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This is Ian Ozsvald's blog, I'm an entrepreneurial geek, an AI consultant, co-founder of the StrongSteam AI and data mining API, co-founder of the SocialTies App, author of the A.I.Cookbook, author of The Screencasting Handbook, a Pythonista, co-founder of ShowMeDo and FivePoundApps and also a Brightonian. Here's a little more about me.

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19 August 2008 - 21:34CamTasia tip – increasing the call-out length

I’ve just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out an odd behaviour in CamTasia v5.1.0.  The documentation (great video demo) explains that a call-out can be added, and then by dragging the call-out we can change the length for its display.

Only…it seemed that you couldn’t drag the length.  You can easily drag its position, but why not the length?

After some frustrated hacking around, I saw a solution (in the darned-awful UI!) at experts-exchange for Camtasia: How to Extend the Duration of a Custom Callout in the Timeline.  As wize-owl says:

“The timeline has a zoom feature to change the viewing resolution.  It is adjustable by the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols.  Click the + zoom a couple times.  This will expand the timeline and the callout, and give you a larger area by which to grab the edges.  Now you can expand the callout to cover a larger area of the timeline.”

I had to zoom in 8 times to see the +/- symbols, I’ve since reset the default time-length for call-outs from 3 seconds up to 8 seconds and the +/- symbols are more visible.

If you follow the above experts-exchange link, you might find that they’ve shielded the solution from you until you login (that darn awful UI of theirs…).  If so, either goolge for “camtasia length call-out experts-exchange” and click the cache’s link, or try this cached link.

Want to learn more about screencasting? Take a look at my screencasting blog which has a screencast tutorial category, this includes entries on how to convert CamTasia 6 mp4s into flv videos and discusses the rate of adoption of the new mp4 standard, amongst stories of how to decrease your bounce-rate and increase sales with screencasts.

Read The Screencasting Handbook – I’ve written this handbook to share 4 years of screencasting experience, purchase includes access to our forum and some private consultation time with us.

Brought to you whilst I’m wearing my ProCasts professional-screencasting hat.

procasts professional screencasts

Ian applies Artificial Intelligence as an Artificial Intelligence Researcher for companies (Mor Consulting), co-founded the StrongSteam A.I. datamining toolkit, co-authored SocialTies, programs Python, writes The Screencasting Handbook and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

17 Comments | Tags: Life, ProCasts

Comments:

  1. robert says;
    30 Oct 2008 - 22:49

    Thank you so much for this tip! It was driving me crazy too!

  2. Lisa Irby says;
    05 Nov 2008 - 23:09

    THANK YOU! I was going nuts trying to figure this out!!

  3. Julia says;
    01 Dec 2008 - 21:27

    Here, here! How insane to just have this in the UI and NOT in the properties. I had to do about 3-4 Google searches until I found a link to you.
    I heartily THANK YOU.

  4. Tim says;
    01 Dec 2008 - 21:59

    Thanks very much for this, I had been trying to figure out what I was doing wrong for ages.

  5. John says;
    03 Dec 2008 - 0:36

    Thanks for pointing this out Ian, and thanks for quoting the solution so I didn’t have to use that awful experts-exchange site :-)

    You just saved me a whole lot of frustration…

  6. Arlene says;
    14 Jan 2009 - 18:08

    Thank you so much!! Such a simple solution for something I spent WAY too long trying to figure out on my own.

  7. tim says;
    19 Feb 2009 - 22:41

    Thanks, I really needed that. Crazy UI.

  8. Chelle says;
    04 Mar 2009 - 7:59

    Thank you! You just saved me a lot of time and frustration when I’m already frazzled over a deadline! =)

  9. Brandon says;
    13 Apr 2009 - 19:46

    Thanks a lot. It only took one Google search, but when I clicked on this link it helped me out a lot. =)

  10. Thangu says;
    20 Apr 2009 - 21:36

    Thanks a lot.This helped a lot.

  11. joan says;
    01 Jul 2009 - 9:36

    Genius! Thanks!

  12. Evelyne says;
    06 Jul 2009 - 12:08

    i was getting frustrated, spent a whole 40 minutes trying to figure out how to adjust the length, thanks a lot

  13. Jeff says;
    21 Jul 2009 - 3:02

    A simple solution that came in very handy. Thanks for the information.

  14. Myles says;
    17 Aug 2009 - 12:08

    Thanks, you’d think for a version 5/6 that this woudl not happen.

    Very painful exp.

    Thanks !!

    I’m not going to upgrade this software, using pinnacle v12 now.

  15. Annamaynoon says;
    18 Aug 2009 - 7:55

    Thanks to you!
    And thanks to Google too!

  16. Karen says;
    26 Dec 2009 - 3:15

    Ian..thank you so, so much…I thought maybe my trial version had less features..Dr. K Genius

  17. rogi says;
    13 Jul 2010 - 18:24

    Simply good! I might be finding to adjust the length of a callout throughout of my life, if I did not come to this page.

    Simple zoom function, OMG! after reading this page, I am feeling how dumb I can be.

    Thanks for posting.
    regards

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