Camtasia Guide

Camtasia Guide

Setting up Camtasia for use

Camtasia is a program designed to capture your desktop (and any program running on it in all sorts of
formats (pictures, videos, etc). You've heard about this program in Fluxmeister's Sprite Guide, so
now you are going to learn how to use it (at least the basics anyway ^_^).

You want as much space as possible on your target Hard drive!

You will need a copy of Camtasia from Camtasia's Official Web Site, its only a 30 day free trail, 30
days of capturing game footage should be plenty... if you like it buy it ^_^.

The part of the program we are going to use, "The Recording Studio", looks like this:

Setting your input and your output...
•Under the "Capture" tab ť "Input" choose "region" //This will allow you to select a window region on
your desktop in which to record

•Under the "Capture" tab ť "Output" choose "File"

Now for the AVI Capture Settings
•Then under the "Tools" tab ť "options..." //allows you to specify your capturing settings
The window now looks like this:

•Set your frame rate to 30 //If you try 29.97 it will set to 29.0 after you close this window, you can
always use virtual dub to change that later.

•Now its time for the CODEC decision. Think ahead here about what your project settings will be, try
to keep everything the same within the project for best results.

Recommended CODECs Description Notes

Uncompressed Not really a CODEC, but this will kick out every
frame and is therefore Lossless.
Files are 100's of MB or even a couple GB depending
on how long you captured for.

Morgan M-JPEG V3 This is a good Codec as it leaves nice looking footage
and if you are editing your DVD source with this codec then your whole project will be M-JPEG. Also keeps file size down. If you use the FOURCC, then choose "MJPG" not
"dmb1" for best results.
60 day free trial

HUFFyuv A very good Lossless codec if you can get it to work. File size is a
little smaller than Uncompressed, so its your choice Unfortunately Camtasia will not give me the option
for HuffYUV, so if I wanted it I would have to capture Uncompressed and then use virtual dub to re-encode

*Other codecs may work, but be prepared for problems while trying to export your video to the settings
Fluxmeister and MJ set.

Removing Mouse Cursor and Muting Sound

We don't want a mouse cursor messing up our footage and I personally don't want to capture sound with my video footage, so I take these simple steps:
•Under the "Effects" tab ť "Cursor" choose "Hide Cursor"

Also I don't need the extra space taken up by audio capturing, since I am not manipulating the audio source so i want to mute it like so •Under the "Effects" tab ť "Audio" choose "Mute"

Capturing AVI Footage

Now its time to capture your game footage. Load up your favorite Emulator (my examples will be from ZSnes),
and make sure that Camtasia is still loaded, so that you have easy access to both programs.
Like this:

•Select and load the game you want footage from.

•Hit 'Esc' on your keyboard to go back to "Menu Mode" and pause the game screen.

•You can move the mouse in and out of the Emulator (which is a good thing, Alt-Tab can get hectic if you have a
lot of programs running on the desktop) so move the mouse over to Camtasia and hit the "Record" button
(or your hotkey) and select the region of your desktop that you want to capture. //I am using a window size of
512x448 (I know its wierd but I can always run my video output through AVI Synth to resize to 720x480
for editing use.

•Now all you have to do is hit 'ESC' to pause the game and click the "Stop" button (or hit your hotkey), save the file
to the desired folder and with the desired filename.

•Repeat the recording process until all of your game capturing is done.

Another Desktop Screen Capture Solution

Thanks goes out to Eric Parsons, who emailed me about a FREE desktop screen capturer called CamStudio. It functions and feels just like the Camtasia, but it has TWO big differences that I have found thus far:
•1. It is free so you don't have to do all your capturing with in a trial period.

•2. The codec compression choices... of the three I explained above the only codec that this software allows you to use is Morgan M-JPEG. I prefer Uncompressed myself, but M-JPEG is completely editable so this works for anyone who doesn't like Uncompressed footage.
CamStudio can be downloaded HERE

Tutorial written by Teknoboy

For other guides visit:
http://www.nhmk.com/rvg
AMV.org
MindWarp Entertainment - Tutorials

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Recommended CODECs	Description	Notes
Uncompressed	Not really a CODEC, but this will kick out every frame and is therefore Lossless. Files are 100's of MB or even a couple GB depending on how long you captured for.
Morgan M-JPEG V3	This is a good Codec as it leaves nice looking footage and if you are editing your DVD source with this codec then your whole project will be M-JPEG. Also keeps file size down.	If you use the FOURCC, then choose "MJPG" not "dmb1" for best results. 60 day free trial
HUFFyuv	A very good Lossless codec if you can get it to work. File size is a little smaller than Uncompressed, so its your choice	Unfortunately Camtasia will not give me the option for HuffYUV, so if I wanted it I would have to capture Uncompressed and then use virtual dub to re-encode