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camtasia posts

Filed under: Video, Macintosh, Productivity

Camtasia screencasting software now has a Mac version

Camtasia, one of the best screencasting applications for Windows, just got a highly-anticipated Mac release. Camtasia can easily record audio and video from multiple sources at once, so it's easy to talk someone through what's happening onscreen.

The recording of your screen, your Mac's audio output, sound from your microphone, and video from your iSight can all be easily arranged in the timeline along with any other elements you might want to import. Combine that with a nice effects library and easy sharing, and you've got a winning screencast app.

It's also currently discounted from $150 to $99.

Mac users have been salivating over Camtasia for a couple of years now, mainly because it tops other Mac screen recording software in terms of post-production and editing. The Mac version of Camtasia isn't exactly the same as the PC version, however.

Aside from the Mac-like UI design, it also has more options for editing the size, position and rotation of your video than its Windows counterpart. The Camtasia team has used their own software to record a screencast of Camtasia, and that's a good place to start getting familiar with the features. Check it out on their homepage, or sneak a peek at a YouTube walkthrough after the break.

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Filed under: Developer, Video, Education, sxsw

MindBites launches Screencast 4 Cash contest

At SXSWi 2008, Grant and I met Jason Reneau, the founder and CEO of MindBites, a platform and marketplace for video lessons. We were really impressed with the MindBites vision last year. When we met up with them this year, it was awesome to see how far the community, the site and the market for quality video tutorials has come.

Today, MindBites is launching the Screencast 4 Cash contest in conjunction with Techsmith's Jing Pro and Download Squad (that's us!). Entrants can submit an original screencast to be eligible to win a Grand Prize of $1000, plus a copy of Snagit/Camtasia Studio. There will also be a People's Choice Prize, determined by popular vote, and the winner will get $500 and a copy of Snagit.

Every vote cast in the contest will yield a $0.10 US donation to the
Youth for Technology Foundation, which exposes children in underdeveloped parts of the world to technology through instruction and staffed technology centers. So just by voting, you can help underprivileged kids get access and instruction to technology.

Screencasts are a great way to learn, or teach a specialty. We covered some iPhone-specific screencasts last month and found the medium really, really ripe for learning or supplementing other forms of instruction.

If you've got a great idea for a screencast, enter the contest! Grant and I are two of the judges and we can't wait to see what stuff gets submitted! You can read more details on deadlines and voting dates over at MindBites.

Want to know more about MindBites? Check out this video from SXSWi 2009!

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

ScreenFlow: Screencast for the Mac with style



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]

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