Animations In-Depth

In this tutorial:

Animations add interesting focal points to your video such as:

• A talking head that smoothly transitions or trades places with a screen recording.
• An image that enters the video from the left, pauses, then flies off the canvas to the right.
• Callouts that animate in various ways on the canvas to draw attention to an area in the video.
• Zooming in or out on important parts of your video to draw attention to key actions or enhance difficult to view parts within a video.

Add an Animation

1. Click the Animations tab.
2. Click the Animations subtab (Windows only).
3. Drag an Animation onto media on the timeline.
   

Camtasia displays the animation as an arrow on top of the media.

Edit an Animation

Animations move media in the video based on the change from one set of visual properties to another. These properties include position on the screen, rotation, scale, and opacity.

The tail and head of the animation arrow on the timeline indicate where the animation begins and ends. Adjust the visual properties at each point to set how the media displays at the start and end of the animation.

1. Place the playhead to the left of the animation arrow.
2. Click the Properties button.
   
3. Adjust the visual properties for the start of the animation. See Animation Properties.
4. Move the playhead to the right of the animation arrow.
5. Adjust the visual properties for the end of the animation.
6. Drag the arrow tail to where you want the animation to start.
7. Drag the arrow head to where you want the animation to end.

Animation Properties

Property	Description
Scale	Drag the slider or enter a value to adjust the size as a percentage of the original media.
Opacity	Drag the slider or enter a percentage to adjust the transparency of the media.
Rotation	Do any of the following to rotate the media around the Z, Y, or X axis: Click and drag the spinner Click a position on the spinner Enter a degree value Tip: To rotate media during an animation, set Rotation at the end of the animation arrow to 360° (clockwise) or -360° (counterclockwise).
Position	Enter X, Y, or Z coordinate values to place the media relative to the center of the canvas.
Size	Enter pixel values to adjust the size of the media. Click the lock icon to enable or disable the aspect ratio lock.
Skew	Drag the slider or enter a value between -10 and 10 to adjust the angle of the media. Tip: Pin the corners of your media to automatically adjust skew and integrate media with a background. See Create the Illusion of 3D Perspective (Corner Pinning).

Easing

Easing helps media to look more natural as it moves during an animation. To change the easing:

1. Right-click (Windows) or Command+click (Mac) the animation arrow and select Enable Easing (Windows) or Animation Easing (Mac).
2. Select an Easing option:
   • Exponential In/Out
   • Linear (Windows) / None (Mac)
   • Bounce
   • Spring
   • Auto (defaults to Exponential Easing)

Auto Animate Mode (Mac only)

Enable Auto Animate Mode to automatically add animations to the timeline as you move, rotate, and scale media on the canvas or adjust the media’s visual properties.