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8 May 2020 - Podcast #692 - (21:38)
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Camtasia has been the preferred application for nearly 18 years by those who need to create video documentation for computer users, but in recent years TechSmith has pushed the application into other areas.
SnagIt was TechSmith's first product, a screen capture utility that the company introduced 30 years ago. Camtasia expanded SnagIt's ability to capture still screens and gave documentation specialists a way to capture full-motion screen sequences with narration that was captured live.
Starting several years ago, Camtasia began to acquire sophisticated editing capabilities while maintaining an interface that's easier for users who have no background in video production to navigate. Camtasia's export process, which video experts know as "rendering", requires little or no knowledge of video formats, video codecs, and a myriad of other potentially confusing topics.
TechSmith released Camtasia 2020 on 28 April and the company provided a copy of the application for me to work with in mid April. There are four new or improved features that make upgrading to the 2020 version well worth the $99 fee, and a variety of other tweaks. New users will pay $249 for a license.
Let's take a look.
Although the interface makes Camtasia one of the easiest video editors available, that doesn't mean it's always easy to find what you're looking for. There are annotations, transitions, behaviors, animations, cursor effects, and other functions that are used to improve the quality of the video. Each section has several components and each component can be modified with settings.
Users often have preferred components with specific settings and until now creating a preferred transition or annotation required starting with the appropriate category, drilling down to the desired effect, and then modifying the settings. This had to be done each time the effect was used in a video. In short, this is something that gets old fast.
Now users can now add a star to their most frequently used tools and effects and save them, with all their settings, in a Favorites category for quick access. This will be a huge time saver.
Click any of the small images for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
Templates have been around for a while, but they were fairly basic. In Camtasia 2020, users can download advanced templates from TechSmith or create their own. Or download a template from TechSmith, modify it, and save it as their own.
As helpful as this will be for users who may be the only documentation specialist at a small company, it will be a tremendous improvement for companies that have a documentation department. Templates can contain intros and endings for video projects and placeholders, complete with transition effects, for video segments. Templates are a way to ensure consistency from one video to the next regardless of which staff member works on it.
Templates aren't limited to just those provided by TechSmith, even though they are well made. Users can create their own templates that they can use for new projects or that can be used by other team members.
Templates demonstrate one of Camtasia's new features: Magnetic tracks. A placeholder for a video segment might show in the template's timeline as being two minutes long, but what if the actual video segment that replaces the placeholder is just 55 seconds long? Until now, the user would have needed to manually adjust every additional element on the timeline to close up the space.
Closing up the spaces isn't a time-consuming process, but tiny gaps can remain between segments. On playback, these gaps display a black screen that are distracting. Fixing all the little gaps can be both time consuming and annoying.
The solution is the Magnetic Track function that can be activated for any track. When the function is active, Camtasia automatically removes all gaps between the clips on that timeline track. Replacing a placeholder with a clip that's longer or shorter is no longer a problem.
Camtasia can import and export template packages for use by other team members or to use as a starting point for similar projects that an individual user is working on. Packages can include templates, favorites, library items, specific colors for branding, and other preferences into a single file that can be shared or reused. As with templates, packages can be used to ensure consistency among users and throughout a range of projects.
The import and export functions are on the File menu.
Track mattes bring transparency effects to Camtasia. The feature makes it possible for users to create both static and animated masks that control how the contents of other tracks are displayed. For example, a layer that contains text could be used as a matte to display a video or still image through the letters while suppressing the background image elsewhere. This is an uncommonly sophisticated effect for an application such as Camtasia.
Many businesses now give users more than a single screen. Dual monitors (or more) are popular with anyone who needs to work with an application that has a complex interface and even Camtasia's less complicated video production interface can be busy. As the user displays more and more tools, the workspace for the video itself, which TechSmith calls the canvas, becomes smaller.
Camtasia 2020 has taken the first of what I hope will be many steps to give users the ability to rework the interface. The timeline can now be moved to a second monitor. It's a two-step process: View > Timeline > Detach Timeline (or Ctrl-3); then drag the timeline to the second monitor. The user can then restore the timeline to the main monitor by pressing Ctrl-3 or revisiting the menu: View > Timeline > Attach Timeline.
 TechSmith's remarkable Camtasia receives some dramatic improvements.Improved capabilities to share templates and packages will enhance consistency. Placeholders make templates even easier to use and more powerful. User interface enhancements recognize the growing use of multiple screens. Track mattes will probably be overworked for a while as users react to a shiny new object, but eventually the feature will be selected only when it's appropriate. There's a lot to like in this new version.
