Camtasia 9 was released today.

Camtasia is a tool that I spend a great deal of time using. As is true of many users, I use a subset of the features and ignore many others that are less useful to me. With the release of Camtasia 9, TechSmith is trying to further cement the production software as the “Swiss Army knife” of eLearning tools. A fully featured tool, Camtasia allows you to edit video and produce quizzes, and it comes stocked with dozens of visual effects and transitions.

Camtasia does have a 30-day trial edition you can use to follow along with these tutorials if you have not yet purchased Camtasia 9 (Figure 1). Camtasia is cross-platform: Windows and Mac machines can use the same development files.

(Editor’s note: If viewing this article on a smartphone or a tablet, you may find that placing your device in landscape orientation will make some of the figures more legible.)

Figure 1: The new Camtasia 9 interface while editing an instructional video

Let’s take a look at three production techniques with the new Camtasia 9 that will allow you to see exactly what the new software can do and how it can help you create more engaging content.