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Callouts are used to help draw attention to something important on the screen.
There are a number of different callouts to choose from,
including arrows that point directly to something specific in your video.
Spotlight, which darkens everything on the screen except for the area you want to focus on;
Text callouts, which are pretty self explanatory and are great for easily adding text anywhere in your video.
There's even a blur callout to hide certain areas of your recording that you don't want everyone to see, like login information.
And we've even added that new sketch motion callouts which makes it look like you're drawing right on the screen.
Let me show you the process for adding callouts to your video projects.
The first thing you'll need to do is position the playhead on the timeline where you want to insert a callout.
Then select the callout tab and click on the Add callout button.
This will add the most recently used callout to the timeline on a callout track, and it's also visible in the preview window.
If you like hotkeys, the "C" key on the keyboard will also quickly add a callout to your timeline as well.
If the callout that was added isn't the one you want, then expand the shape menu and choose a new callout from the list.
Here's where you'll find the ones I showed you earlier, like the Spotlight, Text, Blur, and the Sketch Motion callouts.
I recommend that you play around with all of these to see which ones you like, but I'll stick with the arrow callout for this tutorial.
Note that the callout is floating on top of the video and can be dragged and positioned anywhere in the preview window.
Grab one of the corners to resize it.
You can even free rotate the callout using this green handle.
To change the properties of the selected callout, expand these menus to change the border color and width,
the fill color, and many different effects.
Some callouts even allow you to add text to them as well.
Again, play around with each of these properties to learn how they change the look of your callouts.
With the callout looking the way you want it, let's now look at the placement of the arrow on the callout track on the timeline.
Position the playhead just before the callout and playback the video to see if it appears and stays visible for the correct amount of time.
To adjust the duration of the callout hover over one of the edges until you see a double arrow.
Click and drag the edge of the callout to the desired length...or duration.
You can also click and drag the callout to a new location on the callout track.
These triangles at the beginning and end of the callout represent the amount of fade in and fade out.
Make adjustments by using these sliders from the callout tab.
One great new feature in Camtasia Studio 7 is the ability to import any custom image file into the clip bin, or library,
and then drag it directly to the callout track on the timeline.
It can now be positioned and edited just like any other callout on this track.
This new process saves you lots of time.
I hope this tutorial helps and gets you started with using callouts.
Check out the other tutorials on callouts to learn some tips and tricks. Thanks.