Techsmith Camtasia 2021 Review + Tutorial

I recently had a black screen of death on my laptop.

Not a surprise, since at any given time I have umpteen number tabs open in at least 3 browsers (you can get a glimpse of this in the Coschedule review gifs), and sometimes I force close the system.

So, guess what I did? I watched a video on how to fix the black screen. I did fix it, thanks to two very helpful videos out of scores of many.

I could have read the many blog posts on how to fix it.

But I was in panic and decided to speed up the process and fix it ASAP. The videos helped me fix my black screen of death in less than 30 minutes.

As per numerous surveys conducted by Hubspot, Renderforest, Optinmonster, Hootsuite, Forbes, Youtube Official blog, and others, 85% of businesses use video marketing. 88% of these businesses that use video as a marketing tool reported a better ROI. 

Videos sell. Videos have better engagement. Videos boost up brand value. 

Videos are also increasingly used for training and for creating visual instructions. In a survey conducted on 2000 companies conducted by Mimeo, a global content management and distribution organization, 74% of trainers preferred video training.

And video training is no longer a trend or a fad – as much as 64% of small companies used video training in 2019(Mimeo survey). Videos are now the most effective way of communicating – with your team as well as your customers. 

And one way to start creating videos is Camtasia. It allows you to record your screen, and do a lot more with it. So it’s not a QuickPlayer alternative, it’s a powerful video recording and editing tool.

They recently released their newest version, the Camtasia 2021.

Let’s take a look at what’s changed and what’s new.

Why Camtasia 2021?

Camtasia 2021 is a screen-recorder and video editing software. While Techsmith’s Snagit too captures screen videos, it does not have a video editor.

Techsmith has been a pioneer in the screen-capture software space since 1987. Their flagship products are Snagit and Camtasia.

Both these products received a fresh dose of upgrades in their 2021 releases. We have earlier reviewed SnagIt 2021 in detail – you can read about it here.

If I have to answer simply why Camtasia 2021 should be your screen-cast video maker and video editing tool, I would have to point you to two important facts about Camtasia 2021 :

•  over 24 million people use Camtasia
•  it has an average user rating of 4.3

In our review of Camtasia 2021 today, we will give you a detailed report that will help you decide for yourself if Camtasia 2021 is going to be your choice for screen-recorder and video editing tool.

Who needs Camtasia 2021?

If you are

• a social media marketer
• a coach
• a podcaster
• a teacher
• a content creator
• an online course creator
• a trainer
• a leader

you will benefit from using Camtasia 2021.

Features of Camtasia 2021

Let us check the different features of the two main tools of Camtasia 2021 – Screen recording and video editing

Screen Recording Video

Screen recording videos are easy to create and best for instructional and training videos. Screen-recorder video tutorials and webinars are almost a must for companies that sell software or services. Look for the support/help or training section of any company that sells software, and you will find tons of these how-to and guide videos that are essentially done using screen-recording software.

Features of Camtasia 2021 screen recorder

The interface and navigation

A very minimalistic interface, the Camtasia 2021 screen-recorder looks like this :

With 3 links in the menu dashboard and 4 clickable sections in the dashboard – this is one uncomplicated software dashboard.

How to record?

The recording screen in Camtasia is simple

• Download the free trial of Camtasia or buy it from the product page.
• Once it is installed, click on the Camtasia 2021 app icon.
• The dashboard opens up; click on the “New Recording” button. The recording icon should help you find it easily.
• Select the options from the new Camtasia 2021 recording screen dashboard. By default the Screen 1 option, the Microphone option and the System Audio options are in ‘on’ mode.
• You can further customize the Screen 1 option by clicking on the dropdown arrow right beside it. You can choose a specific region to capture the screen, choose the video quality, and choose Facebook and Instagram specific resolution.
• After you have chosen the options and the specifications of the screen, click on the red record button that has ‘rec’ written on it.
• Your screen recording has started! You can minimize the recording bar by clicking on the minimize sign, and it remains hidden out of view. When you are done recording, click on the Camtasia 2021 button – the orange one, and click on the Stop button with the squarish stop icon.
• And you’re done! Congratulations. Your video is now ready for you to prune and primp in the Camtasia 2021 video editor.

