Video and Camtasia experts ...

You might want to PM Josh Anderson. He knows this kind of stuff inside and out. I believe he has a membership site that shows you all you need to know about camtasia settings, optimal video production, and thing of that nature. But he hates camtasia.

Dennis

Thanks Dennis,

Anybody else? I really just need the optimal setup settings and ouput options. I know everything else, as I create Camtasia vids all the time, just not sure I am doing it optimally!

1. Always save as an avi file at the highest quality possible for your master video.

2. Always encode your video at a bit rate optimized for your target market. To reach the widest broadband market globally never exceed 220kbps for the video stream and 32kbps for the audio stream which is a combined total of 252kbs. Much of the US market is still on 256kbps.

3. Always use vp6 or h264 codec for your encoding for best compression and image quality.

4. I recommend NOT using camtasia's players and not encoding with camtasia. Instead use a professional video player optimized for delivery which provides you the most control over various settings like buffering and encoding soluions such as Flix Standard ($39) (supports vp6 flv video encoding) , Sorenson Squeeze for Flash Pro (supports many video format encoding including vp6 flv and h.264 mp4, or Quicktime Pro (supports h.264 encoding).

The only two video players I would recommend are either JW player (requires commercial license for business use) or my own Transparent Player because they support playback of both vp6 encoded flv video as well as mp4 encoded h.264 video now supported by flashplayer.

Using these custom solutions will give you more control and flexibility over your encoding settings and video embedding and display resolutions.

My transparent player is an "optimized" video player which allows you to fully control the buffer setting for "instant" play. If you are streaming an optimized video (meaning the bit rate is encoded low enough for the internet speed of your average target market visitor there will be no delay in the play of the video.

This is done using progressive download which some people also call streaming. Essentially the video starts to play before the entire download is finished. Most players have some sort of buffer control option.

What I do when publishing my own videos is encode at the optimized bit rate I suggested above (kbps) and set my buffer to 1 second. This gives the effect of almost instantaneous delivery of the video content.