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Fred Grover, Champion
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Which Version of PowerPoint are you using not that it should matter that I am aware of but helps to know with more information. Is it possible to post some screenshots or video of what is happening when you try to Import a PPT into Camtasia ? Thanks for posting and have a great day/night.
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Hope this helps.
Kuldeep
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Stephen Wagner, Employee
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-Stephen
Kelly Rush, Product Manager
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As Stephen said, PowerPoint support was added in version 9 of Camtasia for Windows, so you will need to use that version if you wish to use the PowerPoint import functionality.
Cheers,
Kelly
kayakman, Champion
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The mp4 will be flawless.
Recording it with Camtasia can result in dropped frames. It's not the best way to go.
Regards,Joe
kayakman, Champion
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I've not experienced dropped frames, but Recorder captures are usually higher quality than MP4 videos; you may not see any difference [which would be good], but, when I compare the 2 sources, the AVI's in the trec captures usually look better, especially if a lot of colors are involved
JMTCW
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That way you don’t have to worry about dropped frames because it synced directly with the application. Plus, you get to save it as an AVI/.trec which is a higher quality video than MP4.
The MP4’s that PowerPoint produces are of high quality as well.
While not ideal for the process of re-producing. I produced a PowerPoint presentation with this fractal. I won’t tell you whether the upper or lower image is the original Image. Which one is the frame I extracted from the MP4 video. But I’m willing to bet you can’t pick out which one came from the video. Because neither 1 of them is noticeably degraded.

Anyway, in this case the user has Camtasia 8 so they do not have the plug in. Recording PowerPoint with the recorder in slideshow mode will result in jittery animations with dropped frames.
The same thing will happen if you try to record a standard video
playing in a media player. I’ve tried it dozens of times with the same results.Judder,jitters, call it what you like.Poor results.
I prepared a video to prove my point. I don’t feel like getting into lengthy back-and-forth discussion about what I’ve known for years. So here’s my evidence.
Regards, Joe
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It wasn't until Camtasia 9 that you could Import Powerpoint slides while in the Camtasia editor.
:)
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Recording a presentation through external means is a poor choice. "I.E. the Camtasia recorder not being used as a plug in" and my video clearly demonstrates why.
I won't be traveling to Okemos Michigan to shout it from the rooftops of TechSmith. Besides, this will fall probably fall on deft ears anyway.
Some videos can drop frames. With the outcome going relatively unnoticed due to the nature of the material.
But that doesn't mean frames weren't filled in artificially during production.
Or, if you clicked frame by frame in the editors timeline.That you wouldn't find repeated frames and glitches.
That's why TechSmith went to all the trouble of creating a Plug-In to begin with.
Because recording the Slide show playing on a monitor, doesn't work.
End of Story.
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Since moving to a high-end Mac laptop, I get flawless recordings from slideshow mode. I'm not trying to reopen the Mac vs Win debate, just describing my experience. I do animations in PowerPoint if possible because it is easier to use than After Effects, although with less capabilities.
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The question I was responding to referred to a Camtasia 8 issue. Which is a Windows question.
In calling Windows "Windoze" in your first sentence and then writing "I'm not trying to reopen the Mac vs Win debate".
Well........ it was an insult at the very least. I'd say you put Mac on a pedestal with that jab.So no debate"I'll give you that lol", just claiming the win outright.
I can only guess that Mac's interact with PowerPoint differently. Or handle video differently. Whatever it is. It won't help the person I was addressing.
That's one of the problems with jumping into the middle of a conversation/post. The advice you give might not fit the question at hand.
I do it myself.
More often than not. I'm being corrected by someone who isn't addressing the actual question.
So bottom line, recording the slide show is Mac users only option and it works. Great!
Because there is no Camtasia add-in for Mac.
Nor is there a Add-ins feature in PowerPoint for Mac, so TechSmith couldn't develop one if they wanted to.
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Actually, I think davemillman has something valid to share. It's sad to see him attacked for simply sharing his own view as well as the attack seeming to violate the community guidelines.
