All of the following guidelines apply to performance (smoothness) for canvas preview and timeline while editing. Production of projects, in most cases, results in smooth videos even if canvas preview has some choppiness.
4K and 60 FPS
Camtasia 2018 and later adds the ability to import, edit, and produce 60 FPS media. In addition to this feature, we’ve invested considerable effort to increasing Camtasia’s ability to utilize the computing power of a users system. This has helped with other demanding features such as 4K media and behaviors.
Camtasia 2018 and later uses hardware accelerated decoding for MP4’s to preview projects on the canvas. Based on our testing both in house and with our beta testers the following is what we recommend for 4K and 60 FPS media when editing.
Recommended Machine:
- Windows 10
- 3.5 Ghz 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processor with 4 CPU Cores or better or 3.5 Ghz 2nd Generation AMD® Ryzen™ 5 Processor with 4 CPU Cores or better
- Discrete graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 10 Series or higher)
- 16 GB or more
60 FPS is not recommended for machines that are Windows 7 and/or have an integrated graphics cards.
With hardware acceleration for the canvas preview, you should expect to get better performance with newer discrete graphics cards. Also, having more than one piece of 4K and/or 60 FPS media on the canvas simultaneously will demand more of your system. Therefore, expect some degrading of canvas “smoothness” with multiple pieces of 4K or 60 FPS media simultaneously on the canvas, depending on the computing power of your system.
Behaviors and Library Assets
Text Callouts (annotations) with behaviors applied can demand more computing power especially when there’s the use of multiple behaviors on the canvas simultaneously. Some may encounter this with our library assets such as lower thirds, intros, and outro which take advantage of multiple text callouts with behaviors. For users that are on our recommended system setup, behaviors should perform well in most cases. For those with systems are closer to the minimum requirements, behaviors maybe be less smooth in canvas preview. When produced, behaviors are typically smooth and without issue even if some choppiness is seen during editing preview on the canvas. Based on our testing internally and with beta participants, here are a few recommendations for a better editing experience with behaviors on lower-end systems.
Recommendations for behaviors and assets with behaviors on lower-end systems:
- Removing drop shadows from callouts with behaviors can improve canvas preview
- If using a system with integrated graphics, switching to “software-only” acceleration may improve the smooth of behaviors on the canvas (Edit Menu > Preferences > Advanced > Hardware Acceleration)
- Multiple callouts with behaviors simultaneously on the canvas will be more demanding. An alternate to consider when multiple simultaneous callouts are needed are to use a transition such as fade instead of a behavior