- [Instructor] Camtasia provides a whole box of tools
to help draw your viewer's eye to a specific spot
or action on the screen.
I'm going to show you a few of my favorites.
I'm going to start simple here.
Sometimes making the cursor larger is all you need.
So I'm going to select my clip, pop open my properties panel
select the cursor button or tab, whatever you want to call it
and I can scale this up all the way to 500%
and that makes it really easy to see my cursor.
Now 500% starts to look a little pixely,
I usually go somewhere in the two to 300 realm.
Do what looks good for your project.
Let's take a look at some sketch motion call-outs.
Click on the annotations button
and sketch motion call-outs tab.
That's this little squiggly line.
You can try out any of these.
I really liked the square one that works well for me.
I'm going to drag it over my clip here.
Now, I only want this sketch motion call-out
to be for this particular section of the clip
where I show the UHD 3840 by 2160
so I can adjust the duration, just like any clip,
going to reposition it and resize it using the handles
and I can even take it a step further here
in the properties panel, I could bump up the thickness maybe
can change the color to anything I want.
Let's go with purple, that's fun.
I can also adjust the draw time,
right now it has a one second draw time
to me that seems a bit on the slow side.
So I'm going to pull this down to about a third of a second.
Now there is one thing I don't like here,
it just kind of drops off when it's done.
I like things to be a little more subtle
so you can always add a transition
to any of your sketch motion calls.
Let's just go with a quick 10 frame fade out.
So we've got a draw in then it just fades out.
Let's go back to the annotations button
and let's try the special tab here.
Let's go with a blur.
I'll pull that over this clip here.
Now this may seem a tad counter intuitive.
It's actually blurring things out, not what I want at all
but over here in the properties panel, I can invert that.
So it blurs out everything except this little square here.
I can re size that and reposition it.
Let's adjust the duration here on the timeline
so it's just blurring it out for this section here.
Now, once again, it's a little abrupt.
It's off then it's on.
So I could once again, add a transition to it.
I'll just go with fade that works well,
adjust those ten-ish frames.
So we've got a slow in,
there's my eye-catching blur and a fade out,
and let's do one more here.
I'm going to show you the spotlight effect.
Once again drag it over your clip
and it creates a spotlight.
Once again I'm going to adjust the duration of the spotlight.
I'm going to resize it here and reposition it.
I could adjust the intensity here in the properties panel.
I could go complete black, just a subtle gray,
somewhere in the middle, usually as well works great.
But once again, it doesn't have any sort of transition.
So if you don't like that
go ahead and add whatever you like.
Fade usually works well for me.
So there's the spotlight effect.
Let's look at some cursor effects, you know,
pop open the cursor effects button here,
and let's start with magnify.
Now cursor effects are a little different.
You don't drag them above the clip.
You actually drag them to the clip
and I get this magnify effect.
In the properties panel I can adjust all kinds of things.
I can scale it up so it's a bigger area.
I could adjust the zoom,
somewhere in the 150% looks pretty good to me.
I could change the shadow if I wanted to,
I can adjust the softness
so it adds a little bit of a feather to the magnify.
I don't like that, I like a nice sharp edge.
Now I've got this over the whole clip
so I don't really like that.
I'm going to change a couple of things here.
If I click this little show effects button down here
I can adjust the duration of the magnify effect.
I'm going to adjust that so it's just over this section here
and I can even add a transition to it.
I don't need to use the transitions,
it has its own built in transition.
Ease in and ease out.
Let's go with 0.3 seconds again, I like that.
0.3 seconds in, 0.3 seconds out.
So I've got no magnify then the magnify kind of swells up
shows what I want it to show and then goes out.
Now a key point with this here
you don't have control over where it's magnifying.
It follows the cursor.
Let me adjust that here so you can see that.
The magnify just follows your cursor wherever it goes
so keep that in mind when you choose this effect.
And last but not least let's give spotlight a try.
Same deal, drag it to my clip.
I can adjust my parameters here
let's make it a little bigger.
I like a nice sharp edge.
I can adjust the opacity
so I'm completely darkening my background
or somewhere in the middle looks good to me.
I can even blur the part that's not in the spotlight
if I want to.
Same deal, if I pop this open
I can adjust where the spotlight is affecting the clip.
Just over this section is what I want
and I'm going to give it an ease in 0.3 seconds.
Do looks good to your eye, 0.3 seconds out.
So I have no spotlight then here comes the spotlight,
shows my area and then it fades out.
So those are a few of my favorites.
There are of course, other effects to choose from.
There's really no right or wrong way
to draw attention to an area.
If it works, it works.
So take a bit of time, play around and find the method
that works for you and your project.