Camtasia for PC
About this article
This article includes instructions for downloading, installing, and configuring TechSmith Camtasia. It is intended for instructors.
What's Camtasia?
TechSmith's Camtasia is a software application that gets installed on your laptop that allows you to record your screen activity and save it in the form of a video. Your movies include all mouse movements, pen and key strokes, any software application activity, and even web browsing activity. You can also choose to record audio from both system output (i.e., what's coming out of your speakers) and microphone input (e.g., your narration of a PowerPoint slide show). Camtaisia also includes a set of tools for editing your video, adding instructional and interactive elements such as callouts, transitions, and quizzes, adding audio tracks, Closed Captioning, and publishing your video in multiple formats, both locally and online (e.g., to YouTube or MediaSpace). TechSmith offers both PC (Version 9) and Mac (Version 3) of Camtasia.
Installing Camtasia
Many have grown used to downloading Camtasia directly from TechSmith, but we are moving away from this method and ask you to simply contact TLT (tlt@winona.edu) for a direct link to the software link and license code for your version of Camtasia.
Getting started
TechSmith has produced a series of tutorials called Getting Started with Camtasia 9 and the Camtasia 8-to-9 Where is it now? resources. In this section we introduce and provide further resources for the three basic functions of Camtasia are recording, editing, and sharing.
Record
Basic recording of your screen, audio, and video with your laptop webcam can all be active by opening Camtasia and clicking on the Record button 
in the upper left corner of the application. To record, you will first need to adjust the following settings.
1. Set your screen recording area (Full to Custom)
2. Adjust camera options
3. Set microphone and levels
4. Start Recording (see rec button on PC).
Edit
The features for editing your recordings are best learned on your own by going to the LinkedIn Learning training videos linked below under LinkedIn Learning Training.
Share
This functionality is where we make your videos into final products that will be streamed on YouTube, MediaSpace, or played from a laptop locally. If you are planning to produce and share these videos for your courses in BrightSpace we recommend saving these as a Local File and using the MP4 (Windows users will need to save the as MP4 Only at 720p) option. To learn more about this functionality you can go directly to the LinkedIn Learning resources below.
LinkedIn Learning Training
Where are your Camtasia files stored?
When you install Camtasia Studio, the default save location is C:\Documents\Camtasia Studio. To find where Camtasia stores files go to your Documents folder after your first recording and you should see a Camtasia Studio folder. This is the default location for the recordings (.trec) and the Camtasia project files (.tscproj). When you produce a project (e.g., for Web publication), the resulting file(s) are stored in a sub-folder that has the same name as the Camtasia project. These default save locations and sub-folder names can be changed if you wish.