Saturday
01Mar2008
ScreenFlow: The iTunes of Screencasting
Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 01:19PM
I come to praise an application that puts a smile on my face every time I use it: ScreenFlow by Vara Software. ScreenFlow is an application for recording video from your computer screen and exporting it as a video file for sharing online.
I'm calling it The iTunes of Screencasting, not because it looks like iTunes or manages a library of your screencasts, but because it does the one thing that I love seeing applications do: it takes a process that formerly involved many small tools that worked together but were poorly integrated and pulls them into one coherent whole.
Kids today don't remember what we had to go through to listen to music on computers. First you had to rip the CD to AIFF files (being careful not to entirely fill your hard drive!), then use an encoder like Mpegger to convert them to MP3, then add the IDv3 tags in another app, then organise them in files in the Finder (I still can't believe that people still yearn to do this part), then use Audion to make playlists. Once you'd done all that, you had to go digging for those playlist files in the Finder, open them and play them. And you couldn't just Spotlight-search for them, or make a Smart Folder. Oh, no.
This is the kind of simplification that Screenflow delivers for screen and audio recording. You launch it, you choose your video sources (screen and/or iSight), you choose your audio sources and you hit the Big Red Button. You do your stuff, and then you tweak it afterwards.
"Tweak it afterwards" makes it sound lightweight. It's not. In other screen recording software, such as Snapz Pro X, you define a region of the screen to be recorded and if a dialog pops up somewhere you didn't expect, you start all over again. ScreenFlow does away with all that: you record the entire screen, and zoom in or crop the video later. That alone justifies the application for me. You can also add highlights such as cursor circles, click targets and sounds and keystroke overlays - all automatically and all after the fact.
Put that all together and it means this: focus on recording your demo, forget DJ'ing all your screencast software at the same time and edit with ease. Fantastic application.
[Update: Here's a link to a short video showing you how to sample a hung application: How To Sample An App (4MB Quicktime)]
I'm calling it The iTunes of Screencasting, not because it looks like iTunes or manages a library of your screencasts, but because it does the one thing that I love seeing applications do: it takes a process that formerly involved many small tools that worked together but were poorly integrated and pulls them into one coherent whole.
Kids today don't remember what we had to go through to listen to music on computers. First you had to rip the CD to AIFF files (being careful not to entirely fill your hard drive!), then use an encoder like Mpegger to convert them to MP3, then add the IDv3 tags in another app, then organise them in files in the Finder (I still can't believe that people still yearn to do this part), then use Audion to make playlists. Once you'd done all that, you had to go digging for those playlist files in the Finder, open them and play them. And you couldn't just Spotlight-search for them, or make a Smart Folder. Oh, no.
This is the kind of simplification that Screenflow delivers for screen and audio recording. You launch it, you choose your video sources (screen and/or iSight), you choose your audio sources and you hit the Big Red Button. You do your stuff, and then you tweak it afterwards.
"Tweak it afterwards" makes it sound lightweight. It's not. In other screen recording software, such as Snapz Pro X, you define a region of the screen to be recorded and if a dialog pops up somewhere you didn't expect, you start all over again. ScreenFlow does away with all that: you record the entire screen, and zoom in or crop the video later. That alone justifies the application for me. You can also add highlights such as cursor circles, click targets and sounds and keystroke overlays - all automatically and all after the fact.
Put that all together and it means this: focus on recording your demo, forget DJ'ing all your screencast software at the same time and edit with ease. Fantastic application.
[Update: Here's a link to a short video showing you how to sample a hung application: How To Sample An App (4MB Quicktime)]
Reader Comments (10)
What, half a day and no reference to the Four Yorkshiremen?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
"Ay, but we were happy in those days..."
First of all, I'm a bit flabbergasted that people are pitching a fit over $100. Let's assume you buy SnapzPro X 2 at full retail (i.e. you didn't find a discount code or get it in a bundle). THAT'S $70 RIGHT THERE!
Does SnapzPro let you do timeline editing? No. Gotta use something like iMovie for that (which would incur an additional $70, if you didn't already have a consumer-level Mac it came pre-installed on). Now, let's try the mouse-highlighting... oh, that's right, we have to tack on an additional $17-ish for something like Mousepose from Boinx.
Oh, and let us not forget, if you want picture in picture (like Screenflow allows), you'd better scale back to a previous version of iMovie and the GeeThree PiP plug-in, or else rig up some sort of iChat screen-sharing with yourself to pull off the same feat. Did I mention SnapzPro will still be recording all of this as one flat video file, with no discretion between elements to allow for individual zooming? Heck, I haven't even mentioned trying to do audio ducking and whatnot, but just to keep some folks off my back, we'll assume you can use the audio editing features in GarageBand in tandem with iMovie (but you're STILL looking at the cost of the iLife suite, unless, again, you got it as a bundle, and then you're either shelling out for the computer, or your timing was just perfect to get a machine at the time you needed to make these screencasts). Maybe you're not editing your audio? Maybe you're just doing single-take wham-bam screencasts with basic talk-throughs and no highlighting. Well, may I just say I've seen your screencasts when you put them on YouTube, and they suck.
And you wanna know the bit that really seals the deal? The part that will make your head spin?
Screenflow's installer comes it at a gobstopping 4.4 MB. That's it. That's all.
I always hold off on a system upgrade until there's a game-changer app that requires the new OS. Last time, Safari 2 made me jump. Now that Safari 3 is available for 10.4.11, I was still left waiting. But this, folks, is an app where I am just sitting in awe and going "so THAT'S how easy it's supposed to be!"
Next person who complains about the $100 gets a virtual slap from me, m'kay?
p.s. that should really read as "gobsmacking." Should've probably thrown an "egad!" or a "gadzooks!" in there, while I was at it. ;-)
Without any features but almost free for “amateur” screencasters:
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
Does it have its own codec? That's crucial and one of the things that makes Snapz suck. Camtasia is coming to OS X, and it'll kick Snapz to the curb.
I think ScreenFlow should be compared not to Snapz or iShowU, but to Final Cut Express. I publish screencasts and spent $1,300 on Final Cut Pro because Express couldn't work with arbitrary resolutions. Compared to that price, ScreenFlow is a steal.
The voiceover support has much to be desired, but the ability to edit at the resolution of your choice and have full control while editing makes it a winner in my book.
As an example, check out this video of iShowU where the author has to use 4-5 tools to get the same results as ScreenFlow.
Personally, as I'm on 10.4, I have no choice but to go with IShowU. However, as soon as my new iMac arrive, I'm off to ScreenFlow-land.
- Nick -
Whoops, hee the video;
http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/tips/tips/tricks.html
Matt:
I was curious, too. So I looked: It clearly has an internal codec.
There is absolutely no way it could keep the file sizes reasonable and the CPU in check while recording HD and not have something very special under the hood. However, it appears to be used just to store the documents, as today you can only export to QuickTime movies. I tried using zip to compress their documents. No gain what-so-ever. That's impressive for real-time encoding.
So I bet that internal codec is a major barrier to entry here. Yeah, camtasia has a codec, but it falls over with full motion video. Can you say
Only major problem I have with Screenflow is its limited output options. It's a .MOV or nothing. No Flash output hurts this app, especially at its pricetag.