Camtasia Studio 8.4 - Introduction to Markers Video Lecture | Create a Video Masterpiece with Camtasia: Learn and Master - Professional Skills

Have you ever wanted to add an interactive
table of contents to your videos to make them
easier for your viewers to navigate?
Or, do you want to make your editing process
more efficient? If the answer is yes, then
markers are a great tool for you to use.
Markers essentially serve as placeholders on
your timeline and media.
They can be used to help you lay out edits you
need to make without having to preview your
video over and over.
They can also be used to quickly set up an
interactive table of contents when you produce
your video.
When you’re in the Editor, you can access the
marker view by opening the Marker/Quiz view
dropdown menu to the left of the timeline and
selecting “Show Marker View.” You can also go
back and choose “Hide Marker View” to close
the marker view when you’re not using it.
If you like to save even more time by using
hotkeys, you can use the hotkey CTRL+M to
either show or hide the marker view.
Now, you can see here that I already have two
markers. These represent the two different
kinds of markers that you can create.
The first is a global marker and the second is
a media-based marker.
Global markers are attached to a specific point
on the timeline and are marked with a green,
diamond-shaped indicator.
Because the marker is attached to the timeline
itself, it is independent of anything that goes on
down on the tracks.
So, if I move any of this media or make other
changes to the tracks, the global marker is
going to stay in the same spot.
The media based marker is marked with a
blue, diamond-shaped indicator,
and it’s attached to a specific point on a piece
of media.
This can be your screen recording, your audio,
callouts, images, any piece of media on any of
your tracks.
Because it’s attached to a piece of media, any
time that piece of media is moved, the marker
will go with it.
Now, to add a marker, I need to move my
cursor over any of the marker bars either above
the timeline for a global marker
or above a piece of media for a media marker.
Anywhere I see a diamond indicator appear, I
can click to add a marker.
When I add a marker, I can immediately
change the name of the marker to help me
remember what it is for.
For example, if I want to mark a section for
deletion, I can add a marker at the beginning of
the section and name it “Start delete”,
and then add a second marker at the end of
the section and name it “End delete.” Then,
when I am ready to delete that section,
all I have to do is double click the first marker’s
thumbnail to move the playhead to that marker,
and then select the area between the two
markers. There are two other ways to add
markers.
One is to use the hotkey M. This is going to
add a global marker to the point where the
playhead is on the timeline.
It will also open the Marker view if it's not
already open. The second is to add markers
while you're recording.
To do this, you can either select “Add Marker”
from the Recorder, or use the hotkey CTRL+M.
When you Save and Edit the recording, those
markers will be added as media-based
markers on the screen recording.
This can be a great way to mark the beginning
of a new topic, or mark a mistake that you
know you’ll want to edit out later.
These markers won't have a name, so to edit
the name of any marker, just right-click on the
marker’s thumbnail and choose “Rename.”
Or, if the Marker already has a name, just
double click on the existing name to edit it.
Next, to get rid of a marker, all I have to do is
click on the marker’s thumbnail and press the
Delete key.
Or, I can right-click and choose “Delete.” I can
also right-click and choose Delete All to get rid
of all the existing markers in my project.
This can be useful if you’ve used a lot of
markers while editing and want to start with a
blank slate to create a table of contents.
Let’s do that now and delete all the markers to
create a table of contents. Now, a table of
contents is made up of all the existing markers
on the timeline. When it’s produced, it will look
like this for your viewers. An easy way to add a
table of contents is to start at the beginning
and scrub or play your way through your video.
When you get to the beginning of a new
section, press M to add a global marker,
and then give it a name that will tell viewers
what to expect from that section. Continue this
way through the rest of your video.
When you’re finished, click the produce and
share button. Here, you can choose any option
that will produce your video with the
TechSmith Smart Player: including
Screencast.com, either of the MP4 with video
player options, or Custom production settings,
as long as you choose to produce with the
MP4-Flash/HTML5 player option.
The other available options don't include the
Smart Player, which is required for a Table of
Contents.
If you continue through the custom production
settings, you will find a page called “Marker
options” in the Production wizard.
Here, you can decide how you want your table
of contents to appear, and make any last-
minute changes to your marker names.
If you choose any of the other options, your
table of contents will be set automatically
based on the names you’ve given your
markers. When you produce your video,
viewers will be able to find the Table of
Contents by clicking this button in the player.
They can then easily navigate to any of the
sections you've marked by clicking on that item
in the Table of Contents.
We've covered just a couple of ways for you to
use markers. Try them out for yourself and let
us know of any great uses you come up with
here at feedback.techsmith.com. Thanks for
watching!