OT: screen recording software

I have been using Camtasia for some of my projects. I haven't been too impressed with it. Are the others that you would recommend. I use it most for tutorials of navigating through software. I don't need it to record my voice but it's cool if it can.

Thanks for you help

-Laurie

Try ScreenFlow or iShowU.

I was checking out iShowU.

are there any hickups or issues with this software you have come across?

iShowU is great for a quick recording- especially if you just want to feature a single part of the screen. And the rendering is really quick so you can just capture and have a movie ready to go. I personally find at least on my machine it picks up a fair amount of graphical glitches when recording things in FCP- especially when you move windows around or play high bitrate footage.

I'm using Screenflow a lot more now because it lets you capture the entire screen and zoom into portions and even enlarge the foreground window after screen capture is complete. It also features a built-in editor that lets you do very quick and painless zoom ins and call outs that you'd spend days getting right in FCP or Motion from an iShowU recording. And it captures everything in FCP without missing a frame or glitches.

The only downside is that you have to render out the movie when you're done with the edit in Screenflow. This takes some time- maybe 1-3 minutes per minute of on screen action, depending on how many zoom ins and call outs you've done. But personally I'm totally blown away by how much easier it is to do good screen recordings in Screenflow. I'm using it right now on my RED video:

[www.callboxlive.com]

-Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
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Screenflow seems to be the way to go. Look like they will be releasing an upgrade next week.
Thank you so much for the break down. testimonials are always the best = )

Screenflow is better than iShowU, IMHO.

Kevin Monahan
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I just downloaded the Screenflow demo. I am impressed. I think will suit my needs much better than camtasia. iShowU looks good but Screenflow seems to be a few steps ahead.
Thanks again.

The only downside of Screenflow as Noah said is the render time. With iShowU you set the codec and that's what gets captured. Stop the capture and you're done.

I like SnapZ Pro. I've tried Screenflow, but....

The reason why the render time is longish in ScreenFlow is because it's doing a very high resolution capture of the full screen. The results would be good enough for HD use if you exported it to ProRes for example.

If you have Matrox CompressHD the encoding is slightly faster than real time.

It's not even that slow- just did a screen recording of 3 minutes that took 3 minutes to render- not bad.

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

just tried iShowU's demo. I am officially sold on ScreenFlow. Though I see what you mean about the rendering time (which wasn't too too bad), the quality of the video makes it worth it. I got that vapor trail look whenever I moved window in a recording in iShow. It is nice how iShowU works with FCP. However being able just to get what of effects and edits in ScreenFlop was a time savor for me.

Telestream is pouring a lot of money and energy into ScreenFlow since they bought it, so yeah its a good choice.

Michael Horton
-------------------

The rendering to H.264 is impressively fast.

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

What kind of problems have you had with Camtasia?

While Screenflow does have a lot of impressive features, even when captured to Animation it is not as clean as Snapz is when going to Animation. It can't handle gradients as well, adding some pink fringing in window shadow gradients. It also locks you into their proprietary edit format so if you want to edit things professionally(i.e. Final Cut), you have to export out to a QT movie and then if you have multi-channel audio, you have to do it twice since it will merge the tracks otherwise.

iShowUHD is by far the quickest and better option in my opinion, however it can have audio dropouts which is just not cool. So for the highest quality, flexibility, and reliability, we still use Snapz. One day iShowU will be there but just not yet...

Camtasia would crash for me when it comes to large recordings. It wasn't very user friendly or streamline IMO. I asked a co-worker to sum up Camtasia in one word and he nailed it, "Clunky"

Snapz is impressive. I like the ability to select one window, mulitple windows, the whole screen, or a certain section. The price is nice too.

I still feel that ScreenFlow is right for me. iShowU and Snapz are good applications too.

The feedback in the forum is fantastic.

That banding issue will be gone soon.
The proprietary codec keeps the quality up and file size down. It's great in all cases except the darn gradients but that issue will be gone.

ScreenFlow 2 will be out in a few weeks.

Someone asked if it'll bring me breakfast in bed.
My response, how do you like your eggs?

I use Macvide ScreenCap on Mac and Screen VidShot on Windows. I don't know if these apps are "the best" but both work well for me.