Needing something to create good, clear screen recordings

I am having to creating tutorials of our learning system and the tools, such as Camtasia Studio or Adobe Captivate, are PC only and are sorely crash prone.

I would like to find something mac based that I could use to create screen recordings that are crisp and that can be edited in FCP.

Ambrosia's SnapzPro X.

[www.ambrosiasw.com]


www.derekmok.com

I use the software Derek mentions above.

Not entirely happy so please let me know if you find something better.
(Its very slow and usually crashes for recordings over 5 minutes and all files I save have 10fps for some unexplainable reasoon)

Derek have you had these issues?

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

I used to use Snapz Pro but started having lots of problems with it. Tech support never answered my emails so I gave up and moved on to iShowU which is MUCH better.

The problem with Snapz Pro is that it captures to it's own file format first and after you've hit stop, transcodes to the codec you choose. This can be painfully slow. In contrast, iShowU does a straight capture to the codec and the file is ready literally a second after you stop capturing.

Martin Baker
[www.digital-heaven.co.uk]
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps

Ohh nice one Martin. I just did a job last night where I had to capture a stupid animated Powerpoint presentation that wouldn't export properly - did it wth Snapz but it was 17 minutes long and took forever to convert at the end. It does lovely quality, though.

Great price on the iShowU too. Worth a look.

> It's very slow and usually crashes for recordings over 5 minutes and all files I save have
> 10fps for some unexplainable reasoon

Strange, that doesn't happen to me. I don't usually need to screen-capture at super-high qualities (I usually go Sorenson 3), but I have also used it to capture in Uncompressed 10-bit SD, NTSC, and in my case Snapz Pro X doesn't crash. However, Martin's gripe about Snapz Pro having to "capture twice" is dead on -- after playing the captured material, Snapz Pro still needs to save the thing, and I can say that I once clicked on the wrong button and the entire capture was discarded. No files saved, unrecoverable, and the event was one-time only.


www.derekmok.com

>>I once clicked on the wrong button and the entire capture was discarded. No files saved, unrecoverable, and the event was one-time only.<<

Oh man - that had to hurt.
I have nightmares about that kind of thing. That and the rhino on the train with the cheese sandwiches.