ScreenFlow: Screencast for the Mac with style

Filed under: Utilities, Video, Macintosh, Podcasting, Productivity

ScreenFlow: Screencast for the Mac with style

by Christina Warren Feb 14th 2008

Although there are a lot of different screencasting options out there for the Mac, in our opinion, none has had the power and features of Camtasia Studio (a Windows only app); until now.

ScreenFlow from Vara Software is, quite frankly, the best screencasting application for the Mac that we have seen to date -- and trust us, we've tried them all. Taking advantage of Core Animation (making this a Leopard only application), Quartz Composer and a custom 64-bit enabled compression system, ScreenFlow can capture DVD playback (see our screencast below for a demo), 3-D game playback and can also simultaneously capture from your screen and your iSight or DV camera -- meaning you can create a screencast that can show you as you speak.

ScreenFlow's recording algorithms are great, truly, but what really made us excited were all the built-in post capture editing tools. It is very, very easy to add animations to a screen capture, highlighting one window, zooming in on part of the screen, isolating the mouse pointer (and adjusting the opacity of the non-isolated area), and more. Editing is where Camtasia absolutely owns any other screencasting application (regardless of platform), and while ScreenFlow might not be as advanced as Camtasia at this point in time -- it's only at version 1, and it already does the really big stuff.

ScreenFlow is $99.99 and a full functioning demo is available here, you can use all the features, your videos will just have a watermark on the top.

[via TUAW]

Tags: camtasia, mac, screen capture, ScreenCapture, screencast, screenflow, tweet-this

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

rustman said 10:27PM on 2-14-2008

you said, "ScreenFlow from Vara Software is, quite frankly, the best screencasting application for the Mac that we have seen to date -- and trust us, we've tried them all."

Perhaps you have tried them all -- and are easily impressed. But, have you actually used any of them, in production environments ?

sorry. Screenflow is slow on the draw, with startup, playback is jerky and intermittent. Configuring the screen capture environment is not as flexible nor the whole application as robust or "tested in the fire" as other
applications. So, much as I'd like to, "trusting you and your experience" - you're not being fair in that sweeping
statement. I have to first trust my own experience with
"all these others" - and my own experience puts Screenflow in the "not yet ready for prime time" pile. It freezes way
too often, the "spinning beach ball" takes forever, after a
user picks options, and before the application is ready.

A product like Screenflow that has to be interrupted with
the "three finger Mac salute" to get back control of the OS,
and other Mac applications is not ready.

Screenflow offers many fewer choices and is far less flexible
than at least a few other contenders "out there".

there are better products out there - sorry, I wish Screenflow were as good as you report. It's, quite frankly, not true.

Christina Warren said 10:48PM on 2-14-2008

Yes, I have used the others in the production environment, and honestly, the only program I have felt comfortable using on the Mac is SnapzPro. iShowU, Screenium and Screenflick (back when it was called Screencast, ie, last month - though I haven't tried it under the new name) have all failed to appease me and have been choppy with pans and edits. Or in the case of Screenium, make my 2.16 C2D slow to a crawl and export video that was three times as large as it should have been with half the quality.

Granted, I haven't put ScreenFlow through the full paces of a production level screencast, but I spent about 3 hours with the program this afternoon and was totally blown away. It didn't crash on me once, and I didn't have any of the playback or any spinning beachballs that you experienced. Encoding could take a while, but I was doing it while multitasking other applications and didn't have any issues. I'm not discounting your experience; had I experienced anything along those lines, I certainly wouldn't have written up a glowing review. And while I'm not saying that it is fully ready to be used as the only screencasting tool, right now it looks pretty damn good.

I'm excited to see Techsmith's Mac offering and Ambrosia's next SnapzPro revision, especially after seeing the benefits of Core Animation.

Jay Jennings said 6:53AM on 5-02-2008

I've used (I'm pretty sure) all the Mac screencast tools and NONE of them ever got me close to ditching my Windows machine and Camtasia Studio. People mention SnapzProX and that's not even a viable option if you want to stay sane. Rendering takes for-freaking-ever and then it GOES AWAY! I can't even try a different codec, etc. Bah!

But with the 1.1 version of ScreenFlow, I've now switched completely away from Camtasia. In fact, I no longer feel the need to keep a Windows machine around, so I'll be putting that laptop up on Craigslist very soon.

Yes, there are more features in Camtasia than in ScreenFlow -- but ScreenFlow does some things that are just so cool they make up for any "shortcomings." Plus, the 1.1 update had some really cool features added so it's obvious Vara Software isn't sitting still. By the time the Mac version of Camtasia arrives they will have some serious competition with ScreenFlow (if they don't already).

I have some screencasts showing tips with ScreenFlow: http://screenflowtips.com

I think ScreenFlow is a "killer app" for Leopard.

Jay Jennings

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