Annotation, cursor effects, blurs and more

Aimed at those who create screencasts, YouTube videos and other instructional material that involves screen capture, animation, annotation and editing, TechSmith's Camtasia has been updated to version 2.0, which brings a more intuitive editing interface to the program, along with higher quality output that is 40-60 percent faster to produce. The new version also introduces a blur effect to hide sensitive information.

The re-designed editing interface also makes room for additional new features, such as speech bubbles, lines, arrows and shapes to highlight, point to or clarify specific features in the video. The callouts can also be animated to follow along with the objects they are associated with.

Cursors can also be made more attention-getting by highlighting or magnifying them in the new version, either following the mouse or just animating mouse clicks. Version 2 also has tilt-and-restore effects, similar to those seen in Keynote, where the screen can "move aside" so that additional content can also be shown, then the screen can "move back" if desired. Camtasia also allows users to put a "frame" of an iOS or other device around a movie of a running program, showing it what it would look like on an iPhone (for example).

The program costs $100 new, but 1.x users can upgrade to Camtasia 2 for $50. It requires an Intel Mac running 10.6.3 or later and 2GB of RAM.

by MacNN Staff