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  • Question about how tutorials are made…

    Posted by Cal Johnson on February 6, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    I’m sorry to post this “non” After Effects question here, but there isn’t a forum for it. Watching some of the tutorials on After Effects, it appears that people are using Camtasia to record their screen. I know there is an option for drawing a red circle on the screen while recording, but this is done by hand, producing a sloppy red circle. Some of the tutorials here have the same effect, but a smooth elipse is drawn by the computer, and I’d really like to know how to do that. I tried creating an animated GIF file with transparency (alpha) and exported it as RGB millions colors + alpha, but the program doesn’t recognize the transparency. I can’t find a call-out or effect that does the job, so if someone out there knows how to do this, I’d really appreciate a response.

    Cal Johnson replied 19 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Marco Salsiccia

    February 6, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    It can always be added in editing after the person is done recording the full tutorial…


    Marco Salsiccia
    Engineer of Insurrection
    Digital Anarchy

  • Cal Johnson

    February 6, 2007 at 8:40 pm

    Marco, could you tell me how? Thanx.

  • Marco Salsiccia

    February 6, 2007 at 8:49 pm

    We use SnapXPro to record our video tutorials, with a microphone plugged into the computer to catch our audio. This generates a really long .mov file with audio.

    We drop it into a non-linear editor application like Final Cut Pro, cut out all of the mistakes and edit the pacing of the tutorial, and add any post-effects necessary, such as highlighting portions of the interface we are showing off or circling parameters.

    It’s as simple as animating the opacity of a transparent graphic in a layer above the source video layer.

    What application are you looking to edit your video with?


    Marco Salsiccia
    Engineer of Insurrection
    Digital Anarchy

  • Cal Johnson

    February 6, 2007 at 9:22 pm

    Ok, I see. I use Camtasia, and edit right there in the ap. I understand the whole transparency thing, I’ve used After Effects for years. I just thought it would be more efficient to edit the recording in Camtasia, which I’ve done and had really good results. I assumed that people were using their screen capture ap to produce the final video, but if they cutting it in another editing application, that’s a different story. Thanks for the insight.

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