Additional details are available on the TechSmith website.
Manufacturers of hardware reviewed on TechByter Worldwide typically loan the hardware and it must be returned at the end of the review period. Developers of software reviewed on TechByter Worldwide generally provide a free not-for-resale (NFR) license so that all features of the application will be unlocked.
A recent article on PetaPixel described a bug that results in some photographs taking far more space than they should. Making one change in how you use the program could save tens of megabytes per photo; maybe more.
The PetaPixel article describes a situation that is common for professional photographers, but less so for amateurs. If you never select "Edit in Photoshop" from Lightroom, you're not affected. Those who round-trip raw photos from Lightroom to Photoshop and back could see significant changes.
To understand what's happeneing and why, we need to look at how the process works.
When you're editing a photo in Lightroom and need some of the capabilities offered only by Photoshop, the photo can be sent to photoshop in Photoshop format (as PSD file) or as a TIFF file. The PSD format might seem to be the logical choice, but generally it's not — particularly if you use the camera's proprietary raw format. Sending the file to Photoshop in TIFF format (should) allow the use of file compression.
Note my use of "should" there. In fact, you can open Lightroom's preferences panel and examine the External Editing tab. The Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2020 setting defaults will specify ProPhoto RGB color space, 16-bit color depth, 240 PPI resolution, and no compression. The color space and color depth settings are correct and resolution is meaninless, but compression should be set to zip.
Click any of the small images for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
Photoshop can't open raw files directly. The file will be processed in Adobe Camera Raw first, but you'll want to retain the changes made in Lightroom because Lightroom is actually Adobe Camera raw with a different interface and a database connection. TIFF retains all adjustments you've made in Lightroom, but the files are several times the size of a raw or DNG file. A 30MB raw/DNG file could be ten times that size by the time the image has made the round trip to Photoshop. Specifying [(1) on the photo below] zip compression for the TIFF file makes the resulting file a lot smaller.
The problem is, the setting isn't honored and the file comes back to Lightroom as a gigantic TIFF. If you use this process rarely, the impact will be relatively small; but if you send a lot of images to Photoshop for pixel-level editing, the effect can be substantial.
Many photographers use Lightroom for the entire editing process because it's a powerful program that can make overall changes to the image. Cropping, leveling, exposure, color temperature, tint, contrast, clarity, vibrance and saturation, hue-saturation-luminance changes, split-toning, sharpening and noise control, lens corrections, and vignetting are handled well in Lightroom. Lightroom also handles minor blemish removal, but detailed changes call for Photoshop.
Here's an example. I have a photograph that I took on 16 May when — maintaining proper social distancing at all times — I captured some images around the city. One of the photos shows gasoline selling for $1.61, but I wanted to clean up some of the distracting elements of the image (arrows), so I selected (2) Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2020.
I brought the image back to Lightroom after cleaning up the (1) service station sign and (2) some of the gas pump's base. But the DNG file (23MB) returned as a (3) 247MB TIFF. The more layers you add to the file during editing, the larger the returned file will be. I've seen some returned TIFFs that have ballooned to nearly 500MB.
Files are usually returned to Lightroom from Photoshop by choosing Save from the menu or pressing Ctrl-S. Because this procedure doesn't honor zip compression, the returned file is needlessly large. The fix is easy: Choose Save As from the menu and change the Image Compression setting from NONE to ZIP. The resulting file is still large, but now it's less than 200MB.
You might be tempted to return the file to Lightroom as a JPEG file. If you do that, it will be much smaller — perhaps 10-15MB, but further editing in Lightroom will be substantially limited. If you're certain that you'll never want to change cropping, leveling, exposure, color temperature, tint, contrast, clarity, vibrance and saturation, or any of the other adjustments, JPEG is OK. I've never felt comfortable with that choice, though.
Adobe will probably fix this little bug at some point. Until that happens, this is a quick and easy way to save a bit of disk space.
There's never a shortage of scams, but large events bring out the creeps in large numbers and the COVID-19 pandemic is clearly a large event.
You doubtless know that no Nigerian prince wants to send you several million dollars, that the long-lost heir who left you millions when he died is a fake, that some big-box store will not send you a coupon for $100 if you forward their message to 100 people, and that nobody in Ukraine wants your help to exfiltrate millions. Anybody who falls for any of those scams these days has earned whatever misfortune ensues.
