Camtasia: Windows vs. Mac

The look and functionality of the latest versions of Camtasia is almost identical between the Windows and Mac versions. These versions (9 for Windows, 3 for Mac, & version 2019) are also cross-compatible, allowing people to collaborate on a video editing project using different platforms, but there are few differences you should be aware of.

Callouts
  • Sketch Motion Callout Color – the default color is yellow instead of red in the Mac version, but you can edit the color of any of your annotations in either platform.
  • Sketch Motion Callouts render, but they can NOT be edited cross platform.
  • Keystroke Callouts also render, but they can NOT be edited cross platform.
Captions
  • The Mac version does NOT have a speech-to-text option for creating captions like the Windows version. You can manually create captions, but it might be easier to upload to Youtube for auto captioning and just edit those as needed.
  • The Captions are NOT cross compatible – Once you’ve created them on one platform you will not be able to edit them in the other platform. To share your captions between platforms, export your caption file as an SRT or SAMI file.
Other
  • Export to Vimeo – Share direct to Vimeo is an option in the Windows version, but not from the Mac share button. You can still upload a video to Vimeo from a Mac, but you should export it as an MP4 first, then open your Vimeo account and browse to upload your video.
  • WMV, AVI, SWF, and MTS files will not work on Mac.
  • Mac to Windows projects will not support:
    • Device Frame
    • Freeze Region
    • Glow
    • Keystroke Callouts
    • Mask
    • Reflection
    • Sepia
    • Window Spotlight
    • Clicking Reduction
    • Clipping Reduction
    • Dynamics Processor
    • Pitch
    • Gesture Effects
    • Spotlight
More on Sharing Project Files & Archiving

By default, Camtasia projects reference media on your hard-drive, the content is NOT actually stored within your camproj project file. If you were to ever move, rename, or otherwise lose your hard drive content, when you opened your Camtasia project it would be empty.

Similarly, sending someone your Camtasia project file will NOT contain the content that the camproj file references on your hard-drive. There is an archiving process to save your entire project file with all additional media and edits into one sharable folder.

To archive or share your Camtasia project, click on File → Export as Zip. Remember, if you want to share your project so that someone else can make edits to it on their machine, you must give them this zipped folder.

NOTE: While the latest versions of Camtasia are cross compatible for sharing and editing the archived zipped file, there are some exceptions. You should take note of any pop-up alert you get so you can replace a missing annotation if needed.