Not to be confused with Fantasia, a magical screen recording tool has been around for many years. Books have been written on the use of this software to instruct others on how to teach and demonstrate other software and ideas.
Unlike Fantasia, the screen recording software Camtasia was not made by Disney, but does contain some proprietary data. Camtasia is a screen recording software by the developer TechSmith. First released in 2002, it was available first for Windows and much later, Macintosh.
The first versions of Camtasia would encode screen recordings in an AVI container, using the TSCC codec. The TSCC codec, aka TechSmith Screen Capture Codec, was developed by TechSmith and the codec was distributed freely. Let’s see what MediaInfo knows about it.
mediainfo Camtasia1-s01.avi General Complete name : Camtasia1-s01.avi Format : AVI Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave Format settings : BitmapInfoHeader File size : 1.66 MiB Duration : 2 s 333 ms Overall bit rate : 5 966 kb/s Frame rate : 15.000 FPS
Video ID : 0 Format : TechSmith Codec ID : tscc Codec ID/Info : TechSmith Screen Capture Duration : 2 s 333 ms Bit rate : 87.3 kb/s Width : 320 pixels Height : 240 pixels Display aspect ratio : 4:3 Frame rate : 15.000 FPS Bit depth : 8 bits Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.076 Stream size : 24.9 KiB (1%)
The AVI video format was the default recording format for the first couple versions. In version 3 the default format changed to the proprietary CAMREC format.
Camrec video files are a proprietary TechSmith file format that is used to store multiple files and information in a single package. Overall, .camrec files store your screen and camera recording plus some meta data about the various streams. However, it is important to note that you cannot view or play .camrec files outside of Camtasia Studio.
The CAMREC video format isn’t entirely proprietary and uses a common container.
Scanning the drive for archives: 1 file, 4696576 bytes (4587 KiB)
Path = Camtasia3-s01.camrec Type = Compound ERRORS: Unexpected end of archive Physical Size = 4698112 Extension = compound Cluster Size = 4096 Sector Size = 64
Date Time Attr Size Compressed Name ------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------ ..... 3912 3968 manifest.camxml ..... 4672000 4673536 Screen_Stream.avi ------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------ 4675912 4677504 2 files
The CAMREC file might be unknown to most video players, but the AVI within the compound object is the same as the versions before it. Camtasia even has a built in extractor if you really need to pull the AVI out of the format.
Each CAMREC file contains a manifest.camxml. They seem to be UTF-16 XML files, with and without the XML declaration. The Screen_Steam.avi file seems to be in all my samples, but not clear if there can be a variant without an AVI file.
This CAMREC container was used in the Camtasia Studio software until version 8.4 when the default was changed to a new Codec, based on MPEG4, with the TREC extension.
mediainfo capture-1.trec General Complete name : capture-1.trec Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (mp42/isom) File size : 277 KiB Duration : 3 s 41 ms Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 746 kb/s Frame rate : 19.091 FPS Encoded date : 2025-02-11 03:48:25 UTC Tagged date : 2025-02-11 03:48:34 UTC FileExtension_Invalid : braw mov mp4 m4v m4a m4b m4p m4r 3ga 3gpa 3gpp 3gp 3gpp2 3g2 k3g jpm jpx mqv ismv isma ismt f4a f4b f4v
Video ID : 1 Format : tsc2-D0 Codec ID : tsc2-D0 Duration : 2 s 933 ms Bit rate : 495 kb/s Width : 924 pixels Height : 696 pixels Display aspect ratio : 4:3 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 19.091 FPS Minimum frame rate : 10.000 FPS Maximum frame rate : 30.000 FPS Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.040 Stream size : 177 KiB (64%) Title : 100 Encoded date : 2025-02-11 03:48:25 UTC Tagged date : 2025-02-11 03:48:34 UTC
TechSmith Recording File (TREC) files will identify as an MP4 in most identification tools, you will need MediaInfo or other tools to understand the codec used. If we look at the header of the MP4 TREC file:
We see the standard header for an MP4 file. The codec specific to the Camtasia software is identified later in the file, but identification using a PRONOM signature might be challenging. In looking at the hex of the file, near the end, you can find embedded PNG’s and other data. VLC and FFMPEG can read the codec, but players like Quicktime struggle.
A promising section near the end shows the name and version of Camtasia Studio. More data needed.
Camtasia also uses a lot of Project files to managing the video editing process of your screen recordings. The project files can vary between the Windows and Macintosh versions.
The older versions of Camtasia for Windows up until version 8.4, used the CAMPROJ extension for their projects. These are in XML and simply use “<Project_Data>” for the root element. With Version 8 having a later element “<CSMLData>” to manage the assets. Other projects also have a File element that begins with either “tscrec4://” or “TSCRec://”. But it may be best to identify the older versions with the “<ClipBin_Array>” element.
For Mac version 2, they used CMPROJ for the Project, but also it was an Apple Bundle/Package file. It also used a recording file with the extension CMREC, but is also Apple Bundle/Package file which contains MOV and DAT files.
The most recent versions of Camtasia for Mac and windows use the TSCPROJ extension. They are plan text files with some resemblance of JSON.
There are a few formats related to Camtasia, but the CAMREC format is the one that shows up the most in my work. So today I am only proposing a signature for CAMREC and the CAMPROJ formats. We will have to have some discussion on the TREC format to determine if standard MPEG-4 identification is fine or if the format needs its own PUID. You can find some examples and my proposed signature on my Github page.
