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Make Videos from Games Using Camtasia

Learn how to make videos from your games by using the general screen capture tool called Camtasia Studio.

The advantages and disadvantages of Camtasia will also be looked at in terms of capturing videos from your games.

Find out in this article what is different about Camtasia and how to use it for your own games.

Download a 30-day trial of Camtasia here:
http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasiatrial.asp

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What is Camtasia?

Camtasia Studio (abbreviated to Camtasia) is a general screen capture program that can record screen activity and audio from all types of programs.

It is meant to be used as a general-purpose screen capture tool but it can still be used for making videos from games.

This is a high-end commercial product, with a 30-day trial of the program being offered for free.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Camtasia

Camtasia lacks game-specific features but makes up for this with many more advanced video production features that are not commonly found in other screen capture tools.

The additional production features include using the videos to create presentations that can be saved in multiple distinct formats such as WMV movies, SWF, Ipod and DVD.

Camtasia can also record windowed games very easily. This comes in handy when you need to get footage of a stand-alone Flash game for example.

The biggest strike against Camtasia is its high price. The full version stands at almost $300 for a single user licence. As a result it is only recommended for people who want to do much more with it than just record videos from games.

The second strike against Camtasia is that it isn’t optimised specifically for games, which means the videos won’t be as smooth as with other more specialised tools.

How to Use Camtasia for Your Game

Even though Camtasia is a more general tool it can still be used for games.

These are the general steps to capturing video from a game:

1. Open Camtasia and click on Record the screen. The Recording Wizard screen appears.

2. Go through the options and select how you want the video to be recorded. Take special note of the hotkeys as you’ll need to use them in-game to control the recording of the video.

3. Run your game. Use the hotkeys to record the video while playing the game. The video is saved into a .camrec file.

4. When finished with recording it’s time to export the video into a more manageable format. On Camtasia’s main window go to File / Batch Production.

5. Add the .camrec files which you want to convert. Click on next.

6. You can use one production preset for all videos or different presets for each video. Go to Preset Manager to configure the preset settings.

7. Click on next and choose your output folder. I recommend you don’t check “Show Production Results” as Camtasia doesn’t always display the end results correctly.

8. That’s it. You now have usable videos that were recorded from your game and can be used in other programs.

On a side note this tool can be used to create more complex video presentations by importing the .camrec files that you created from recording your games.

Last Minute Hint: A little known feature that separates Camtasia from other tools is being able to easily record microphone and speaker audio at the same time. This allows you to give live commentary while playing the game.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and I look forward to seeing your future video productions.

After you have had a chance to sit back and absorb this article, please send us your comments and suggestions - your feedback is greatly appreciated.

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