Professional Presentation Videos with Camtasia Studio

Reading Time: 4 minutes
| Author: Tom Becker

If you want to convert your presentation into a video file, PowerPoint has a feature for that. However, aside from a limited recording function, there are only a few default format outputs available. More over, the editing of the rendered file is only possible by using additional software. That’s why we present to you Camtasia Studio by TechSmith, with which you can save your presentation video in the format of your choice and edit it extensively.


CamtasiaStudio_PowerPoint

Why video presentations?

You have created a PowerPoint presentation and want to send it to a friend, customer or colleague, via email, CD, or thumb drive. You then have to be sure that the person receiving it has PowerPoint installed on their device, so they can open the file. Admittedly you could save your presentation as a PDF file but then the embedded animations, videos or transitions are lost.

In order to preserve your presentation a conversion into video is advisable. Then you have your presentation with all its contents and settings and at the same time can enable access even without having PowerPoint installed.  Aside from that, there are numerous further reasons for a conversion of a PowerPoint presentation into a video file:

  • You can easily share your presentation on the Internet via platforms such as Vimeo or Youtube.
  • Your content has better protection from unwanted editing or use by third parties – a simple “copy paste-theft” is not possible any more.
  • Videos that are embedded in your presentation can be displayed correctly and without additional buffer time.

These advantages pertain mainly with the distribution of finished presentations. Obviously for the delivery of a lecture, presentation videos are not ideal. When you press “play” the video runs continuously and determines the timing of your speech. So if you do not want to stop the video at every slide, you need to stick to the exact time you have scheduled. If you have access to devices with PowerPoint wherever you deliver your lecture you should use traditional PowerPoint files.


Video conversion with PowerPoint

With PowerPoint 2010, you can convert your presentation easily on the “Save and send” feature and in PowerPoint 2013 with “Export” in a video.


ppt video 2010

ppt video 2013

PowerPoint then creates a video of your presentation with the settings made by you, with all animations and slide transitions. Embedded video files are also incorporated – as a kind of video in the video. With PowerPoint 2010 you can only save in Microsoft’s own WMV format, however with the 2013 version you can also save in the widespread MPEG-4 format.

This is how a presentation video created with PowerPoint could look:

 


Camtasia Studio

An interesting alternative or useful complement to video creation with PowerPoint is to use Camtasia Studio. In a graph, we have summarized the pros and cons of both programs to create a video:


prosandcons

The conversion process with PowerPoint is designed quickly and easily. The problem: If the video is recorded, it cannot be changed retrospectively. Unfortunately, PowerPoint doesn’t offer any option to edit the video afterwards.

Here, Camtasia Studio comes into play: Unlike PowerPoint, not only can you create videos with Camtasia Studio videos, but you can also edit extensively. The user-friendly program provides a variety of options for post-production – for example, editing, sound or subsequent insertion of effects.

Here is the presentation video created with PowerPoint from the above clip, but now we have continued work on it with Camtasia Studio:

With Camtasia, you see not only the run of the presentation, but all displayed activity that has been recorded. The recording of the cursor movement is to highlight specific content or generally for creating tutorial videos of great importance. An extensive video editing with zoom, markers, video acceleration, effects and much more can be implemented with just a few clicks.


Professional editing of Presentation Videos

If you only want to make a simple implementation of your presentation content into video format, you can do this with the conversion options from PowerPoint. If you, however, want to create high-quality image, advertising and training videos that come with extensive options for post-production, Camtasia Studio is the ideal implementation tool. A simple operation allows even a novice to quickly familiarize oneself with the area of video editing and to become familiar with transforming presentations into compelling videos.

Camtasia-US-left-400px

To download Camtasia Studio.

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