Music for your Camtasia Studio Screencast
Posted on Saturday April 26, 2008 by Betsy Weber
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A little background music goes a long way and can set the tone and personality of your screencast. It can also make your screencast feel polished and professional. I get several questions about where we get the music for some of our screencasts. So, I thought I'd do a music round-up to share some sources we've found.
One option is to create your own music. I've used Cinescore and ACID Pro from Sony Creative Software. If you don't feel like composing from scratch, you can get some samples, loops and themes from Sony to help you create your masterpiece.
Creative Commons is also a great source music which you can search here. You can also try ccMixter for music that is free to download, remix and sample.
We use royalty free music that we purchase from Digital Juice often. The nice thing about Digital Juice is that most of their tracks are stackable which means you can pull out individual audio elements. So, if you find a track you really like but dislike part of it, you can just remove it.
DigitalJuice has a 10 second, 15 second, 30 second, 1 minute and a 3 minute version of each song. Here’s a quick screencast about how to get to the galleries to listen to their samples. It runs less than a minute long.
The Camtaisa Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, has compiled a list of his favorite music clips from Digital Juice’s Stack Traxx. Here are Troy's favorites (the number represents the Volume Number):
- 04 RiverFlow (upbeat, fun)
- 06 ComeAndPlay (upbeat, little techno)
- 15 Mystique (lighter, subtle)
- 15 KickItBack (moderately upbeat guitar)
- 06 LookInside (un pocito espanol)
- 12 Letter of Intent (blue suit feel)
- 32 EstaBien (fun latin groove)
- 03 Magic (playful orchestra music)
- 37 Westcoast Vamp -- (bit of Jazz)
- 13 RadioActive -- (more of a driving, rockish sound)
Chris McQueen in Training used royalty free music for the Jing videos from Kevin Macleod at Incompetech.
What music sources have you found?
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Comments (4)
Digital Juice looks like a good resource. I also use Acid and mainly just purchase various sample CD's and compose my own music if needed.
Posted by Spencer | April 27, 2008 2:28 PM
Posted on April 27, 2008 14:28
I have used opuzz (www.opuzz.com).
Posted by Andy | April 28, 2008 3:18 AM
Posted on April 28, 2008 03:18
Take a look at SmartSound (www.smartsound.com). Over 150 discs of royalty-free music that is customizable to any length with their Sonicfire Pro software (free with music purchase)...compared to the 9 discs offered for Cinescore. SmartSound Strata Series discs give access to instruments like DJ Stack Trax. Don't bother using Acid or other loop music unless you know how to make good music and have plenty of time.
Posted by Brian | April 30, 2008 2:56 PM
Posted on April 30, 2008 14:56
I'm a recent SmartSound convert as well. Its buy-out pricing is very reasonable, and the application itself is intuitive and rock-solid. I used to custom-cut all my music to the exact length of the screencast. This can be very labor intensive. It's exactly what SoundBooth should have been.
For a non-proprietary source, I've had good luck with CSSMusic.com. Decent music at decent prices from decent folks.
cheers, d.
Posted by Daniel Park | May 13, 2008 8:00 AM
Posted on May 13, 2008 08:00