CamTasia 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.