Watch the steps in action in this short and quick gif.

Screen recording in Camtasia 2021 is easy. No extra steps and no unnecessary beautification or complication.

Just what a recorder tool should be. Isn’t making the video, thinking about the concept or explaining things in the simplest way already brain-whacking enough?

Special Feature: Templates

If you want to send a quick celebratory video celebrating a birthday or anniversary, Camtasia 2021 has you covered. The ‘New from Template’ feature in the Camtasia 2021 app opens up a host of pre-made templates that are customizable to suit your needs.

When you click on ‘New from Template’, the default Camtasia template will appear. On the right-hand side top of the screen, you will find the ‘Download More Templates’ button. Clicking on that opens up the templates gallery.

There are currently 44 templates to choose from. The templates can be used as intros and outros for your presentation, online course, video tutorials, video blogs, or as promotional videos.

Now that we know how to record the screen in Camtasia 2021 and about its other features, let’s move on to the video editor.

Camtasia 2021 Video Editor

I’m not a fan of video editors that look like Adobe Premiere Pro. I am amazed at the Adobe products, especially Photoshop and Premiere Pro that our designers use extensively for client projects.

However, with due respect to the said software, the interface looks like one needs to be techy and know what they are up to. Definitely not for novices like me. That’s also one of the reasons I prefer Canva over Photoshop. Canva makes me want to learn. Photoshop makes me feel I know nothing about creating designs! I know it’s a wonderful tool, it still however scares me with its dashboard.

Back to Camtasia 2021 video editor, and at the first look, it is neat, and not scary for non-techies. You can figure out that there are a good number of editing options yet not too crowded or overwhelming.

At the top you will find the following options :

• File – all about pulling up a video file and saving it.
• Edit – contains the shortcut buttons of editing the file (viz cut, copy, split, arrange, etc).
• Modify – pretty much has the same options that the left side menu panel has (animation, behaviors, captions, quizzes, etc).
• View – has all the tools + the view of properties, markers tracks, quiz tracks, etc).
• Export – Export edited video to several locations like YouTube, Google Drive, Vimeo, etc or helps save as a local file in your system.
• Help – opens up tutorials, online help, tech support, shortcut keys and other stuff that would help you with editing the video or with your Camtasia 2021 purchase.

Main features of the Camtasia 2021 Video Editor

Let us look at some of the best features of the editor :

Tracks

A track in Camtasia is a layer of media that appears on top of the last track. By default, Camtasia 2021 opens up 2 tracks – the video and the audio tracks. You can add further layers of tracks if needed.

Library

Techsmith has aptly named this feature library as it contains scores of icons, introductory and exit pages – also known as intros and outros, lower section text placeholders and motion backgrounds.

This library of assets can make an ordinary or drab-looking video more appealing.

Annotations

Annotations in Camtasia 2021 editor are cool graphics with editable text inside. Annotations are helpful for all kinds of videos where a little text pop-up makes understanding clear.

Transitions

There are over 100 transition effects that you can choose from in the Camtasia 2021 version. You can use multiple transitions after creating splits in the videos. For creating splits just click on the timeline/track slider.

Behaviors

You can add 10 available behaviors to your video like a drifting screen, a jump and fall effect, a pop-up or a simple sliding of screens. Perfect for re-engaging the attention of the user to an important section of the video. Also a great feature for fun, personal videos.

Visual Effects

Frame your video in a device or remove a color from the background – the visual effects feature helps you put more aesthetics to your video. Again, what I find really interesting is that all these features are not overcrowded with options. Too many effects can spoil the message of the video.

