by Kevin Siegel 
You know that saying that the cobbler's kids have the worst shoes? Or perhaps the one where the doctor's kids are always the sickest... something like that anyway. It's sort of the same thing for trainers... there's never time to attend training. When it comes to software, we're often on our own and have to learn via the "click and a prayer" methodology.
When I first started using Camtasia, I "clicked and prayed" as I tried to figure how things worked. (Mind you that this was long before I'd figured things out and written several books on Camtasia.)
I was like any new user--I was developing eLearning content with zero training. Nevertheless, what I lacked in training I made up for with an abundance of energy and hope (hope that I was doing things correctly and the button I was about to click wasn't going to delete my project).
At one point, I wanted to delete part of an audio clip on the Timeline. I'd figured how to make a selection by dragging the green and red Playhead ports. (Shown below. The green icon is known as the "in-port" (or "in-point"), the red icon is known as the "out-port" (or "out-point").
Once I had a segment selected, I clicked the Cut tool on the Timeline and successfully deleted the segment.
It certainly seemed like all that praying had paid off, and I went on and did about a million other things to the project.
It wasn't until much later that I realized, much to my horror, that while I had deleted the selected audio as intended, I'd also deleted video segments, images, and other parts of my project. Apparently, when you make a selection on the Timeline, items above and below the selection are also selected... in every track.
Because I had saved several times (I'm a very efficient saver) and closed and reopened my project, the Undo command wasn't a viable option. Sadly, I had pretty much trashed much of my work.
Lesson learned! If you need to delete part of segment on the Camtasia Timeline, make a selection using the ports on the Playhead. But prior to clicking Cut, lock the tracks you don't want to alter prior to using the Cut tool.
Once a track is locked, it will gain diagonal lines across the entire track. While you can still use the ports to seemingly select part of a locked track, clicking the Cut tool won't harm the track. Crisis averted!
If you'd like to see the process of locking Camtasia tracks and then deleting content, check out this video demo on the IconLogic YouTube channel.
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