Looking for free video screen capture software for mac I found there to be a great abundance… of nothing. There isn’t a single free pice of screen capture software that doesn’t have water marks or limited options unless you pay for it.
With this in mind I wanted to make sure if I had to pay it was worth it. Out of all the different screen capturing software I’ve seen ScreenFlow seems to be the best. It has a wide appeal to novice users and experts alike.
ScreenFlow has two stages, the capture stage and the edit stage. Capturing is very simple and not very customizable, it just does it. Where ScreenFlow comes into its own is with the edit. See ScreenFlow captures everything by default and then you can do what you want with it. You can’t capture just one window, but you can highlight any window and fade or blur out the background. You can’t select a specific area to record but you can zoom to any section you like in the editor.
It seems like they have thought through all the nifty little things that you might want to do with a screen capture and added them in easy steps. You can add little click effects, you can zoom into the mouse pointer, add text where ever you want as well as many other features that make your videos look more professional.
Now, though limited the capture stage is very important. You are presented with 4 options:
- Record desktop from (I discovered this when I plugged in my second monitor, you can select which you want to record
- Record video from (lets you record from your built in iSight or external video source)
- Record audio from (select the audio source to record complete with VDU)
- Record computer audio (If you want to record sounds from the computer, e.g. application sounds, games sounds).
This is all you need to set up ScreenFlow and then hit record and everything is taken care of.
The last and possibly most important part of any screen capture software is the export. With out good export features it doesn’t matter how good it captures and how shiny it looks you can’t do anything with it, it’s useless! ScreenFlow is very simple, you can select one of the presets which include web ready formats, iPhone, iPod, Windows Media as well as high quality formats such as PAL DV and NTSC DV. There are also options to customize your preset, so you can select your own compression techniques as you would in say Premier Pro.
ScreenFlow really is ideal for video screen capture, wether your a beginner or a pro. What ever is on your screen it will capture, video, games, sounds, it will even record your webcam and put it in a little box on your screen for you.
The one thing I would suggest as will all video screen capture software you need your own microphone. A head set mic will do the trick, but don’t use an internally build microphone as they tend to pick up lots of noise from your computer.
ScreenFlow Website: www.telestream.net
Example: Video tutorial made with ScreenFlow
