Camtasia/Techsmith codec

TYU wrote on 6/11/2007, 12:29 PM
Camtasia/Techsmith codec produces very small AVIs when used in screen capture -type videos.

But when I render with Camtasia/Techsmith codec with Vegas I get large AVIs. My workaroudn is to render an AVI with Vegas (7) and then use Camtasia to render it again with Techsmith codec and I the a small AVI (ten fold smaller).

No matter what I try the file size is a lot larger.

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 6/11/2007, 4:49 PM
as good as it is, i woudlnt rely on camtasia codecs for serious archival work
daryl wrote on 6/12/2007, 11:50 AM
I completely agree! As for me, I create an AVI from Camtasia uncompressed to load into Vegas, then render to whatever format I need to use. Never had a problem with that.
D
douglas_clark wrote on 6/12/2007, 1:07 PM
TechSmith Screen Capture Codec (TSCC) is a commercial lossless Windows video codec designed for screen capture. TSCC is very efficient with video with large areas of non-changing image...such as a screen showing a program in operation, where only the mouse cursor is moving around. It is not efficient with real motion video, or video containing gradients or noise. Other lossless codecs, like HuffYuv or Lagarith, are much more efficient at compressing real, noisy motion video, and are suitable for editing in Vegas. And they are free.

edit: TYU: you need to tell us more about what you are trying to encode, so we can help you sort out the problem. If your "screen capture" video is of something other than a typical office software program...for example a computer game, then you need to use a different codec. What is the material, and what are your settings?

Home-built ASUS PRIME Z270-A, i7-7700K, 32GB; Win 10 Pro x64 (22H2);
- Intel HD Graphics 630 (built-in); no video card; ViewSonic VP3268-4K display via HDMI
- C: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB; + several 10TB HDDs
- Røde AI-1 via Røde AI-1 ASIO driver;

TYU wrote on 6/13/2007, 3:31 AM
My workflow is usually the following:

1) I capture the and edit it in Vegas. Then I render it to (often using HuffYUV as codec) to an AVI. The size for three minute video is about 30 Mb.

2) I open the AVI with camtasia and render it again now using TSCC. The resulting AVI (with or without sound) is 1-2 MB

What I would like to do is:
1) I capture the and edit it in Vegas. Then I render it to (often using TSCC codec) to an AVI.

Bummer but my video size is 20MB! Upon examining the video Windows reports it using TSCC so something must be wrong somewhere.

If I render the video using VirtualDub I get the 1-2Mb files as with Camtasia. My videos are not noisy and contain material suitable (plain screen capture) for TSCC.
PeterWright wrote on 6/13/2007, 4:24 AM
TYU

OK, you have described what you have been doing, but

What is your ultimate aim for the final product - web video? DVD? CD? Cinema Projection? email? etc .....

The answer to this may help in suggesting your best workflow.
PeterWright wrote on 6/13/2007, 4:24 AM
TYU

OK, you have described what you have been doing, but

What is your ultimate aim for the final product - web video? DVD? CD? Cinema Projection? email? etc .....

The answer to this may help in suggesting your best workflow.
farss wrote on 6/13/2007, 4:49 AM
It could well be that Vegas is encoding the vision using the TSCC codec but including PCM audio. From memory Vegas almost always includes an audio stream.

Even so, I'm really with Peter on this one, why go back to the TSCC codec.

Bob.
TYU wrote on 6/13/2007, 6:27 AM
I am including the videos on a CD. And size in an issue since I have lots of videos on the CD. I sometimes email the videos since they are adequately small

I've tried many different codec and frankly I haven't come across anything better (sizewise). For example a 5 minute lossless video with TSCC was just 6Mb and with Lagarith 118MB and HuffYUV 500Mb. Note that TSCC really is suited only for screen capture. If I add any other type (regular video or video with gradients) the size will balloon quickly.

SWF does render small also.

Oh yeah. I've tried with audio and no audio and Vegas still produces "super-size" videos.
PeterWright wrote on 6/13/2007, 6:36 AM
For CD, try either MPEG1 or WMV - there are any number of settings you can try, to optimize size and quality.
TYU wrote on 6/13/2007, 11:57 AM
The results from MPEG1 and WMV are at least ten fold bigger and quality is horrible artefacts all over the place. They simply are not for suited for screen cap. TSCC produces lossless small AVI.

I asked at Camtasia forums but they could not help since Camtasia has no problems and Vegas appears to be the culprit.

Well anyway workaround works and I am very happy with both products (Vegas and Camtasia) so I just have to live with it. I staryed with Vegas 4 which had teh same hmm.. feature.
douglas_clark wrote on 6/13/2007, 4:19 PM
TYU, I think I have solved your problem. You need to specify TSCC render parameters in Vegas that are the same as Camtasia uses, especially the keyframe interval.

1) set custom frame size to exactly what you captured,
2) set framerate to 15 fps, which is Camtasia CamRec default (and not 25 or 29.97 !)
3) set field order to none, progressive
4) set pixel aspect ratio to 1.000
5) (I'm not sure how to set audio interleave...I left it unchecked.)
6) set Keyframe every (frames) to 80, which appears to be Camtasia default
7) set audio to match what Camtasia does. Default for microphone recording in CamRec is mono, 22.050 kHz, 16 bit PCM.

