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Betsy & Troy,

Since we're talking roadmaps, let me break this into a near, mid, and long term suggestion list.

Near Term
I would create an "add-on" pack that includes royalty free music, sound effects, and graphics for use with Camtasia. People are always looking for quality music and to be honest, it's hard to find – particularly the short little intro pieces. Sound effects can go a long way in keeping screencasts engaging too. This one could be pretty easy to do near term.

Mid Term
I'd really like to see green screen effects incorporated into screencasting software. This would allow a presenter to be "superimposed" over their Keynote presentation. I think this is a more effective technique than just using Picture-in-Picture. I use this style over at MacScreencasting.com and I've gotten lots of feedback on it.

It's important for viewers to see the presenters eyes and smile. It helps to establish rapport and trust. Picture-in-Picture doesn't convey the same message. Most of this is because of poor implementation including camera angles & lighting though.

BoinxTV is incorporating live chromakey effects and iMovie '09 makes it drop dead simple to overlay video. Building this into screencasting software would create a whole new generation of presenters who focus more on presentations instead of recording applications. While this is a little more difficult, it's a great way to differentiate the free tools from the pro tools near term.

Long Term
This probably has more to do with file formats and CODEC's but it would be great to have a "layer" on a video that enables interactivity – without having to resort to Flash. Imagine being able to create a branching scenario or embedding hyperlinks in your video.

Again, that one is probably out of your hands. However, if there was a utility that could accomplish this without having to go into Flash, it could do really well in the marketplace. Flash is ridiculously expensive and overkill for basic interactivity.

There's my little wish list. Hope it helps with your roadmap, Troy.

Scott Skibell

P.S. You guys buckle down for the winter. We just got our first dusting of snow yesterday here in KC! Happy holidays.

Betsy & Troy,

Since we're talking roadmaps, let me break this into a near, mid, and long term suggestion list.

Near Term
I would create an "add-on" pack that includes royalty free music, sound effects, and graphics for use with Camtasia. People are always looking for quality music and to be honest, it's hard to find – particularly the short little intro pieces. Sound effects can go a long way in keeping screencasts engaging too. This one could be pretty easy to do near term.

Mid Term
I'd really like to see green screen effects incorporated into screencasting software. This would allow a presenter to be "superimposed" over their Keynote presentation. I think this is a more effective technique than just using Picture-in-Picture. I use this style over at MacScreencasting.com and I've gotten lots of feedback on it.

It's important for viewers to see the presenters eyes and smile. It helps to establish rapport and trust. Picture-in-Picture doesn't convey the same message. Most of this is because of poor implementation including camera angles & lighting though.

BoinxTV is incorporating live chromakey effects and iMovie '09 makes it drop dead simple to overlay video. Building this into screencasting software would create a whole new generation of presenters who focus more on presentations instead of recording applications. While this is a little more difficult, it's a great way to differentiate the free tools from the pro tools near term.

Long Term
This probably has more to do with file formats and CODEC's but it would be great to have a "layer" on a video that enables interactivity – without having to resort to Flash. Imagine being able to create a branching scenario or embedding hyperlinks in your video.

Again, that one is probably out of your hands. However, if there was a utility that could accomplish this without having to go into Flash, it could do really well in the marketplace. Flash is ridiculously expensive and overkill for basic interactivity.

There's my little wish list. Hope it helps with your roadmap, Troy.

Scott Skibell

P.S. You guys buckle down for the winter. We just got our first dusting of snow yesterday here in KC! Happy holidays.

I don't like to exchange my seat with Troy (or Betsy). It's enough to have his mail address in my address book and give feedback from a professionall screencaster's point of view. ;)
There are a few things in Camtasia that need to get some refinement in my eyes.
The callout arrows for example or the non-removable menubar item.
But all-in-all Camtasia is a very stable product and has done a great job when I had to edit a 1024x screencast together with two HD videos!

First thing is communcations with your end users. Let us know what each other is saying/suggesting...let us know that you heard us loud and clear-- and provide an honest response/timeline for what is/will be worked on and if/when it will be released (as an interim or as part of a larger release.) As an example, Busymac, makers of the new BusyCal, does just that by sending me an email each day summarizing the questions, bugs, comments and suggestions that come in each day to their blog. Someone at Busymac responds to each item; those reponses are included as part of the thread on the blog and in each day's mailing. Their approach is a good best practice for any company looking to build and keep a loyal and positive customer base.

Second, I know you said you are approaching Mactasia differently from Wintasia, but the old grey lady still has some tricks the new kid could and should learn. Scott mentions above about interactivity. Wintasia has had that for a while and it seems like a feature that should be on Mactasia. Creating linked chapters and on-screen link hotspots should be something you can bring to Mactasia in more of a near-term fashion.

All this should not belie the fact that Techsmith is a great consumer-focused company. A beacon in the industry. These comments are only meant to make you all that much better.

Thanks for a wonderful product, very Mac-like in function and feel. I have been using Wintasia for years and now prefer using Mactasia whenever i can--even if that means firing up Parallels to do it!

Best,
Jay

Simple,

Make it more like the Windows version which is a clear winner on the Windows side. Screenflow on the MAC is a very serious competitor with an established base. Hard to attract people from there and their price is or will be better then Camtasia. Plus they are including WMV Media Studio. Very competitive product with an excellent upgrade policy.

Provide a further incentive for those on the fence to buy now..

This comment is a quick one as I am just now starting to explore Camtasia for Mac. The biggest challenge that I have had is sharing things from Camtasia Studio for Windows to the Mac side. Here is an example... I created a Project in Windows. I used the Export as Zip tool to put everything together to move to the Mac. However the Mac could not read any of it. I did explode the zip file and try to import the media, still not functioning. I also was not able to bring over the production presets, which could be operator error as I think they are just XML.

