Animations In-Depth
Learn how to create and edit animations to add visual interest to your video.
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
- Click the Animations tab.
- Click the Animations subtab (Windows only).
- 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.
Note: For more detailed information about Zoom animations, see Zoom in to Focus Attention.
- Place the playhead to the left of the animation arrow.
- Click the Properties button.
- Adjust the visual properties for the start of the animation. See Animation Properties.
- Move the playhead to the right of the animation arrow.
- Adjust the visual properties for the end of the animation.
- Drag the arrow tail to where you want the animation to start.
- Drag the arrow head to where you want the animation to end.
Tip: Streamline animation editing with Edit All Animations mode.
With Edit All Animations mode, edits you make to a single animation are applied to all animations in the selected media. Click the Edit All Animations icon 
at the top of the Properties panel to toggle this mode on and off.
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:
|
| 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:
- Right-click (Windows) or Command+click (Mac) the animation arrow and select Enable Easing (Windows) or Animation Easing (Mac).
- 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.
Get Camtasia
Check out the latest features in Camtasia.
Already a Camtasia user? Learn how to update to the latest version.