Voice Narration

This is an interesting feature and a much useful one. Especially useful for current work from home scenarios where there’s no filter to the background noise (or music if you choose) that your folks at home create.

You can easily suppress that loud shriek from your toddler in the background by just muting the timeline for that shriek-patch, and instead of giving a voiceover for that duration of time.

Sometimes, we record a video and the audio might come out bad, or perhaps we had kept ourselves mute but would like to add voice instructions now. The voice narration feature comes in handy for such scenarios.

Audio Effects

I especially like the noise reduction effect which can significantly help reduce background noise. This helps especially if you live in a bustling neighborhood and a noiseless space is hard to get. There are a total of 6 audio effects to choose from.

Interactivity

Prepare an interactive quiz for your viewers for fun or to assess their understanding of the video so far. You can create multiple-choice, fill blanks, short answer and true/false questions. This is a really cool feature, and interactions always boost up sales and brand value.

This is also a great feature for online courses.

Captions

Pull up an existing captions file or create your own – the captions feature is a must now to reach global audiences, or reach out to local businesses/customers locally by putting up a local language caption file. You can create videos in your local language and still manage to reach global audiences and vice versa with the help of captions.

A few other noteworthy features of the Camtasia 2021 video editor :

• Undo-redo buttons.
• A Lot of shortcut buttons.
• Easily copy effects or animation or other styling used, and then use them throughout the video.
• Trimming videos in between
• Ability to create favorites by clicking on a star icon that is on every effect, transition, animation and other editing tools.
• Cursor effects.
• Zoom in to finetune annotation boxes and clouds.
• Export directly to Youtube, Vimeo and Google Drive.
• Real-time what-you-see-is-what-you-get-editor.
• Detachable canvas to check the output in a wider frame.
• Addition of device frames to make your video look like it is running on a computer or mobile device.
• Video table of contents.
• Background replacement for green screen videos.
• Facebook and Instagram-specific video resolutions.
• Compatible with Mac and Windows.

Keeping in mind that Camtasia 2021 is focused on creating screen recorder videos and editing the same kind of videos, the editor is a pretty good one.

Tutorials and Documentation

While Camtasia 2021 scores a 10 on 10 from me on the ease of use, sometimes, we can still get stuck at some functionality.

When you open the Camtasia app, the second tab on the menu is named “Learning”. If you go on the Learning tab, you will find video tutorials, help articles and webinars.

The third tab on the menu “Help” takes you to more online resources like community support and online help. It also has the Tech Support option for you to speak to a Techsmith expert. The Help tab also provides a downloadable keyboard shortcut pdf.

Pricing

The pricing of software and the industry type and size it caters to, has a huge role to play in determining the worth of the software.

The world is so tech-friendly today, for all our digital requirements there are multiple offerings from multiple companies to choose from. Therefore the cost factor is important.

Camtasia 2021 comes with a one-time fee of USD 249.99. If you are purchasing it for educational purposes, or for NGO and governmental purposes, you can get it for as low as USD 169.99.

If you want to keep receiving the next update to the software, add the one-year maintenance to your purchase for another USD 50.

Camtasia 2021 comes with a no-obligation trial period of 30 days. If you are looking for a screen recorder and video editor in one, go for the free trial.

Verdict

The points that go in favor of Camtasia 2021 are :

• Easy to understand, easy to use
• One -time lifetime fee
• Amazing tech support
• Loads of tutorials

The cons that I have found are :

• Paid maintenance and upgrade
• No direct upload to social media channels

I would give Camtasia 2021 a 9 on 10. For those of you who want a well-functioning screen recorder and video editor without being bombarded with beautification filters and unnecessary editing features, Camtasia 2021 is for you guys. Just go for it.

Try Camtasia for free

You would also like to read our Snagit review – another amazing software by TechSmith.

Are you using Camtasia 2021 already? How has your experience been so far? Let us know.

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