Of these, the Keyframe setting is most important. If you don't set this, you get keyframes every frame, which explains why your files are so big.

I tried this on a little 20 second sample 684x620 screen clip of opening a document in Word, which was 1.8 MB out of Camtasia.

I put the clip on the Vegas timeline and rendered using above settings, and got a 2.0 MB avi file. That's not too bad.
Above settings except not setting Keyframes (default is 0) gave a 34 MB file.
Uncompressed avi was 648 MB.
Using Keyframes every 200 frames gave a 1.8 MB file.....same size as from Camtasia....and it rendered a lot faster, too. Using MP3 audio would shrink it even more.

That should get you where you want to go :-)

Douglas

Home-built ASUS PRIME Z270-A, i7-7700K, 32GB; Win 10 Pro x64 (22H2);
- Intel HD Graphics 630 (built-in); no video card; ViewSonic VP3268-4K display via HDMI
- C: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB; + several 10TB HDDs
- Røde AI-1 via Røde AI-1 ASIO driver;

TYU wrote on 6/14/2007, 12:23 AM
Thank you very much!
The keyframe seems to be the factor.
Laurence wrote on 6/14/2007, 2:45 AM
It sounds like the Camtasia/Techsmith codec might work well with 3d programs like Bluff Titler.
apit34356 wrote on 6/14/2007, 3:32 AM
Laurence, excellence point! Major savings with BluffTitler and other titling programs.
Per1 wrote on 9/19/2007, 12:16 PM
1) set custom frame size to exactly what you captured,
2) set framerate to 15 fps, which is Camtasia CamRec default (and not 25 or 29.97 !)
3) set field order to none, progressive
4) set pixel aspect ratio to 1.000
5) (I'm not sure how to set audio interleave...I left it unchecked.)

These settings I managed to find.

6) set Keyframe every (frames) to 80, which appears to be Camtasia default

This is grey for me when rendering to AVI.

I rendered uncompressed AVI and it was 100% clear.
Is it possible to get same quality with smaller file size?
Per1 wrote on 9/19/2007, 1:17 PM
I don't have the TSCC code on the same PC as V7. Considering that WinZip reduces the Camtasia AVI (uncompressed) to a fraction of full size it seems to be lots of "air" in the AVI - is *sounds* reasonable (not sure though!) to think that V(7) - without TSCC codec - could make a AVI with perfect image, but with a small file size.

So far my workflow would be
1. Capture and export to Uncompress AVI from Camtasia
2. Edit in V(7) and render to Uncompressed AVI
3. Import into Camtasia
4. Export as Flash

Anyone that have a better workflow?
busterkeaton wrote on 9/19/2007, 2:48 PM
Uncompressed avis are huge.

You could probably render to DV avi. DV is compressed at 5:1 without losing much quality.
You could also render to a high bitrate WMV if you are looking to save space.

Huge-Uncompressed
Giant-DV
Big-WMV

I think since you are just rendering a computer screen capture, that you would not notice much difference in file size from the Huge workflow to the Big workflow.
Per1 wrote on 9/19/2007, 4:32 PM
After some trial-and-error with various formats I found that VMW was not too bad. AVI: 1.6 GB, WMV: 2.7 MB with good quality. Still I rely on uncompressed AVI from Camtasia as source file which is edited in Vegas. (The clip was 34 secs.) IIRC Camtasia made a Flash at about 700 kB. Have to test how much quality can be turned down to acceptable level.
Cheesehole wrote on 9/19/2007, 7:06 PM
I would take issue with the suggestion to use DV, etc as an intermediate (if I'm reading correctly).

If you want to compress to Flash at the end you will lose a lot of compression efficiency by going to DV, WMV, or anything else lossy. By going to lossy codecs you increase your final file size by a lot - like between 2 and 20 times depending on the content.

For screen based content the secret to great compression efficiency with Camtasia is to use lossless codecs (and avoid any resizing of the image) all the way up to the point where you compress to SWF.

The best way to accomplish this is to use TSCC. Install camtasia on the machine with V7 so you can encode to TSCC and use the tricks mentioned above (keeping the same keyframe interval from recording to rendering) to keep the file size down. If that is really impossible then your only choice is to use uncompressed.

edit: You probably know this but when you render to Flash from Camtasia, rendering to 16-bit color saves you a ton of space too. With "light motion" screen content I get well under 100kbps and that is with a 56kbps audio stream.
Per1 wrote on 9/20/2007, 6:04 AM
"keeping the same keyframe interval from recording to rendering"

When rendering to uncompressed AVI keyframe was not available.

If I install Camtasia on the same PC as V will TSCC appear as a codec in the Vegas list?

Will keyframe-setting (80) be available then?
jbolley wrote on 9/24/2007, 2:02 PM
I am working with this workflow. Camtasia capture, vegas editing & audio work, back to camtasia. The techsmith codec shows up in vegas...

Jesse
Cheesehole wrote on 9/24/2007, 9:48 PM
If I install Camtasia on the same PC as V will TSCC appear as a codec in the Vegas list?

YES

Will keyframe-setting (80) be available then?

YES