Camtasia, Cubase, Totalmix & ASIO drivers

Using Cubase & Camtasia

With RME ASIO Fireface drivers & Totalmix

Screencasting videos of professional DAW software like Steinberg Cubase or Avid Pro Tools is a royal pain in the arse.

Why? Because professional DAW software uses — surprise, surprise — professional audio interfaces. And on Windows, that means interfaces with ASIO audio drivers.

Not one screencasting application supports these drivers — even Adobe’s uber-expensive professional tool Captivate. They all rely on the bog-standard Windows WDM drivers which, let’s face it, are pretty crappy. They’re certainly no good for low latency audio performance.

Worse still, even where the WDM drivers themselves support multiple audio channels, hardly any screencasting software allows you to record more than one audio track — it might mix a mic input with the system sound down to one file, but that’s about it.

I thought I’d reached a compromise for a while — set my mic to go into the DAW and have that duck the rest of the DAW sound, just to keep the levels OK. But that meant having my mic channels on screen and setting up buses. Which got in the way of the screencast.

After searching high and low, I reached the conclusion that if you want to record separate audio streams alongside your screen (so that you have control over them in postprod) there is only one suitable screencast — Techsmith Camtasia.

Techsmith Camtasia — the only option for screencasting if you want to capture more than one audio stream without mixing everything to stereo

Camtasia is not all good news, though. For a start, it doesn’t support ASIO drivers — you can record the system sound and the headset mic to separate tracks, but that’s it. Furthermore, if you’re plugging a professional mic into an audio interface input, that input will come out as mono, and will be panned to one side. Again, that’s not ideal!

But there is a way around it! I got the idea from Phil Pendlebury (credit where it’s due: www.pendlebury.biz/screencast-your-daw-with-camtasia-and-rme-totalmix) but have had to refine things a little for my own purposes. I hope this helps you.

I’m using an RME Fireface 800 interface, which ships with Totalmix software.  I’m using the previous generation of Totalmix, which I prefer — it’s simple and uncluttered, with no hidden settings that have you scratching your head. The Fireface 800 supports both ASIO and WDM drivers and both can access it at the same time. So I have Cubase or Pro Tools set up to use the professional ASIO driver. And I have Windows (and thus Camtasia) accessing the same interface with the WDM drivers. This is a much better way to do things thatn trying to get Cubase to use the generic ASIO/WDM driver (essentially the WDM driver wrapped for use in ASIO), not least because Cubase forgets all it’s routing settings every time you switch interface driver. D’oh!

Here’s how to set things up…

You’ll want a mic plugged in to your interface’s mic input, and to have the following applications open:

• Cubase (I’m using 7.5.2)

• Totalmix (or equivalent routing software)

• Camtasia Recorder

• Windows Sound pop-up — I’ll call it Windows Audio Settings (I’m in Win 7 64-bit: Control Panel/Hardware & Sound/Manage Audio Devices

1.  In Cubase VST Connections (hit F4 top open/close) send the master stereo bus signal to whichever physical stereo output you wish to use. I’m using the S/PDIF output, as I’m monitoring via an external monitor controller/headphone amp (Dangerous D-box). Any output is fine, just make a note, because it’s easy to lose track. Just bear in mind that if you're using the same outputs for Cubase and Windows you can end up with a feedback loop - check Phil's site for details on managing that problem.

Setting Cubase Audio Outputs in VST Connections

2.  Make a note of the audio interface channel your mic is plugged in to. I’m using channel 8, because it happened to be spare. Again, make a note.

3.  Go to Windows’ Audio Settings and in the playback tab click on the outputs you want to use for Windows. I’m using the 9&10 because they’re the RME’s headphone outputs, but many people will have 1&2 by default. Make a note. In fact, as Phil suggests, you can edit the name directly in Windows Audio Settings, so that you don’t get lost. I’ve called mine ‘RME Headphones/Windows Out’.

Keep a note of where you're sending Windows audio to. I've gone to 9&10 instead of 1&2, because that's the RME interface's headphones output. Sure, I could re-route things in Totalmix, but I find it easier this way. You can relabel any Windows inputs and outputs, as I've done here, which can help you keep track.

