It’s Time to Go Back to Camtasia to Record My GoToWebinars

About a year ago I was contracted to record a series of webinars for an organization whose audience is MBA students  looking for a permanent job.  It’s been an interesting time for me as I get to watch all the presentations on using social media, writing great emails, setting goals and networking.  I’ve been using the GoToWebinar software to record our sessions and the recordings have come out very well for me all year.  Until recently…

GTW vs Cam

My Typical Webinar Recording Routine

Recording the webinar itself just requires pushing the “Record” button in the GoToWebinar Panel. As long as I remember to do this I have never failed to get a decent one.  Most of the time the webinar needs some editing in Camtasia.  But, Camtasia doesn’t like the GTW recording and won’t produce it so I have to convert it first into something Camtasia does like (an MP4).  This is easily done using the Handbrake tool. It takes an extra ten minutes to do this but it has been my routine for the last year and has never let me down.

Then Everything Fell Apart

Last month GoToWebinar switched to a new video converter and I had high hopes that I might not have to convert my webinars at all. Hey, an extra ten minutes times 3 webinars per week times 30 weeks of webinars gets me 15 hours of my life back. But, unfortunately this happened instead:

  1. The mp4 that GoToWebinar puts out now comes out without the mouse pointer. Not so good for anyone trying to do a software demo.
  2. When I tried to go back to converting my webinars in Handbrake they would now come out with weird streaks in them. Yuck.
  3. The final straw was this past Friday when we had a group of Panelists all sharing their webcam and none of the Panelists videos showed up in the GTW recording. We were quite disappointed.

So, Here’s the Solution

To avoid all the conversion and webcam problems, just use the Camtasia Studio Recorder or even TechSmith’s Snagit to record your webinars.  And if you do, here are some tips to get good, clean recordings:

  1. Use two monitors.  If you don’t have an additional monitor, then Camtasia will record the GoToWebinar Panel which takes up a nice chunk of your screen. You have to be able to drag the panel over to another monitor to get it out of the way.
  2. Don’t forget to click “Record System Audio” if you will have any guest presenters, plan to unmute the lines for attendee questions or want to record any  audio other than your own voice.
  3. Be sure you have a computer with a pretty good processor speed. Running a webinar along with the Camtasia recorder can cause your computer to slow down a bit and that might effect your audio quality on the webinar.
  4. Use a headset and choose the VOIP option and not the phone. Camtasia will not  pick up audio spoken into a phone (unless you have a microphone in front of you as well).

For those of you who already record your webinars with Camtasia- what has been your experience? Any other tips to pass on?

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below

Al Navas Reply

Have you tried the Google+ Hangouts on Air? Nornally, these are Public; however, there is at least one way to make them Private, as required when it is a paid event. Then there are also Business Hangouts, with a fee comparable to GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

Many people are considering moving away from GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, for the reasons you mentioned.

Al

Howard Reply

I’ve run into this myself. The fix I stumbled on is to take the GTW file (which is Windows media video) and import it into MS Expressions and then re-encode it as a Windows Media video file (free for encoding). This “corrects” the encoding and allows me to bring it into Camtasia for my editing. The key for a good quality result is to carefully establish your output settings in MS Expressions or the default settings will result in a loss of quality. As you mention it does take some time.

Jim Esmeier Reply

I record GTM using their software, then I re record it in Camtasia. I suppose that is a waste of time, but I can concentrate on doing the webinar without worrying about Camtasia.

Dan Hill Reply

I record a lot of webinars, mine and ones I’m watching with Camtasia. It always works well. You need to find a happy medium on the frame capture rate, and as Michelle reminded us, do select the appropriate audio recording devices. I don’t always use a very small frame rate, and it does produce larger files, but I’ve never had a problem with Camtasia handling large files for editing. I do have a fast (i7 quad core, 16GB RAM) computer, so that helps with larger files. I find Camtasia is a real workhorse, and good for so many things!

Shelby Carr Reply

This is what I do & my GTW videos come out perfect. I use the GTW converter to download to my computer. Then I upload them to my account on Youtube in “PRIVATE” mode. Youtube converts them for me and I just download them back to my computer.

I record 8 – 10 webinars per week and found this to be the simplest & easiest for converting. Once is a great while, I find one that won’t convert that way, then I just play it and record it using Snagit. Works every time.

Lee Reply

I prefer to use Camtasia to record GTW sessions but have had varying results with audio quality. The levels “meter” in Camtasia does not seem to work when recording system audio only and the resulting audio gets distorted (as if it was too loud when recorded) no matter how low I set my system volume and recording levels. How does one control / audit audio levels when recording system audio?

    Lon Naylor Reply

    I also use Camtasia to record my sessions (when I am the only presenter). 😉

Leave a Reply:

>