I will definitely give it more thought, but this one is the one that I am banging my head against at the moment. I was surprised it wasn't like other programs that exist on both platforms where the data can be shared easily.

I think Camtasia for Mac is an excellent v 1.0 product, but there are some glitches and shortcomings I'd like to see fixed that I covered here:

http://www.equixotic.com/2009/09/11/review-camtasia-for-mac/

(Not trying to spam my blog (which is non-commercial), I just don't want to copy/paste the details.)

I'm torn between Camtasia and ScreenFlow, each of which offers compelling features the other does not (and I do prefer the Camtasia user interface, which to me is more intuitive than ScreenFlow). I suppose if I were in charge of Camtasia for Mac I would take a hard look at ScreenFlow and start, ahem, "implementing" some of the features that make that app so great. You can bet that the ScreenFlow folks will be doing the same with Camtasia.

I love the keyboard icon feature in ScreenFlow and I'd love to see that in Camtasia.

Got another idea how to improve the Camtasia Mac experience. Have you ever thought about making something like a "Camtasia user meeting"?
That idea is sitting in my mind for a few days now...
It's quite easy. Just invite some/all Camtasia beta testers to _moderated_ brainstorming chat where everyone can present his/hers ideas to the other testers.

I do love Camtasia for the Mac as it is today as a v1 product for the future I would like to see;

Better use of multicore machines with options to run in the background or high priority, my 8 core Mac doesn't see significant processor usage with camtasia, I didn't buy 8 cores and 16Gb or ram for nothing.

Mac software integration, podcast producer and compressor are great tools it would be nice to be better able to work with directly

The size you record the video at can be set as the default output size no canvas changes etc etc.

The ability to just save the raw file after recording, when using pro editing tools the export is another step and another wait, on the pc you can just get the avi file, for the mac an option to save a mov without export would be great ( I use en sharpen anyway)

Keep up the Great Work.

add blur or obscure on callouts.... i know Studio has "blur", but is it possible it's not yet in the Mac version?

Scott, Zettt, Jay, Ray, Bradford, Chris, Nick - thank you so much for the feedback. Much appreciated! Keep it coming...

You mentioned several things on my wish list too! I still want that 'um' filter too. :-)

Betsy

I've been using Camtasia on a PC for about
a month now creating training videos for software
company. My background is in video editing with more robust (although not geared towards screencasting) programs such as Premiere, Final Cut, etc. While I like the screen cature functionality and the interface in Camtasia, there are a few features I have been longing for:

1) Non linear editing. Nothing is worse than putting together a 20 min video complete with callouts etc. only to find out that you have to go back and change some of the video. Because you can only have one track of video, and there can be no gaps in the video track, this means deleting some of the video - thus throwing all the subsequent visual out of sync with both the audio and callout tracks. Then you have to write down the length of the portion you removed, bring in the replacement capture, do some math to figure out where to cut it to get it to the exact length of the portion you removed, and insert the trimmed clip in the break to reallign the audio and callouts. If the clip you just inserted is slightly off, or not to you liking, you have to go through this process again. In software with multiple tracks of video you can just slide the replacement video around under the 'hole' you've cut out of the main video track above it. Having to edit linearly in Camtasia means that you have to have all your audio and video finalized before you start to put everything together. While I'm waiting for a video clip from a co-worker I cant really proceed with piecing together what I have without knowing I'll have to go through the rigamaroll I mentioned above. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it was easier to import projects to, and export projects from, more robust editing programs. I tried doing this with Sony Vegas and ran inrto all sorts of problems, mostly having to choose between working with truly massive video files or suffering a loss of video quality after multiple import/exports.

2) Copying and pasting video on the timeline.

3) The abilty to zoom in the timeline with the keyboard up and down arrow keys.

I apologize if this post is redundant or simply in the wrong place - I came across this thread and felt compelled to throw in my two cents. It should also be noted that I use Camtasia 5 for PC - not the latest version for either platform, though I have heard that these things have not been changed in either Camtasia 6 for PC or Camtasia for Mac. If I am misinformed please point me in the right direction.

I use Camtasia to create video tutorials for a federal agency that requires 508 compliance. Please consider incorporating some of the features that are currently available in Camtasia Studio into the Mac version. Features such as: captions, region capture, voice narration only, table of contents, a powerpoint add-in, and customizing flash controls would be extremely helpful.

Take it to the PC in the same glory. I work with both platforms almost every day, and having this on Mac can only be twice as nice if the same workflow exists on the PC as well. Cross-platform consistency is a great thing! ;)

Cross-suite consistency is too, but that's another ball of wax, right Adobe? (FAIL)

Just got Camtasia for Mac. At its core its a great product, but here are two things that are really bugging me:

1. It seems if I want a Flash HTML wrapper then I have to choose the default export option. But the rendering time is huge and so are the finished files. I would like to be able to adjust the video settings (for example, I don't need 96 kHz stereo audio for a mono voice over) so that the resultant file is small AND still get the Flash HTML stuff.

2. Is there a reason why it cannot generate a .swf rather than a .mp4 file? A 20 min presentation takes up to two hours to render on my modern MacBook Pro and I suspect a .swf wouldn't take as long to create.

One thing I would really like to see is an export to FLV option. Glad you have MP4 and that is why I am leaning towards you guys over Screenflow, and the only reason I am still torn as to which I want is because every time I have asked in a public forum with a lot of mac users, they have almost all said Screenflow. I don't want to post quicktime videos on my site though and MP4 works with the flash player I am using when I host it on Amazon S3 so Camtasia is almost winning.

The other thing I would like to see is a roadmap of features you guys have planned or something like a Uservoice forum, where people can vote on features or something.