4.  Open Totalmix.  We’ll do two things here — take the mono mic input and route it so that Windows sees a stereo input (to give us centered mono); and second take the Cubase output and make Windows see it as an input.

a.  The Mic Input: As Camtasia can’t deal with mono signals without panning them off distractingly to one side, you need to pan the mic input to the centre in Totalmix. This doesn’t kid windows yet, so send your centred mic input signal (channel 8 for me) to a different pair of outputs. I’ve used 5&6. Then use Totalmix’s loopback facility (cntrl+click on the output label and it will go red — or in more recent versions of Totalmix, click the spanner and enable loopback) to send the output of 5&6 back to inputs 5&6. We now have a dual mono signal coming in on 5&6.

The mic, plugged into input 8, is panned centrally, and then assigned to channels 5&6. 5&6 are looped back in Totalmix, so that the signal presents at the input. Windows applications using WDM audio can now 'see' this input.

b.  Cubase Output: Loopback the Cubase outputs (S/PDIF in my case). Windows can now see the signal as a stereo input on the S/PDIF input channel.

Cubase is coming out on the S/PDIF outputs. These (red) are looped back to the S/PDIF inputs so, again, Windows can 'see' the signal generated by the ASIO application (Cubase)

5.  OK… now we have Cubase outputting as normal. And we have Windows seeing two separate inputs. Now to make Windows think the S/PDIF is a ‘system sound’. In the Windows Audio Settings window, go to the Recording tab and scroll to select the S/PDIF input (or wherever your Cubase signal got routed to!) Where it says ‘Set Default’ click on the arrow and from the drop down select ‘Default Communication Device’. Double click on the SP/DIF (or whatever you used) entry in the list and select the Listen tab. Then set it to ‘Listen To This Device’. Bingo. Windows is now routing your input to it’s default output — in other words, your Cubase output is now a System Sound which can be captured by Camtasia.

Setting 5&6 (our stereo mic signal) as the default input, and S/PDIF (Cubase output looped back) as the Default Communication Device.

Telling Windows to 'Listen To' the re-routed Cubase output. In other words, Cubase is now a Windows 'System Sound'.

6.  Now go to Camtasia Recorder and click on the dropdown arrow by the audio settings icon. From the dropdown list, select the input where your mic input got routed to — in my case the stereo mic signal is coming in on 5&6.

7.  In the same dropdown window, make sure there’s a tick next to ‘Record System Audio’.

Selecting the 5&6 (stereo mic) input as the main recording source in Camtasia to accompany the screencast, and ticking Record System Audio to capture the re-routed Cubase output.

8.  Now, you’re ready to go. Hit record, go to Cubase and play something while speaking into the mic to make a brief test screencast. You should hear both the Cubase sound and the mic sound when you play back your recording.

9.  Just to be sure, hit save and edit. Your video will open in Camtasia Studio. You should see two waveforms — one will be the screencast with an embedded audio file. The other will be audio only. By default, the system audio will be recorded to a separate audio track , and the actual input you selected in Camtasia will be attached to the movie. Right click and you can ‘Separate video and audio’ to put them all on separate tracks.

 

Separating the Audio & Video in Camtasia Studio 8

10. I find Camtasia limiting as an editing tool, particularly if you have access to a decent professional NLE, such as Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas or Final Cut Pro, or you want to do more complex presentation work with Captivate or some such. You can't even pan the audio! To have recorded multiple audio tracks in Camtasia, you have to have set it to record in the proprietary Camrec format. To dump all your video and audio out to use in any NLE, go to Camtasia’s clip bin. Then right click on the Camrec file and select Extract Camrec Contents… This will enable you to select/create a folder into which Camtasia will dump an AVI video file, complete with the embedded audio stream, and a separate PCM WAV file. You can import both into your DAW/NLE, extract the audio from the AVI and proceed as you would with any project. You may want to think about setting your NLE to work at the right screen size/ratio and frame rate first, but that’s another story…

Exporting Camtasia video and audio assets from the native Camrec format, so they can be imported into DAW software like Pro Tools and Cubase, or NLEs such as Final Cut Pro, Premiere or Vegas.

Hope this helps! It's a bit of a pain in the arse to set up, but once done it should be easy to use. Probably a good idea to save a Totalmix snapshot, though!!!