In reality, of course there are ways to view Video encoded for Microsoft Media Viewer in Quicktime, as well as many other formats of video. The way to do this is to snag a couple free plug-ins that install preference panes and will do the job of getting you compatible with the world.
Look, just for fun, I’ve included pictures of the web sites. Yay.
Flip4Mac installs an app and also a preference pane in your system preferences for the Flip4Mac plug-in.
Next, head over to the Perian web site and snag a copy of that plug-in as well. Perian handles a ton of different formats, and between the two of these plug-ins, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve tried to watch yet that I can’t.
Perian also installs as a preference pane in System Preferences, and you probably noticed its icon near the Flip4Mac icon in the System prefs screenshot above.
Ok, well, as much fun as it was laughing that the New Interoperable Microsoft was showcasing videos that weren’t interoperable, in reality it’s easy to set yourself up for viewing such fine works of art as the highlights of Microsoft acting like they are the first people in the world to grasp that data needs to move around and open source is not going to curl up and die. Hooray, Behemoth!
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.
Awhile ago, I promised to talk about stuff no one cares about, and I’m gonna fulfill that promise for you, the non-reader. Non-reader? That’s right, i know none of you are reading anyway. But if you are, please don’t tell me. Right now the pressure level here is at zero. I kinda like it that way.
One of the things I really like about the Mac is the amount of ease in making media on this platform. For podcasting, there’s things like Ubercaster and GarageBand, for grabbing any kind of sound like skype conversations, online radio, iTunes music, any other sound on your Mac, there’s Audio Hijack Pro and Wiretap Studio. And for doing video capture, there’s excellent options such as Snapz Pro X and iShowU. Let’s look at iShowU, which has quickly become my favorite video capture app on the mac.
Running iShowU brings up the following application window.
On the left is a “presets” pane, so you can easily select a specific group of settings to use for your video. Anytime you tweak any of the settings in a preset, the new settings are saved automatically, so be aware. You can also add new presets and put your own settings in.
Then in the larger pane, there’s detailed options for the audio, video, and some miscellaneous UI settings. This is where you’ll determine what sound sources to grab, what the video size and quality and capture area will be, as well as encoding method, etc, and then whether or not to show the cursor, show capture guides, follow the mouse (can cause nausea, so be careful), etc.
To set up the record area, you can click “Edit Recording Area” at the bottom of the screen, or do a command-shift-3 instead. You can then resize and position the recording area as shown here.
Even here, there’s some helpful preset shortcuts. Press command-4 to go full screen size, and then command-3 down to command-1 for 1/2 size, 1/4 size, and 1/8 size. Or just use the area select rectangles edge handles and resize it to whatever you want. Move it around as you would any other area selection tool, and hit return when done to save the recording area settings.
Okay, well that’s all wonderful, but how do you record? Well, you can either use the record button on the iShowU window, or you can hide it and start recording with command-a. Command-p pauses and resumes, command-c lets you set the area again, and command-t stops the recording. The keyboard shortcuts can be found in the iShowU preferences.
iShowU has a menubar icon when running that lets you choose these things also, but more importantly it has a red flashing square when you are recording, and red lines when you are paused, so you always know what state of capture are you in or not in. It’s mildly annoying to get everything set up and record for 20 minutes without actually starting the recording. Ahem.
I like iShowU for its flexibility, the ability to pause, the quick ’save as you go’ method, and other good stuff. This does mean that you can’t change the video or audio settings after the recording - you’re stuck with whatever you chose beforehand - but that’s fine for most uses and the program works very well in all cases.
Here’s a demo clip I made on creating encrypted dmg files (see my earlier blog post) using iShowU. Please note that it looks kind of fuzzy, and that’s partially due to YouTube’s compression, and partially because I should have used less recording area for what I was doing. When YouTube shrinks it down, it gets hard to see stuff.
You can download a demo of the product here, and I recommend doing so. BTW, this works great under leopard.
