Camtasia Studio Learning Center

Camtasia Studio 6 Tutorial:

Why is my Preview Window “choppy” or seem out of sync?

If your computer can't keep up with the video shown in the Preview Window, it will drop frames which creates a "jerky" or "choppy" viewing experience. Learn more about why this happens and a solution for knowing exactly what the finished video will look like.

The Preview Window attempts to show your video and audio in real time. It would be kind of annoying if every time you wanted to see a clip you had to wait as your computer rendered the video. The bad news about a real-time Preview Window is that if your computer can’t keep up, it’ll start dropping frames to compensate.

(Tip: Some people have reported changing their power settings in the Control Panel to High Performance resulted in increased performance in the Preview Window.)

I don't care why this happens. Show me how to produce a selection of my Timeline.

What does that really mean? Let’s say you use Camtasia Studio on an older laptop. If you have a lot of video action going on—like some transitions and PiP camera video. The computer and its video card will likely struggle, and to compensate the computer and Camtasia Studio will start dropping frames and sacrifice quality to keep up.

When you produce the video for real, Camtasia Studio will not drop any frames and there should be no “choppiness”, or out-of-sync behavior. Here’s a great tip—want to produce just a part of your video to see what it’ll really look like? Learn how to produce a selection of the Timeline.