What is Camtasia Studio?

Camtasia Studio is a video-based screen capturing software program. It is analogous to using a video camera to record your screen. However, unlike using a video camera, the software is installed on your computer, so your screen captures are directly recorded to a digital video format with higher quality audio. Camtasia can also be customized to capture the entire screen, a specific window, or user-defined region. Screen capture videos can be recorded with or without voice narration, and can be annotated after recording.

Camtasia Studio Recorder

What is Camtasia Used for?

Camtasia was originally designed for creating software tutorials, but has other powerful applications. Common uses of Camtasia are:

Software tutorials for discipline-specific or lab software
Explanation of a process displayed in discipline-specific software
Web site tours
Narrated Powerpoint presentations
Narrated explanation of lecture notes, homework solutions or other materials
Video and audio podcast production

System Requirements

To use Camtasia, you will need a PC that meets the following requirements, along with a PC microphone. The headset style microphones work best as they pick up more of your voice and less background noise. Headsets for Camtasia can be purchased for a small fee in the ATC, or from major retailers.

Authoring Requirements:

Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista
Microsoft DirectX 9 or later
1.0 GHz processor (3.0 GHz Strongly recommended for PowerPoint and camera recordings)
500 MB RAM (2 GB recommended)
Windows-compatible sound card, microphone and speakers or headphones
60 MB of hard-disk space for program installation
Camtasia Studio Add-in for PowerPoint requires Office 2000 or later
Office XP or later

Playback Requirements

Playback requirements vary based on the output format. Camtasia videos at WPI are typically converted to Windows Media Player and linked from the streaming server. These videos require Windows Media Player version 9.0 or higher.

Obtaining Camtasia

WPI has a campus-wide license for Camtasia Studio for WPI-owned PC's. Students and others off-campus with non-WPI-owned machines can access the software via the terminal server.

Maintained by itweb@wpi.edu
Last modified: Jun 04, 2008, 10:10 EDT