ScreenFlow from Telestream
Have you ever wanted to record your World of Warcraft game or make a video tutorial of your website, but you can’t find a program to do it? Well with ScreenFlow from Telestream you can! Screen flow allows you to take a movie of anything on your Mac, and then edit it in their program which is very easy to use.
I have been looking for free software that records the action on your computer screen for years. I found all the demos out there, but none of them fit the bill. Now that I have an actual product I can see what the huge difference is. ScreenFlow is worth every penny!
When you open up ScreenFlow you will see a transparent box that asks you what options it should include in the recording. The three options are 1. Record video from built in iSight, 2. Record audio from built in microphone, and 3. Record computer audio. You hit the big red button to record.
Once your recording is finished the fun starts. Your computer will automatically open a new window that has all the editing controls on it. If you have used Macs for a long time you will notice that the control panel looks like the old iMovie. In this control panel you can change the video properties (the angle the picture is at), audio properties, the screen recording properties (eg., if you want the mouse to be showing zoom in when the mouse is clicked), media, text and callout action (eg., flash pointer when clicked should make a noise when clicked).
We created a short tutorial on Different District for exporting Word 2008 documents (.docx) to 2004 compatible documents (.doc). This movie was made very easily in ScreenFlow. http://differentdistrict.com/video/other/SavingWord08Docs.mov
This is one of the only consumer level screen recording software packages on the market that has video editing software built in. If you were familiar with the old iMovie this program is very easy to use because it has the same design with better options.
This is a great application for companies that make software (or a website) that is complicated to use. You can easily make a few short tutorials to help train your customers, and reduce the time you’ll need on your support lines. One of my favorite features in ScreenFlow is the click effect. This makes a red circle appear for a minute around the cursor when you click on something. This is a cool idea because some people can not see the tiny mouse on the screen when watching a video.
The only downside with Screenflow is that when you are recording video on your computer it may lag. It will not lag in the video itself but it does significantly slow down everything else. I was running it on a new 2GHz aluminum MacBook.
I would give this a 95 out of 100. This is the best video recording software I’ve used, easy to learn, easy to edit, and it outputs great videos. I highly suggest getting this for your Mac.
