TeenCastic

April 17, 2009 in Reviews by Shiv

Company: Telestream
Product: Screenflow
Price: $99

User-interface: 5
Stability: 5
Overall: 5

I have been creating a lot of software tutorials and screencasts. The three applications that I normally used were Snapz Pro, iShowU, or Screen Mimic which have been the most common screen recorders . But in the last 6 months, my friends and everyone in the Mac community have been bugging me about Screenflow which was made by Vara Software which was then acquired by Telestream (the same people who make Flip4Mac).

The general idea behind ScreenFlow is that it captures everything you do on your Mac in real time as you use an application, interact with its windows and dialogs, show off it’s features, etc. The very first thing I noticed while testing the software is that the performance is dazzling.  It was very smooth and did a fantastic job, even when I was using software that requires some heavy lifting by the processor, such as Garageband, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and some other power hogs. Even when recording me playing Spore, it only froze for a split-second once.  Everything that happened onscreen was captured very smoothly, including playing HD QuickTime movies. And then things start getting way more marvelous—not only can you capture the microphone’s audio input (speaking along with your demo as you record), but you can also capture video (from your iSight, webcam, or any video camera that is hooked up). This secondary video is automatically synced up with onscreen actions, so your talking head appears in a little window alongside your screen demo, a very nice touch.

But the real gem in ScreenFlow lies inside its editing interface. The timeline-based editor will instantly feel comfortable to anyone who has spent time in iMovie, Final Cut, or any other video app.

In editing mode, you’ve got a wide variety of tools for easily tweaking the captured video, adding in effects that bring polish to your final product. Zooms, callouts, titles, and many other types of visual enhancements that require serious work with tools, such as Adobe After Effects, are just a few clicks away in ScreenFlow.

Every time you click the mouse while recording, ScreenFlow will keep track of the click, as well as the use of most of the keys on your keyboard. Press Command-C to copy while recording your Photoshop work, and when you turn on a toggle to show keyboard input while editing the captured video, an overlay automatically appears with the Command-C visual icons. On the other hand, mouse-clicks can be visually highlighted with an instant “radar” visual effect, as well as making the cursor or pointer larger after the fact, wonderful for making cursors visible against a crowded desktop.  You can even use a custom icon or image as your mouse cursor.  This is useful if you are an iPhone developer, etc. so you can use a finger as your mouse cursor.

Once you’ve edited together your screencast, you can save it as a QuickTime movie, and we found that ScreenFlow made our output movies as clear as can be—scaling screen-captured video is often a problem for other software solutions, but ScreenFlow delivered exquisite, final-quality compressed video.

Bottom Line:

ScreenFlow is full of tools that really expand what we’ve come to expect from screen-capture software.  Screenflow makes it quite easy to make amazing professional recordings of onscreen activity with minimal effort and with a relatively low price. It’s the first-rate tool for people who make software tutorials and screencasts.