an area with too much unused space on one side. I worked around it with zoom 'n pan but would be good to just crop the recording

While there isn't an invert selection, you CAN select an area and dim it out- just select the area you want to dim, and go to "Color Editing" then "Color Correction" in the Task Pane on the right. Drag the brightness and/or contrast around untill it looks the way you like it! Kind of hidden, I know.
'course, the invert selection thing could still be pretty useful...

In what way would you like to see the aliasing improved? That is, we already antialias the text to smooth out the edges... is it still too blocky looking, or??

It would be nice if SnagIt would allow multiple screenshots to be taken into the same window, instead of sending them to an external program first. Usage scenario : take multiple screenshots, store them in temporary SnagIt Editor window and them move them to an external program or clipboard. Thanks!

Oh and what about doing something about the illegal Camtasia / SnagIt usage? It would be nice if TechSmith started working on a better anti-piracy mechanism (product activation or online validation or private user area on website with each user's personal keys) - it would be beneficial for all of us : legal users and TechSmith's revenue. It's just too easy to misuse TechSmith's software these days and as a legal user, it doesn't make me comfortable...

Can you add hot spots, links to launch other sites in the middle of the presentation and various transition effects when moving from screen to screen.

Thanks.

Paul:

Thanks for the response - sorry I didn't see it sooner (this blog needs a comments feed!)

When I rotate a callout, the text looks pretty jaggy; I'll send you a snag via Betsy.

In Camtasia Studio, I want some better tools for doing the "John Madden" draw on the screen technique.

I realize that it's possible to draw on the screen while you're recording a screencast, but I would rather draw on top of an already captured video.