Camtasia, TechSmith's screen recorder and video editor, saves what it records in its own files: .trec since Camtasia 9 (2016), and .camrec in Camtasia Studio 8 and earlier on Windows. Only Camtasia opens them properly, so a recording sent to someone without Camtasia, or kept from a licence that has since run out, often cannot be played or edited elsewhere.
This page converts those recordings into ordinary MP4 videos (H.264 picture, AAC sound) in your browser. A .trec is an MP4-style file whose screen is in TechSmith's TSC2 codec; a .camrec is a container with an AVI inside, in TechSmith's older TSCC codec. Both codecs are decoded by FFmpeg, the open-source media library, built for this site (its source is published at /source/ffmpeg/), and your browser's own video encoder makes the H.264. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline.
It is for Camtasia recordings, not Camtasia project files (.tscproj, .camproj, or a Mac .cmproj): those are edit lists that point at recordings, with no video inside. Drop one here and the page lists the recordings and media it uses.
- Can it convert a Camtasia project (.tscproj, .camproj or .cmproj)?
- No: a project holds no video. It is a list of edits - cuts, captions, zooms, callouts - that points at the recordings and media kept beside it, so only Camtasia can play it back as the finished video (use Share, or Produce in older versions, to save an MP4). This page converts the recordings themselves, as they were captured; drop the project here to see which files it uses.
- Why is the mouse pointer missing from the converted video?
- Camtasia records the pointer separately from the screen, as a list of positions, so that its editor can enlarge, highlight or hide it later. The recorded screen has no pointer in it, and this page does not draw one in.
- What happens to the webcam and the microphone in a .trec?
- A .trec can hold the screen, a camera picture and several sound tracks, usually the microphone and the computer's own sound. The page lists them: the sound tracks ticked are mixed into the screen MP4, and the camera is saved as a second MP4 of its own (it is not placed over the screen as Camtasia's editor can).
- Which Camtasia versions does it work with?
- Recordings from Camtasia 9 onwards (.trec, from 2016) and from Camtasia Studio up to version 8 (.camrec), plus AVI files Camtasia Recorder saved directly. The .trec format is TechSmith's own and not published; this page follows it as FFmpeg and others have documented it, so if a recording of yours does not convert, use Report a problem below the tool.
- Is the screen recording uploaded anywhere?
- No. The recording is read and converted by your browser, on your computer, and never sent to a server, so a recording of your screen, with whatever was on it, stays private. A long recording takes a while for that reason: the conversion runs on your own computer.