Screencasting with ScreenFlow
Okay, I’ve been talking a little bit about screen capture apps, mentioning snapz pro x and ishowu. I think for doing something like capturing game action (WoW junkies, listen up), ishowu is probably the best choice (Update: I don’t think this is the case anymore. I think ScreenFlow is probably better for this too). But for general screen presentation, a recently released product called ScreenFlow just flat out rocks. For how simple it is to make great screen casts, it’s pretty mind blowing really. And for $99.00, it’s a bargain for anyone who depends on screen casts for a living or for serious information sharing.
ScreenFlow takes the approach of recording the whole screen area, unlike some of the other screen video capture tools. You can adjust the zoom, and you can crop the area if you want. But basically, it starts off by default capturing the whole screen and then letting you add Video Events to do what you want within that space.
Below are the media tracks in my video: the isight track on top, and the screen capture video underneath.
If you watch my video on MS Interoperability that was produced with ScreenFlow, you’ll see that I am capturing the screen as well as my isight video, and that I then slide the isight video off the screen and change my zoom and focus areas as I go. These are all done by adding video events on the appropriate media track, and then making those events be whatever change I want. The length of the event determines how quickly the changes take place. In the image below, the purple squares on the two media tracks are video events I’ve added to slide the isight image off the screen, and zoom in on the various things I’m discussing.
The changes can be made on the workspace by moving things, cropping things, etc, or in the Properties panels. Here is the video properties panel for the screen track. As you see, you can also edit audio properties, cursor effects, and more.
You can start/stop recording with Command-Shift-2, or use the ScreenFlow menu in the menu bar by clicking its icon. The neat thing is, you can stop, then start again and it will ask if you want to append to the existing project, or make a new one.
There’s a lot more to this application, so download a copy and have at it. Any video exported will display “DEMO MODE” in nice huge letters across it unless you unlock it by purchasing a key for $99.00.