It is illegal to send unsolicited text messages. That, of course, doesn't bother criminals, and many fraudulent text messages are linked directly to the pandemic. Unsolicited text messages should be treated the way unsolicited emails are treated: With extreme care and suspicion.
The Federal Trade Commission says scammers have crowded onto the COVID-19 pandemic bandwagon with absolutely no regard for social distancing. (No the FTC didn't mention social distancing. I added that part.) The crooks are using fake text messages, emails, social media posts, and even complete websites to help them steal money directly or by fooling people into revealing personal financial information.
Ads that promote prevention, a treatment, or a cure should be immediately suspect. If someone has developed one of these, you can be sure that every legitimate news agency on the planet will headline it. It won't be a secret. It won't be promoted in Facebook. It won't come from an email correspondent you've never heard of.
And now there are economic stimulus payments that people are waiting for. Or unemployment checks. Scammers have deployed robocalls, text, and emails that promise to help you get the money or claim to offer other grants or assistance. These scammers almost always require an advance fee (possibly paid with gift cards) and then you'll never hear from them again.
The FTC says that people don't need to do anything to obtain the stimulus check (or direct deposit). "As long as you filed taxes for 2018 or 2019, the federal government likely has the information it needs to send you your money." Those who receive Social Security payments or railroad retirement payments will receive their money eventually, but aren't included in the initial group.
The usual warnings apply: Government agencies and legitimate businesses will not request identifying information via a text message. When you receive a phony text message, just delete it. Don't click links, call numbers, or reply to the message in any way.
KnowB4, a company that provides training for companies by sending phishing emails and texts to employees so that gullible workers can be identified and coached, recently listed the top ten email subjects that fooled workers. Here are the top five from that list:
Some of those subject lines have doubtless been superseded by stimulus or COVID-19 ploys. KnowB4 says that nearly half of all social media-related phishing emails to business employee imitated LinkedIn messages. That's likely because emails that appear to be legitimately coming from a professional network have higher believability. This is even worse because many LinkedIn users have their accounts tied to their corporate email addresses.
Apple and Google are usually fierce competitors when it comes to smart phones, but the two companies are now working together to find a way to track people who have been in contact with someone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
The process is relatively simple, but it raises security, privacy, and civil liberties concerns. The basic plan is to allow Android and Apple phones to communicate with each other via Bluetooth. When, for example, the owner of an Apple phone is diagnosed with COVID-19, the system Apple and Google are developing would be able to notify the owners of both kinds of smart phones who have been in the same location at the same time as the infected person. This would be a huge step forward in contact tracing.
The security, privacy, and civil liberties concerns should be self evident, but Apple and Google are trying to address them by making the apps that would power the technology available to users only on request. In other words, the user would have to download the app from the Apple App store or the Google Play store, install it, and enable it.
The companies are referring to it as "Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing," and a statement says "we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID‑19 and accelerate the return of everyday life."
We'll take a closer look at this next week.
If you don't have a password manager, you may occasionally forget a password. This can be a minor inconvenience or a minor catastrophe.
Many online services offer the ability to reset the password when you provide the email address or phone number you've registered with. For a service such as Google, the process is simple: Enter your Gmail address and Google will send a password reset link to your recovery email address. To use it, you'll need to enter a confirmation number that Google will send to the phone number is has on record for you. What if you don't have access to these resources?
If none of these options works, Google will ask for an email address that they can use to reach you. Don't expect a timely resolution.
What's the point of all this? Consider it a reminder to use a password manager and to keep your contact information up to date. Prevention is better than cure.
In May 2000, I was delighted to have purchased a portable music player from Circuit City (remember them?) for just $180. "The day of the $2500 MP3 home stereo player has come and gone," I wrote.
That $180 20 years ago would equate to about $270 today. The Apex AD600A "Dolby Digital (AC3)/DTS output, karaoke, MP3 playback, screen saver, 2 microphone jacks with volume control, karaoke vocal assist function, basic remote, supports DVD/CD/VCD/SVCD/CDR playback" device that I paid $180 for was a portable disc player. In 2001, Apple introduced the IPod with 5GB of memory for $400.
There were predictions that car stereo systems would soon be updated with slots for discs and eventually slots for memory sticks in the car's dash. My 10-year-old car accepts discs and it also has a USB connector for thumb drives. I could drive from New York city to Los Angeles and never hear the same selection twice.
But to carry something while we're walking, we still need an MP3 player. They're smaller and lighter, and they start at $30 or so. You can still pay $70 for a Sony Walkman MP3 playere or $300 for an MP3 player from Apple.