[Don Chard]

Thanks, I am trying that also.

I’m following this tutorial… In Caps I will highlight where I’m completely lost, and have no idea what he’s saying. 🙁

Yes, I’m looking on the adobe.com for the help, and that too is french to me unfortunately.

Preparing the Captures:

Use Techsmith codec to capture.
Open the Techsmith AVI in VirtualDub
Go to Video / Compression and choose Lagarith lossless codec. Made sure that it is set to RGB and null frames are enabled (checked)
Add Video / Filters / Resize and set it to Absolute: 2048×1530, filter mode: Nearest Neighbor. Here, you are using “point resizing” to double the image size while maintaining maximum sharpness. The kind of resizing does not usually work well for photographic images, but it is ideal for screen captures: maintaining the sharp, boxy look of non-antialiased text. It will help us from losing too much detail when the video is scaled down later on.

File / Save as .avi from VirtualDub

Cropping, Scaling and Filtering the Captures in After Effects

Open After Effects and create a composition that matches your intended output (such as 720×480, DV aspect ratio, 29.97 fps, etc.) and set it to the length of your screen capture.

Place your (very large) AVI on this timeline and scale it to fit within the safe area (something like 25% of original size), call this composition “establishing_shot”
Create a new Adjustment Layer above the main video track. Apply Effect / Blur & Sharpen / Fast Blur to the Adjustment Layer (Blurriness=0.5, Blur Dimensions=Veritcal, Repeat Edge Pixels checked). This is to soften it a bit vertically to prevent issues on interlaced screens.

Duplicate the “establishing_shot” comp and rename the new one, “medium_shot”
Modify the scaling of the AVI in the medium shot to approximately 45% of original.

HERE IS WHERE I AM COMPLETELY LOST!

Add motion and/or scaling keyframes to keep the focus loosely on the main action on-screen; such as the area where the mouse pointer is. (You may want to set the keyframes’ Temporal Interpolate to “Hold” so it will simply cut to the action instead of trying to animate all of the panning.)

How exactly do I do what is described above?

Duplicate the “medium_shot” comp and rename the new one, “close_up”
Modify the scaling of the AVI in the medium shot to approximately 75% of original. Add motion and/or scaling keyframes to keep tight focus on the action.
Render all 3 comps from AE as either DV (for better editing performance) or Lagarith (lossless quality)

Editing in Premiere Pro

Import your 3 “shots” into Premiere and place them in a Multi-Camera sequence
Nest the Multi-Camera sequence in your main timeline and switch back and forth between the 3 views as needed

So, the “establishing shot” will show them the entire screen. Small text will not bet legible, but it will give them a good idea of how things the screen is laid-out. The “medium shot” will let them see text fairly well – and it allows them enough space to see how the “focused” text relates to other elements. Finally, the “close up” will give them the best view of individual menu items and buttons; showing how things highlight when clicked, etc.

[Don Chard]

Thanks for the info.

I kept digging around last night, and finally ran into this info:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/2063028

In a separate article it also suggested that I needed to upgrade to Premiere Pro 4.1 since it had an improved rendering engine.

So, that’s why no matter what export settings I attempted, the camtasia footage never exported correctly, and was always blurry and unclear.

Now to try the advice given in the article above. 🙂

Thanks very much for the clarifications, and information given here, it is much appreciated!

[Don Chard]

So basically, what I’m going to do is re-create all images at an 800 x 600 resolution, and then replace them right into my timeline.

Therefore, the images and video will be the EXACT SAME dimensions, so hopefully now I will get the desired output needed. 🙂

I’m already testing a resized image now, with the video to see how it turns out.

Will keep you posted, thanks for the feedback!

[Don Chard]

Thanks for the feedback, at least it gives me hope that it’s not the sequence settings that are the problem.

The video fits perfectly into Premiere’s preview monitor, it’s only when exporting that it comes out all blurry.

I think I understand what you’re saying now….

Because my video is 800 x 600 and my images are 697 x 511, they are conflicting with each other and therefore not exporting properly.

So I guess, what I need to do is capture a new set of images at 800 x 600?

And then just replace 697 x 511 images with 800 x 600 images, right?

I just don’t want to do the whole sequence over again, but I could easily replace the images, and add the transition effects right away, without having to mess with the audio.

Here are my images & video settings

Sequence: 720 x 480 ( .9 )

Type: JPEG
File Size: 87 KB
Image Size: 697 x 511
Pixel Depth: 32
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

Type: QuickTime Movie
File Size: 24.4 MB
Image Size: 800 x 600
Pixel Depth: 24
Frame Rate: 30.00
Source Audio Format: 44100 Hz – 16 bit – Mono
Project Audio Format: 44100 Hz – 32 bit floating point – Mono
Total Duration: 00;04;53;05
Average Data Rate: 85 KB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

QuickTime Details:
Movie contains 1 video track(s), 1 audio track(s) and 0 timecode track(s).

Video:
There are 8796 frames with a duration of 1/30th.

Video track 1:
Duration is 0;04;53;14
Average frame rate is 30.00 fps

Video track 1 contains 1 type(s) of video data:

Video data block #1:
Frame Size = 800 x 600
Compressor = H.264
Quality = High (4.00)
Temporal = High (4.00)

Audio:
Audio track 1 contains 1 type(s) of audio data:

Audio data block #1:
Format = 16 bit – Mono
Rate = 44100.0000 Hz
Compressor = MPEG-4 Audio

[Don Chard]

” You should find a way to interpret your assets to be the same size and aspect ratio before exporting.
otherwise it will be good for one set, but display others all weird. ”

Do you mean within the timeline?

Does the fact that my sequence settings are 720 x 480 ( .919 ) and all my assets are ( 1.0 ) affect the output?

I believe this is where I’ve gone wrong.

I’ve tried creating a new sequence at 800 x 600 ( 1.0 ) and copying and pasting my timeline items to get a fresh start, and when it gets rendered it gets cropped and stretched all weird.

I’m really running out of ideas as to what to do, and I need to get this video done yesterday. 🙁

[Don Chard]

Thanks Vince

I guess the real issue I’m having is that my sequence is 720 x 480 ( 0.9 ) and all my assets are ( 1.0 )

Everytime I’ve exported something, only a couple times have I gotten a nice workable video, but the Camtasia video is always blurry and not clear.

I will be hosting the video on my server, and I would like to export either an .avi or .mov file, so that I can import back into Camtasia to create the flash file for the web.

Thanks for the input, I’ve tried MANY export settings, and I can’t get anything to work