I think the debate about trying to answer the user's question is interesting and amusing because when I read the thread, all liane seemed to be hoping to do was use the Camtasia 9 functionality to import a collection of images from PPT into Camtasia. And that's completely different than the oddly ensuing current debate about animations and smoothness and actually recording videos using Camtasia.
Note that I'm not saying the debate isn't worthy of discussion, but it seems a bit ill suited for this particular thread. And it's also factually incorrect to say that recording the PPT slideshow as it plays simply doesn't work, when clearly many users work that way. It may not work as well as some would hope, but it does actually work.
While I have no clue about whether an add in for PowerPoint exists for Mac users, I'm thinking that there shouldn't' be much of a difference between a recording that occurs using the PowerPoint add in VS a recording that occurs using the Camtasia Recorder we launch from Camtasia. Why? Because both ways of recording use the Camtasia Recorder to accomplish the goal.
When you are using the PowerPoint add in to record and you end the PowerPoint show, the Camtasia recorder prompts you to save a TREC file just as it does when using the Recorder from Camtasia. And if you choose to edit the recording, Camtasia opens up with the TREC added to the media bin.
Now it's likely that there is great merit to using PowerPoint to produce a video instead of recording it. My guess is that you get smoother videos that way because PowerPoint likely has some better ability to handle its animations when producing the video internally. And actually, that's what Joe said in his first reply when he decided to jump into the middle of this thread. He advised to export from PPT as an MP4 and it will be flawless. Then, I'm unsure why, but somehow the answer morphed from that to suggesting that using the PPT Add In was the best way to go.
Of course, only a TechSmith Camtasia developer can speak with any real authority on this, but I'd be willing to bet that if we could take it apart and see it for ourselves, the PPT add in is simply manipulating the very same Camtasia Recorder we see when we launch it separately. But somehow the Camtasia Devs have managed to keep it hidden from view in efforts to save the PowerPoint user from having to make adjustments to it, then clicking record and all that jazz. Probably a large chunk of it being hidden is because if it weren't, they would be struggling with capturing the recorder and those settings that come into play. I'd love to see a technical article some day that discusses this.
As for the statement about Windoze, I have always been a Windows user. I didn't find the statement to be offensive or insulting in any way. I think there has always been a kind of fun rivalry between Mac and PC users.
Cheers all... Rick :)
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I write something positive about Windows, and you take that is me attacking davemillman. Despite the fact that I used LOL in my response/comment. What you actually read was a tongue-in-cheek response. That wasn’t intended as an attack on my part.
So if you or anyone else read it that way. Especially you davemillman,That was not my intention. I’m sorry if you took it that way. And I apologize.
So Rick, since you don’t have a clue whether an add-on for PowerPoint exists for Mac users. I’m posting a link to help give you one https://feedback.techsmith.com/techsmith/topics/no-powerpoint-toolbar-or-add-in
I have a more definitive resource to confirm that there is no PowerPoint plug-in for Mac. But it’s copyrighted. So I don’t think I’m at liberty to post it.
However what Mac can do is import PowerPoint files. Which is actually what liane was trying to do in the 1st place. Then kayakman suggested that they record their screen using the Camtasia recorder while playing the slideshow. Then the responses branch out from there.
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Hey Joe Morgan I frequently type "Windoze" because I've been a Mac fanboy since 1984, it's my affiliation just like the Browncoats in Firefly. In some forums I post my political affiliation as a similar little jab, but that's clearly too far out of bounds here. The OP posted this thread to both the Mac and Win forums; if he had posted just to the Win forum I wouldn't have seen it or replied.
In any case, I didn't feel attacked, and I think that Joe Morgan's great video of the difference between screen recording a PPT slideshow vs exporting an AVI from PPT will help people get the best possible results. That's why we're all here, right?
So let's all get back to the one thing we all agree on: Camtasia (Win or Mac) provides the best balance between complexity and usability of any video editor, and we're just tossing in our two cents here and there to help make it better!
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So maybe the PowerPoint add-in feature for Mac is coming soon?
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