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February 14, 2008

software

ScreenFlow aims to capture your screen (and your heart)

Posted Feb. 14, ’08, 3:12 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

ScreenFlowThe screencast market has mainly been a tug-of-war between the venerable SnapzProX and young buck iShowU, but today, a dark horse candidate emerged from the nether realms to plant its own flag in the eternal battle. Vara Software’s ScreenFlow may be the scrappy unknown kid in the screencasting arena, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t got some tricks up its sleeve.

ScreenFlow is a one-stop-shop for screencasting, allowing you not only to record your entire screen, but also simultaneously capture video and audio from your Mac’s iSight camera and microphone (and computer audio to boot). There’s also a built-in editing interface to trim your screencast into fighting shape, the ability to create callouts (highlight certain sections of the screen, like a window or the cursor), and pan & zoom capabilities (so your screencasts can look like they were produced by Ken Burns). Optimized to take advantage of hardware features like SSE and AltiVec, ScreenFlow can even record high quality DVD video, Keynote presentations, and 3D graphics.

Of course, you’ll need the hardware and software to take advantage of all this: ScreenFlow requires Leopard, a G4 or Intel processor, and a Quartz Extreme capable graphics card. Oh, and if you want the full version (a fully functional demo will pop a watermark on anything you export) you’ll need $99 too. That’s a little more expensive than the competitors, but there’s a lot of functionality going into the package.

I’ve played around with the software for a few minutes this afternoon and I’ve got to say that it seems pretty darn cool. From what I can tell, it’s fast, responsive, stable, and has a boatload of features. In fact, it’s spiffy enough that it almost makes me want to do screencasts—and that seems like the ultimate compliment to me.


3 Comments

krye said:

Wow. They had me at the demo! I've used iShowU and SnapProX before. ScreenFlow has them beat!

February 14, 2008 3:28 PM
Goobimama said:

Looks awesome!

February 15, 2008 2:40 AM
Joe said:

It''s strange that I came across this story in your blog completely on accident just 10 mins after using the demo. I must say, it is AWESOME! I was running a ton of apps and Unreal Tourn. 2003 (windowed) and was pretty much using up every thread that my poor processor had. I was sure that when I went to review the footage it would be choppy and unsightly. I was shocked to find that it recorded everything flawlessly!! Now if I just could spare 100 f#$@*ing dollars I'd buy it and start screen casting...

February 17, 2008 2:18 AM

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