I have been asked several times if I knew of a solid screencasting tool for the Mac, and while for a short time Qarbon offered a version of ViewletBuilder for the Mac, there didn’t seem to be any packages nearly as nice as the Windows heavyweights. Duane points to a package called ScreenRecord that looks like it’ll get the job mostly done. Unlike the oft-mentioned vnc2swf, ScreenRecord has the ability to include audio with your screen captures. ScreenRecord is currently selling for $20, but it looks like you may also have to pick up MediaEdit Pro along with it if you want to edit your screencasts after the initial capture. Not sure if you can include captions/thought balloons, and the brief manual says ScreenRecord can “export to any QuickTime compatible movie” – I suspect that doesn’t include Flash 🙁 Hmm, poking around a bit more on the same site I also see ScreenAction Studio, which seems to do pretty much the same thing – will have to try them both.
My iBook is currently dead, but when I get me one of them fancy new MacBooks I’ll be sure to give this a whirl and report back. (ha! now I have to get one ’cause I just told the whole world I was going to! 😉
Technorati Tags: Screencasting, OSX, Tutorials
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13 Responses to “Finding a Screencasting Tool for Mac OS X”
If you’re already using a Mac, just use iMovie to edit – it’s free, and bundled with your MacBook…
I tried doing a recording on my quad G5, and it wasn’t able to do much. Snapz ProX performs MUCH better…
Thanks D’Arcy – you’re saying you tried ScreenRecord, but it wasn’t as good as SnapzProX? Snapz only costs $70, which is cheaper than the Windows products by a bit – will add it to my list of software to try once I can. 🙂
Check out iShowU. It’s free at the moment, but will eventually be released as a commercial product in the US$40-80 range.
I too recommend SnapzProX. I’ve used it several times to embed “screen movies” into Keynote presentations. Quality of resulting QuickTime movie is quite good,
Just tried iShowU – what a nice app! Perhaps simpler to use than Snapz Pro X – I’ll have to do a comparison. It felt like it was more straightforward to just get going with iShowU. The quality is really nice, too. I recorded a sample session at 800×512 and it didn’t miss anything, recording at 30+ fps. Even downsizing that for iPod playback was totally readable and smooth. It’s got some preset recording settings, and you can add your own as well.
Source recording: http://dnorman.tlc.ucalgary.ca/demo/ishowu/iShowU-Capture1.mov
iPod version: http://dnorman.tlc.ucalgary.ca/demo/ishowu/iShowU-Capture1.m4v
I even did a quick test recording fullscreen at 1680×1050, and it totally held its own.
http://dnorman.tlc.ucalgary.ca/demo/ishowu/fullscreen.mov
I’ll leave the files up for a while, but they’ll eventually disappear because they are just versions of a lame demo recording…
Looks like iShowI will be cheap, too. $40-80, depending on what they finally decide on.
I’ll be sure to check out SnapzProX when I’m able. Can it (or something else, perhaps QuickTime Pro) export to Flash? My belief has always been that Flash is the best cross-platform option for displaying short screencasts…
Sigh, and that’s why I would prefer to be able to export to Flash. Thanks very much D’Arcy, for the examples, but on my machine at least QT threw me an error message and wouldn’t allow me to see the video. Got to see it after firing up VLC, but couldn’t see your cursor – is it there when you view the MOV? It looked nice and clean though, and the audio came through as well. Thanks again for the demos!
With Wally’s help we’ve verified that Sorenson Squeeze can convert from QuickTime MOV to Macromedia Flash (SWF) files, so to me that would seem to be a vital piece of the puzzle when using any of the aforementioned tools to create a screencast on the Mac. Unfortunately, unless they have an educational price, that’s going to add another $200 or so to the project price.
Incidentally, I heard back from the folks who make ScreenRecord and ScreenAction Studio, and they suggest, “ScreenAction Studio would be best if you want to edit the captures afterwards. You can add/edit audio or music, add text, transitions, and much more. You cannot export to flash, but you can export to any QuickTime supported format.
The good thing is you can try before you buy. There are no real limitations in the demo.”
Just found someone else wishing for the same thing on the same day, and not coming up with any better solutions.
I finally decided on iShowU for my screencasts. The app is pretty darn good considering how young it is. From what I can tell the developer is very active and has big plans for the future.
The main problem with iShowU is you really need to buy something else to reduce the video size. I purchased QuickTime pro and use it for minor edits and reductions. While this seemed expensive at first, it turns out that the combo was less than Snapz.
Also, the final size seems pretty big, imo. From my screencast demos page you can see that a 12 minute screencast at 640×480 takes up 75 meg. I was hoping H.264 would crunch it more, especially since the image doesn’t change much. Any ideas how to reduce this? Maybe H.264 is not the best algorithm for screencasts?
There is also display eater, no sound, but fast.
http://www.reversecode.com/displayEater/displayeater.html
For those interested in exporting screencasts to Flash format, Visual Hub will do this quite nicely:
http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/
It’s only about $25.
For the most robust screen capture / screencasting tool available…you can checkout ViewletBuilder from Qarbon.
http://www.qarbon.com/download/