How to screen record your medical presentation using a PC

So, you want to create your own medical teaching video but you're afraid of the tech stuff you need to do, right? But guess what—it's not as hard as you think it is! In this video, we're going to be taking a look at basic video editing techniques in Camtasia using a PC computer. Got a Mac? Check out this video here instead!

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In this lesson, we're going to be taking a look at a screen recording setup on a Windows computer. Specifically, we're going to be using a program called Camtasia, which is made by a company called TechSmith. We've chosen this app because it combines screen recording and video editing features. Both these things will be necessary to create an online course.

On their website, you can download Camtasia by selecting the Download Free Trial button right here. I've already gone ahead and done that. This is the file that I got. I'm going to begin the installation process by double clicking on it. In this pop-up, you'll have to choose a language, it will default to the language that your computer is set to. So in my case, that's German.

I'll switch it to English, and then select okay. On this screen, we'll have to accept the license terms. You can read them by clicking this link here. At the very bottom, we have a couple of options. If you don't know what any of these mean, then just leave them default. I personally don't want a shortcut to Camtasia, so I'm going to unselect that checkbox, and then select continue.

I can now begin the installation process by clicking the big green install button. This will take a while, I'll be back when it's done. There we go. I can complete the installation by clicking the finish button. Camtasia will then start automatically if we left that option checked when we had the installation options earlier.

Again, that may take a while, especially when you're starting it for the first time. So I'll be back when that's done. Okay, here we are. Let's select the new project button right here. Camtasia will load. Once it's completely booted up, it will display this pop-up asking you to sign in. I'm going to go ahead and click that sign in to start trial button.

This will automatically open up a window to your browser, where you'll be able to register a new account right here, or login with one that you already have. I've already got one, so I'm going to use that data right here. I'll select the next button, and then type in my password, and select next again. Your browser may now display a pop-up asking you if it's alright to open Camtasia.

I'm going to accept that by clicking the left hand button right here. It says open Camtasia 2021. Now, the Camtasia icon in my taskbar is flashing, so I'll click on that to navigate back to Camtasia. Now, this is a bug that I hope you don't see, I sometimes see this error. By clicking okay, it will let me use Camtasia as normal. So your mileage may vary here.

I've left it in just in case you do see this. As I mentioned, I'm simply going to click okay. This right here is an automatic survey that you can basically ignore, I'm just going to click other and then select submit. Okay, Camtasia is now ready to be used. We have a couple of options now. Let's start off by actually recording something.

I'm going to click the record button at the top left here. Camtasia will then show me this pop-up. That gives me access to a couple of recording settings. On the left hand side, I can select the screen I'd like to record, you'll need to ensure that this screen is set up so that your PowerPoint presentation is in full screen on this screen.

Otherwise, you'll be recording your presenters view. But we'll get to that in a bit more detail later. You can change the screen that's going to be recorded by clicking on the drop-down and then selecting screen one or screen two Camtasia will display a preview to show you the screen that you've got selected. If you have a webcam connected, you can set one up right here.

I'm not going to need one in my case. Next we want to set up the microphone, which is possible here. From the drop-down you'll be able to select the microphone that you want to use to record. If you have multiple devices connected they will all show up here. If you have a USB microphone or a USB interface, they will show up with their device name.

For example, Scarlet 2i2 USB, or Blue Yeti. I only have one microphone connected in my case, so I'm going to select that one. As you can see, I'm now getting audio levels from my microphone. If it were too loud, then I'd be able to drag this slider down to reduce the gain on my microphone a little bit.

In my case, I actually have the opposite problem, it seems like it's almost a bit too soft in general. So let's alleviate that in the windows control panel. To get there, click on your start button, and then type in sound. Then, choose sound settings right here. Then, on the window that opens up, you'll be able to select sound control panel on the right hand side.

I'll move the Camtasia window out of the way so that we can see what we're doing. I'll select the recording tab up here. And here's my microphone. I'm going to select the one that I want to use to record, and then I'm going to click the properties button down here. Okay, so my microphone was too quiet, and we can actually still see that in the Camtasia window right here.

So how can we fix this? Well, we can click on the levels tab right here. Then, we'll want to make sure that this top slider is set to 100 percent, and if we're still too quiet, as is the case for me, then we can boost the microphone using the bottom slider. So let me just try that now. This slider won't be smooth, it will jump in increments.

As you can see now though, this is definitely enough volume, I can now fine tune my volume by using the slider up at the top here or the one inside of Camtasia. So just to ensure that I don't get any clipping, which is when this bar fills up completely and turns red at the end there, I'm going to go down a bit with this slider.

As you can see, these two sliders are mirrored. And this level like this looks decent. So there's a clip every now and then, but not very many. Alright, let's exit out of all of our control panel windows, and open up a PowerPoint presentation. I've got one open right here. I'm going to put this into presenters view by selecting the button down at the bottom right hand corner here.

Okay, you can now see my presenters view. And when I transition slides, you'll be able to see my script right here. And that's what I'm going to be reading off of. Now we need to set up Camtasia to record the correct screen. So in my case, I'll want it to record the other screen, the one that has my PowerPoint slide in full screen.

So I'll select screen one here, and then click on screen two here. There we go. As you can see, the preview is now also displaying the full screen PowerPoint slide. I can now record my whole presentation after having clicked the record button. So just as a preview, let me begin a recording now.

This window here is now your recording monitor, you can see a timer and a number of control buttons. The window will not be recorded by Camtasia itself, so this will not show up in your final recording. You can end your recording by clicking on the stop button, which I'm going to do now. Let's also exit out of my PowerPoint presenters view here.

And I'll open up the main Camtasia window again by clicking on it in my taskbar. We can also get rid of this recording window here. As you can see, Camtasia has now created a recording for us down here. We've got a video clip at the bottom, and an audio clip right above it. You can even see the audio waveform, which lets me know how loud I was speaking at any point in time.

I can preview my recording by clicking the play button here, or by pushing the spacebar. By default, Camtasia saves your files as TREC files. You can find out where they are from this window, simply right click on a recording that's being created, and then select open file location. Camtasia will then open up a Windows Explorer window right here where it will display all the recordings that you've created by date.

If you create more than one recording each day, it will add a number in parentheses, just like here. You will be able to drag these recordings into your Camtasia files to edit them later. So, let me do that with this file here. Now, I've got this file in my media bin, and I'll be able to drag it down into my timeline to edit. We'll talk more about actual video editing in a later lesson.

For now, you can actually just shut down Camtasia by clicking on the X. You don't need to save these project files until you've done actual video editing. All your recordings will always be saved inside of that folder that I just showed you. By default, this will be under your documents, and then under the Camtasia folder. Have fun recording.