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I've created around 400+ video tutorials with Camtasia, it works well enough and IMO is one of the best all-in-1 screencast recording and editing tools you'll f

by nickjj 6y ago

I've created around 400+ video tutorials with Camtasia, it works well enough and IMO is one of the best all-in-1 screencast recording and editing tools you'll find if you're on Windows or MacOS. Lately I've been using OBS for recording because I want to use native Linux and Camtasia does not run on Linux. Using a Windows / Mac VM won't work if you want to record your Linux environment. Then I use DaVanci Resolve to do the video editing part. It hasn't been smooth sailing though. Lots of issues with exporting mp4s when it comes to having audio artifacts that never appeared with Camtasia. It means having to do extra work to render the audio separately as a wave file and stitch together the video with it as an mp4 with a different tool. I'd pay almost anything within reason for Camtasia on Linux. I tried asking the developers a few times. Even offered to fund the development myself or crowd source the funding with Kickstarter. They don't seem to have any intentions on ever supporting Linux. The next best thing for screencast video editing is Davinci Resolve IMO. It works on Windows, MacOS and most distros of Linux so I'm doing everything I can to migrate to that tool. In some ways it's a lot better than Camtasia too. It's just super finicky with hardware.

Thristle 6y ago
If OBS works fine and davinci DaVanci is having issues why move to it for screen casting?
- detaro 6y ago
  OBS is for recording, DaVinci Resolve for editing.
jonchurch_ 6y ago
What are some features you like about Camtasia besides the basic recording features? I know there's a lot that Camtasia provides, so I'm curious what you get out of it that other screen recording apps don't include.
- nickjj 6y ago
  It's just the whole package, from recording to exporting. For editing, Camtasia makes it almost too easy to create nice looking title overlays with backgrounds, dimming / blurring areas, highlights, zooming / panning and other basic effects. Even pretty complicated animations too, without having to mess around with key framing or needing a video editing degree. For example, I made the intro animation for my Docker course[0] in Camtasia in like 15 minutes by screwing around by dragging sliders around until it looked cool. Of course it's not the best thing ever, but it's one of those tools where things just feel intuitive to use without having to Google anything. That whole video is done with Camtasia too btw. DaVanci is a much more powerful editor and you can do crazy Hollywood style animations and effects, but for someone who just wants to do typical screencasting edits, it's hard to beat Camtasia's efficiency. I'm sure with enough time you could do those things with DaVinci by making your own custom scripts and effects templates but it will take a decent amount of effort to get there instead of getting all of that out of the box. I know ScreenFlow is also quite good. Very comparable to Camtasia. Camtasia seems to have better license terms and isn't MacOS exclusive. There's things like Kdenlive too. I super appreciate the development work they've put into it and I think it'll improve over time, but it's not comparable to Camtasia in terms of usability when it comes to creating nice looking titles, animations, etc. I don't think you'll find anyone who would disagree if they've used both tools for a while. [0]: https://diveintodocker.com/ https://diveintodocker.com/
  - jonchurch_ 6y ago
    Thanks for the context. That intro does look slick!
imhoguy 6y ago
Have you tried HDMI to USB video capture? If you computer has enough power you may pass-thru USB3 and audio into VirtualBox with Windows guest running Camtasia. To avoid extra hardware maybe even VNC would be enough. That is just a hack idea and I am not Camtasia user yet.
- nickjj 6y ago
  I haven't. Do you mean setting up a 2nd computer to run native Linux as my main box and sending that stream over to Windows to record using a capture card? I was hoping to avoid such a set up because it makes things a lot more complicated and uses much more desk space. It does work tho, I've heard of gamers using that set up for streaming on Twitch. I've looked into using a 2nd GPU and doing a pass-through with KVM which would let you run a Windows VM with effectively native performance. I'm sure that would be great for editing, but it's the recording the Linux environment outside of the VM that would be the issue. Audio is super sensitive with latency, even as little as 15ms of latency could be enough to kill an audio recording. Needless to say that's why I'm striving to get DaVinci to work for the editing side of things. It would be so nice to avoid having to do any of the above and just use native Linux straight up with no VMs or secondary machine.

by nickjj 6y ago

Thristle 6y ago

If OBS works fine and davinci DaVanci is having issues why move to it for screen casting?

detaro 6y ago
OBS is for recording, DaVinci Resolve for editing.

jonchurch_ 6y ago

What are some features you like about Camtasia besides the basic recording features? I know there's a lot that Camtasia provides, so I'm curious what you get out of it that other screen recording apps don't include.

nickjj 6y ago
It's just the whole package, from recording to exporting. For editing, Camtasia makes it almost too easy to create nice looking title overlays with backgrounds, dimming / blurring areas, highlights, zooming / panning and other basic effects. Even pretty complicated animations too, without having to mess around with key framing or needing a video editing degree. For example, I made the intro animation for my Docker course[0] in Camtasia in like 15 minutes by screwing around by dragging sliders around until it looked cool. Of course it's not the best thing ever, but it's one of those tools where things just feel intuitive to use without having to Google anything. That whole video is done with Camtasia too btw. DaVanci is a much more powerful editor and you can do crazy Hollywood style animations and effects, but for someone who just wants to do typical screencasting edits, it's hard to beat Camtasia's efficiency. I'm sure with enough time you could do those things with DaVinci by making your own custom scripts and effects templates but it will take a decent amount of effort to get there instead of getting all of that out of the box. I know ScreenFlow is also quite good. Very comparable to Camtasia. Camtasia seems to have better license terms and isn't MacOS exclusive. There's things like Kdenlive too. I super appreciate the development work they've put into it and I think it'll improve over time, but it's not comparable to Camtasia in terms of usability when it comes to creating nice looking titles, animations, etc. I don't think you'll find anyone who would disagree if they've used both tools for a while. [0]: https://diveintodocker.com/ https://diveintodocker.com/
- jonchurch_ 6y ago
  Thanks for the context. That intro does look slick!

imhoguy 6y ago

Have you tried HDMI to USB video capture? If you computer has enough power you may pass-thru USB3 and audio into VirtualBox with Windows guest running Camtasia. To avoid extra hardware maybe even VNC would be enough. That is just a hack idea and I am not Camtasia user yet.

nickjj 6y ago
I haven't. Do you mean setting up a 2nd computer to run native Linux as my main box and sending that stream over to Windows to record using a capture card? I was hoping to avoid such a set up because it makes things a lot more complicated and uses much more desk space. It does work tho, I've heard of gamers using that set up for streaming on Twitch. I've looked into using a 2nd GPU and doing a pass-through with KVM which would let you run a Windows VM with effectively native performance. I'm sure that would be great for editing, but it's the recording the Linux environment outside of the VM that would be the issue. Audio is super sensitive with latency, even as little as 15ms of latency could be enough to kill an audio recording. Needless to say that's why I'm striving to get DaVinci to work for the editing side of things. It would be so nice to avoid having to do any of the above and just use native Linux straight up with no VMs or secondary machine.