Camtasia capture into Premiere CS3.

[Mike Velte]

Camtasia is designed to create video for playback on a PC monitor or projector. It is also very capable of editing imported or captured video as well as exporting as well or better than Premiere.
Output for DVD using video from Camtasia is fraught with issues involving clear images and text due to 2 recompressions and resolution downsizing.

[Perry Cheng]

Mike, may be I did not make my question clear enough. What I want was capture something off pc screen, edit in Premiere and then export to WMV format for pc viewing. What’s the best settings using what codec?

Perry

[Mike Velte]

Hi Perry,
Editing Camtasia in Premiere involves creating a custom Desktop editing mode Project Settings that match the dimensions and framerate of your Camtasia project. Also involves exporting from Camtasia an intermediate video file that will get recompressed again…2 generation losses.
It is so much easier and the results will look better if you edit and export your final .wmv from Camtasia.
If you insist on editing in Premiere, export from Camtasia as uncompressed.avi, edit in Premiere and export using Windows Media Video Screen 9 codec with the same size and frame rate as the original.

https://www.video2stream.com

[Perry Cheng]

Mike,
Pardon my slow understanding here. If I capture a scene of video from Camtasia, that scene is part of an editing project, how do I get the “final wmv” without bringing that scene into Premiere? Say I taped a couple having a conversation (Scene1), then I use Camtasia to record a scene of crowds walking across the street (Scene2), then ending with the couple sitting at the beach (scene3), how should the work flow be without bringing scene 2 into NLE? Are you suggesting that I export scene1 and scene 3 and then bring them into Camtasia for editing and export those scene out? Export out as what format? Then do I bring that in again into Encore again if I want to export to DVD instead of for the web? Thanks Mike, as usual.

Perry

[Tim Kolb]

[mike velte] “Editing Camtasia in Premiere involves creating a custom Desktop editing mode Project Settings that match the dimensions and framerate of your Camtasia project. Also involves exporting from Camtasia an intermediate video file that will get recompressed again…2 generation losses.”

In my personal experience, it isn’t necessary to do any conversion to another codec…I edit Camtasia files frequently.

As Mike says, make a custom project setting at the screen grab resolution.

However, don’t convert the file, just set the project compression to “none”, which won’t recompress the file when you’re editing.

When you import the Camtasia capture clips, you’ll have to go to “interpret footage” by right-clicking on the clip(s), and set the alpha option to “ignore alpha channel”.

Cut away and export from the Media Encoder to WMV (or as I prefer…Flash).

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Mike Velte]

You can also edit your entire project in Camtasia unless you are needing effects like color correction. While camtasia is not a full fledged NLE, you can surely slice and dice video, do titles and other overlays in it.

https://www.video2stream.com

[Perry Cheng]

Gentleman, My appology. I got the software a little backward! Boy, I have a program call “CamStudio” not “Camtasia”! I thought they are the same, no wonder I did not know what you are talking about and you don’t know what I am speaking of. The name is so close, I thought I was talking about Camtasia Studio. Well, never mind about my asking now. I will have to search the web.

Thanks for your effort.
Perry

[Perry Cheng]

BTW, I finally figure out how to use this “CamStudio” capture and bring files into Premiere. Like Tim suggested, I have to use the Lagarith Lossless codec with RBG mode capture every 33 milliseconds, with playback of 30fps. The outcome is great! Thanks guys.

Sincerely,
Perry

[Paul Murphey]

Hi all,

I know this thread is a couple of months old but rather than writing up a new post, I’d like to continue with this one as i have recently come across the same issues.

I am working on a project for a client for online web delivery via flv. The jist of the project – I have filmed a presenter giving a seminar on a sony HVRA1E in hdv mode in parallel to using camtasia studio to capture his on screen notes (word & pdf notes imported into windows journal) – Imported both into premiere pro cs3, edited and synchronised both video & audio with screen capture cutting back and forth from presenter to screen capture – output settings – (512 x 288, 1,000kbps on2vp6 codec)using adobe media encoder from the timeline.

The problem – the cuts showing the presenter appears to be of pristine quality however the camtasia screen recording notes are unreadable. they appear severely pixelated and this is a major concern as around 70% of the video edit focuses on the camtasia studio screen recordings. I have experimented with bigger frame sizes and higher encoding bitrates but it still makes no difference. The Avi file exported from within camtasia is uncompressed and comes to 44gigs (1 hour)and plays back (windows media player) with the finest detail as one would expect. Also from within cs3 itself during editing the text appears relatively clear and readabale. the only possible cause i can think of is that the uncompressed camtasia avi file export is at a custom frame size of 1440 x 1080 and frame rate of 10fps matching cs3 project settings of 1440 x 1080 @ 25fps except for the (10fps)

I NEED HELP PLEASE AND FAST! I am very desperate.

Thanks
Paul

Freelance Event Videographer & NLE Editor

[Paul Murphey]

Hi all,

I know this thread is a couple of months old but rather than writing up a new post, I’d like to continue with this one as i have recently come across the same issues.

I am working on a project for a client for online web delivery via flv. The jist of the project – I have filmed a presenter giving a seminar on a sony HVRA1E in hdv mode in parallel to using camtasia studio to capture his on screen notes (word & pdf notes imported into windows journal) – Imported both into premiere pro cs3, edited and synchronised both video & audio with screen capture cutting back and forth from presenter to screen capture – output settings – (512 x 288, 1,000kbps on2vp6 codec)using adobe media encoder from the timeline.

The problem – the cuts showing the presenter appears to be of pristine quality however the camtasia screen recording notes are unreadable. they appear severely pixelated and this is a major concern as around 70% of the video edit focuses on the camtasia studio screen recordings. I have experimented with bigger frame sizes and higher encoding bitrates but it still makes no difference. The Avi file exported from within camtasia is uncompressed and comes to 44gigs (1 hour)and plays back (windows media player) with the finest detail as one would expect. Also from within cs3 itself during editing the text appears relatively clear and readabale. the only possible cause i can think of is that the uncompressed camtasia avi file export is at a custom frame size of 1440 x 1080 and frame rate of 10fps matching cs3 project settings of 1440 x 1080 @ 25fps except for the (10fps)

I NEED HELP PLEASE AND FAST! I am very desperate.

Thanks
Paul

Freelance Event Videographer & NLE Editor