Snagit Guide » Video

Record Better Videos with Snagit

peter — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:39:45 +0000

Sure, when it comes to Screen recording nothing beats Camtasia Studio. But Snagit is also an excellent tool when you need to quickly record a video off your screen.

In this article I will cover a simple step that can greatly increase the quality of your Snagit Video Screen recordings.

Go into the Video Capture Output Properties. You find this by choosing Record Screen Video, choose Capture Output and Properties (See image below).

Change framerate

You should change the frames per second of your recordings. This simple change will really impact the quality of your videos.

Just change the Frames per second from 5, to 15 or higher. Try different settings but 15 should be enough for a great screen recording. I you capture with too high frame rate you will use too much computer resources and the recording may become laggy.

And that’s all there is to it. If you make this simple change your video should come out crisp and clear.

You can also experiment with different compressors (codecs) to get better results.

If you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

Until next time

Peter – Your Snagit Guide

Camtasia Screen Recorder Software 10 Year Anniversary

peter — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:38:54 +0000

This website is mostly about Snagit. I don’t talk much (here) about other great software titles. In many ways, especially video recording, the big brother of Snagit is really Camtasia Studio. Well this post is a tribute to that big brother.

If Snagit is the ultimate tool to take any kind of screen shots, copy text, images and what-not from your screen, then Camtasia is the ultimate tool to record video from your screen. This is excellent when you want to create tutorials or any kind of instructional videos related to computer or internet use. Perfect to do software presentations, demos and so on.

Our all time favorite Screen Recording / Screencasting software Camtasia Studio is growing up. Camtasia was first released at Comdex 1999. Camtasia has come a long way in these last 10 years and are now available both on Mac and PC platform.

Techsmith compiled a cool timeline below that shows Camtasia milestones, advertising and logos, reviews, feature releases and technology milestones. Check it out:

To celebrate Camtasia’s 10th birthday, SoftwareCasa has a sale on Snagit Screen Capture and Camtasia Screen Recording software!

For a limited time, save an extra 10% on already-discounted volume licenses of Camtasia Studio, Snagit, or both in a bundle. Offer ends December 7, 2009. SoftwareCasa is also doing a special price on Snagit Single user - $47.00.

You find the Anniversary Specials here:

Snagit Single User $47.00
Snagit Multi User Discount (10% 5-users and upwards)
Camtasia Multi User Discount (10% 5-users and upwards)

Until next time
Peter – Your Snagit Guide

Recording Video with Audio in Snagit

peter — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:15:23 +0000

Hi There,

Did you know that Snagit not only captures images but that you can also record Video with Audio?

Yes Snagit keeps getting better and better always one step ahead of all the Screen Capture Software out there.

However please note that this feature is only a small subset of the powerful screen recording and editing capability of Camtasia Studio. Camtasia Studio will allow you to record, edit, annotate and produce videos in all of the standard multi-media formats. It uses an optimized screen capture codec so the resulting files are small and highly compressed.

Back to Snagit, most of the time I notice that first time Snagit users usually ask whenever they record a video from player, website or application, why the audio is missing once playing the videos on the editor.

I encountered the same problem but I soon discovered how easy it is to fix the problem and make it work. I will share with you the steps below. Although it may look long winded don’t give up, if you follow the instructions step by step its very easy and you only need to do it once.

How to record a video with audio in Snagit:

Click on the Light Blue Round button with an arrow beside the Capture button and choose Video Capture. See image above.

Make sure that under the Options area, the Microphone is highlighted or on.

Now click on the tab Output with an image written “None Selected” , then go to Properties, on Audio options, make sure that the Audio capture device is set to your sound card, click Apply then OK.

Once done with setting up the necessary functions on Snagit, proceed to configuring the recording input in your Window Record Control.

Go to Start > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio tab. In Sound recording area, make sure that your sound card is set as the Default Device, click Apply then OK.

Now, under the Sound recording area, click on the Volume button, this will open the Record Control box. Once there, choose Options > then Properties.

Put a check on the box beside the following options: Stereo Mix, Mono Mix, What you hear, Mixer, Wave out mix and Wave in, then click OK.

Back to Record Control box, put a check on the Select button corresponding to each property that you checked earlier, then close the box.

If you follow these steps and it fails, you may want to update your sound card or if your sound card does not support recording audio-generated applications, you may use a jumper wire. Just place the jumper wire between Line Out and Mic In on the Sound Card, making the Line In as the recording source.

Alternatively you may own an older version of Snagit that needs upgrading to the latest version Snagit 9.0. You may request upgrade for Snagit here.

If you find this article helpful please feel free to share with all the Snaggers and give us your comments!

Until Next Time

Peter – Your Snagit Guide

Snagit And The Curse Of The Black Screen

peter — Sun, 11 May 2008 08:51:23 +0000

Have you ever tried to capture video with Snagit but instead of getting the video you end up with a black or grey screen?

The problem is actually not related to Snagit but usually due to graphics hardware acceleration being used to display the image/video.

Newer media players normally use graphics hardware acceleration on your system.

Read on to see how to solve this…

Graphics hardware performs a “hardware overlay” of video on the screen, which bypasses the normal Windows display memory that Snagit captures.

Most video capture programs which capture video from a video camera use “hardware overlay” by default for their video preview. This problem affects all screen capture programs, and even the image put in the clipboard by the Print Screen key.

The solution is to disable any hardware acceleration in the application that is playing the video or disable hardware acceleration system wide. Because this affects all applications on the system, it may cause performance problems for some applications and some applications may not run at all.

How to disable graphics hardware acceleration globally for all applications

Windows XP or 2000: Right-click on the desktop and select Properties > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot. Set the Hardware acceleration slider to None.

On other versions of Windows: Select Control Panel > System > Performance tab > Graphics > Advanced settings. Set the Hardware acceleration slider to None.

I hope this little guide was helpful.

Until next time

Peter – Your Snagit Guide

Camtasia Screen Recorder Software 10 Year Anniversary

Output Snagit Clips to Camtasia Studio

peter — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 11:50:20 +0000

TechSmith just released a new addon to Snagit. You can now output images directly from Snagit into Camtasia.

The Camtasia Output adds a button to the toolbar inside SnagIt’s Capture Preview window.

Just click the button and your image is sent directly to Camtasia Studio’s clip bin so you can easily insert it into your video.

This is an excellent way of easily adding graphics into your Camtasia Studio 5 videos.

A few areas you could use this addon: Add improved graphics into your Camtasia videos, add nicer texts and so on.

It took me about 1 minute to download, install and send my first Snagit capture over to Camtasia Studio. This is definitely a time saver.

If you haven’t heard about Camtasia Studio before it’s the worlds best Screen Recording (ScreenCast) Software.

You can download the new Camtasia Output here.

Until next time

Peter – Your Snagit Guide

Snagit OneNote 2007 Output

peter — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:05:38 +0000

A new output for Snagit was just released, for Microsoft OneNote 2007.

With one click you can send your Snagit scren captures over to your OneNote application.

If you are a OneNote user this is a must have application. callkathy has pointed out several excellent uses for this Output function. For example:

- You can now output long and wide pages to OneNote
- You can now annotate your captures and send them to OneNote

You can download the Snagit output from Techsmith here.

You find information about Microsoft OneNote 2007 here.

Until next time

Peter, Your Snagit Guide

Snagit Video Ad

peter — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:36:02 +0000

Check out the Snagit video ad on Google Video – Click here

Let me know what you think

Recording Video with Audio in Snagit