Having heard some pointers and requirements for recording video with Camtasia and posting it for students, I thought I would try the process out myself to make sure I could do all the steps all the way to uploading to YouTube and getting closed captioning and a transcript. I also did that because I’m teaching a class on using technology to teach and I wanted to cover all the key steps I think people will need. One of my goals is to help you record videos in one shot, with minimal video post processing, because we don’t have time for that.
I’ve made and posted a 27-minute video that shows how to use Camtasia to record a lecture, stream video of real-time writing, upload the video to YouTube, edit the automated closed captioning, and get the full transcript. The 27-minute video is on YouTube, see the link at the end of this email. Of course there are many videos like this these days, but at least I know that this one covers the key steps. Since the video is long, I am listing time stamps so you can skip to a certain topic:
00:10 How to get your windows ready ahead of time so you can record the video in one shot
02:26 How to set up your smart phone to stream video, like a document camera, so you can show writing in real time
03:02 How to record a video using Camtasia
05:19 How to incorporate PowerPoint, PDF, and real-time writing on paper, screen, or tablet into your video
11:02 How to cut out a segment of video that didn’t turn out right
12:20 How to add a colored circle around the cursor to make it easier for people to see what you are pointing at on your screen
12:35 How to save the video on your computer
16:30 How to upload to YouTube (NB: to upload videos over 15 minutes long, you first need to verify your YouTube account, look for that, or just upload and it will make you do it)
20:49 How to see and edit the automated closed captioning on YouTube (NB: it takes YouTube extra time after upload to provide automated closed captioning; it’s worth the wait)
25:04 How to see the full transcript on YouTube
A separate page tells how to set up your smart phone as a document camera. Among other things, that allows you to stream video of what your phone is seeing to your computer, where you can share it with people in an online meeting or capture it as part of a video. Technical details about setting up your smart phone as a document camera.
Closed captioning and transcripts are part of making a video accessible and that’s important. This actually benefits everyone who is watching your video: When watching a video on YouTube, I find it really helpful to have the transcript running next to the video. I also find the transcript to be easier to read than the closed captions. All of your students might benefit from knowing how to turn on the transcript: click the three-dot menu under the video in YouTube, then Open Transcript.
When editing captions, it seemed easiest to me to play the video, read the captions, and click on a caption and start typing when something was wrong. With practice, I was able to play the video at 1.25 and even 1.5 speed (set the speed with the gear icon in the video window). That saved time. When you re-start the video, it starts with the caption you just edited.
Editing your own captions will tell you a lot about the words you actually say when you are teaching. I will definitely speak more clearly in the future!
About editing captions. This is new to me, and it might warrant additional discussion on this list. I read online that captions are supposed to be at least 99% accurate. And it might be an accessibility requirement to add punctuation. I saw this comment on a page about editing captions: “You will probably need to add punctuation to separate sentences.” And I found this on another page, “The next element of readability is grammar and punctuation. Grammar and punctuation make your content readable. It should also be consistent throughout a file.” That is going to take a lot of work, partly because when we speak, we do not speak in complete sentences. Well, not me anyway. So punctuation of the spoken word is intrinsically challenging. Plus, YouTube’s automatic closed captioning does not put periods or commas or capitalize.
Important notes about video and audio quality. The video quality in the 27-minute YouTube video that I produced is not very good. Since I wanted to show what it looks like to use Camtasia, I had to use a different program to record the video. I think that is why the video quality is not that good. The 6-minute Camtasia video that I created while recording the video has much better video quality, see the link below. Unfortunately, the 6-minute video does not have very good audio quality! I have found that my laptop microphone and the microphone on my earbuds are not as good as the microphone on my cell phone, so I have been recording audio with my cell phone, sharing that to google drive, downloading, importing the smart phone audio into Camtasia to replace the audio that was recorded by the computer. But that is a lot of extra steps that I hope that no one else needs to go through!
However, when you set out to record a video, you might want to also record the audio with your phone, just in case.
With all of that said, if you are making videos for your students, I recommend that you make sure you are prepared, then just let it rip and don’t go back and fuss over it to make the video perfect. Lectures are not perfect, why should videos be? And you’ll get better at making videos soon enough.