Captivate Canvas size vs. Camtasia Video size: how do I match these up?

Thanks for your reply, Lilybiri! Resizing the Captivate project to the larger size, 1920x1080, would seem like an obvious choice but I have quite a bit already built in there and have a template built to 1280x720x. So, this would cause quite of work for me!  I may just need to re-record the videos.

Chuck and Erik - Thank you for your replies, too. I was hopeful that I could just size down my Camtasia file. I tried two different attempts:

1-Opened original 1920x1080 Camtasia file, resized it to 1280x720 (adjusted the size of all call-outs, screens, etc) and then produced it at 1280x720. Still blurry!

2-Opened original 1920x1080 Camtasia file and then just produced it at 1280x720. Again, still blurry!

Unfortunately, Camtasia is not scaling them down so they continue to be crisp and clear.

Luckily, the video we have is no long or complex. We will re-record at at the smaller size. If I come up with any other solution, I'll let you all know! Other suggestions welcome!

I reiterate Chuck's reply,

"re-publish it in Camtasia by adjusting the output dimensions"

Publish from Camtasia to the Captivate project size, 1920 x 1080.

Camtasia does a pretty good job at scaling down and the quality should be a lot cleaner than rescaling in CP directly.

Warning - such large (dimension) videos are likely also large in file size. A lot of those progressive, non-streaming, videos directly embedded in a SCORM package is likely to make for a large file that takes a while to load.

Test that out as you build...

Better to put the videos on a streaming server (i.e. private YouTube channel) and embed them via the web object, if possible.

I've done my fair share of creating Camtasia videos and bringing them into Captivate.  I hate how they get "fuzzy" looking when I re-size them. For that reason, I'm always cognizant of what my Captivate dimensions will be if I know the Camtasia video output will end up in Captivate. But that is not always the case.

How complex is your Camtasia animation, and do you still have the raw .camproj file? I had one recently that was about a minute long with about 20 or so animations.  I saved a copy of the .camproj file and gave it a new name, then re-sized it to fit into my Captivate file. I had to move some of the animations and adjust some of the sizes of the images in the project, but it surprisingly took me less time than I thought it would. To me it was worth it because of the quality of the final output.

Also, if you have the raw .camproj file, can you go in an re-publish it in Camtasia by adjusting the output dimensions? Just be sure to keep them proportional so either set the width of the output video to match the width of your Captivate project - or set the height of the output video to match the height of your project - but don't try to do both because you will distort the output and will definitely have a crappy looking video.

Another thing you could try is to use either Captivate or Camtasia to record the Camtasia video, but at the screen resolution that will fit inside your Captivate project.  Perhaps that will give you a fairly decent looking video.

Again, having worked with the two, I've had similar experiences. I can't say for sure which of the above may work best for you because I don't know the video you're working with, but these are some things you can try. I suspect, though, that working with the raw Camtasia project will be your best bet.  If you don't have it, then try recording the existing video at the dimensions of your Captivate project.

Do me a favor . . . after you've tried any of these, reply and let me know what worked for you - or if none of them worked for you. I'm curious to hear out it turns out.

CHUCK

Whenever you rescale a video or a bitmap image, you lose quality.

Why not create a Captivate project with the same resolution as the videos? Later on you could try Modify, Rescale Project to see if the result is better.

I have been using Camtasia videos in Captivate long time ago, but now I am using the Video Demo for better integration. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Camtasia (which I still have installed), but in most instances sufficient for me.