a review by Tom Piper
I have long been fascinated with the tools which can capture things that are displayed on the Mac screen. Of course, a simple Command-Shift-3 with take a snapshot of the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 any portion of it. But, what about capturing movement, sound and sequence of activities in real time? I was absolutely blown away by a brand new product that does it all in a most eloquent way.
ScreenFlow, new from Vara Software Inc., is a “professional screencasting studio” for creating amazing screen recordings on the Mac, only in Mac OS X Leopard. Using a unique new screen capture system, powerful enough to capture the contents of your entire desktop at the same time as your video camera, microphone and computer's audio, you'll be creating incredible screencasts in no time. The finished result is a QuickTime movie, ready for publishing to your website or blog.
As their website describes, you can record from desktop, a video camera, microphone and computer's audio simultaneously, use powerful editing tools, highlight using Callouts, place video in 3D, produce highest quality exporting, and include easy narration of presentations. Here is a detailed outline of features:
• Record Everything: You don't need to pick an area of the screen for capture, ScreenFlow has advanced algorithms 
that only encode areas of change on your screen. The application is powerful enough to simultaneously record from your iSight or DV camera at the same time as your screen (and your microphone and computer's audio!).
• The Best Capture: ScreenFlow has the best screen capture available. Using a custom multithreaded SSE & Altivec accelerated, 64-bit enabled compression system, ScreenFlow can handle everything from capturing DVD video & audio to fast moving Keynote presentations.
• Edit: Once your screen capture is complete, you're transported to the ScreenFlow editor. Using a familiar timeline interface, ScreenFlow lets you easily add zoom & pan effects, trim clips, add drop shadow & reflection, adjust audio levels etc. You can even combine existing media into your screencast.
• Highlight: During your screen capture ScreenFlow tracks where your mouse cursor is, when you click and when you press a key. This allows you to add mouse click effects (both visual and audible), an overlay showing your key strokes and even lets you zoom the mouse pointer up & down.
• Callout: Callouts let you highlight & focus in on the mouse or frontmost window. Want to circle the area around the mouse? What took an experienced user minutes or hours in Final Cut Pro or After Effects is now a couple of clicks away.
• Motion: ScreenFlow introduces actions to the editing interface. These make it very quick & easy to modify parameters of your screencast over time. For example, adding a video action lets you put zoom & pan effects on your clips, while the audio action lets you adjust volume at different points in your screencast.
• Export Quality: When resizing high resolution screen content into a QuickTime movie, ScreenFlow uses custom GPU algorithms to give your finished movie the best possible quality. You'll find even small text suddenly becomes legible for your viewers.
The initial controls are simple and straight-forward with a small camera image in the top menu displaying a drop-down menu with the commands: Record, Configure Recording... , and Stop ScreenFlow. Click on Configure, and the image at right appears showing that I can record either my left or right screen, the ADD video from my iSight camera (or other video source), as well as sound from my computer and/or another outside souce . . . all at the click of a button. The red dot button starts a 3 second countdown and the recording begins. I go back to the same button to stop the recording. Once stopped, the recorded image comes up with a panel of controls at the right (see below) for video, audio, screen and callouts:
Across the bottom of the captured recording are the standard playback controls, as well as the ability to edit the size of the recorded track. Most impressive to me was the “zoom” ability that allowed me to capture just a portion of the screen (yes, you can even grab and shift the screen under the recording “window” to get to the right place), AND you can resize and distort the recording window with the corner and side buttons. Editing is actually FUN!!!
When done, you can save it in any number of formats that will play back on your Mac, iPod, iPhone or other device. Its a great way for me to capture everything from YouTube videos to instructional movies for other users.
There are a number of descriptive videos on their website at: http://www.varasoftware.com. You can download it and evaluate it first to see if you like it before buying it (remember, Leopard only). If you do like it, it can be yours for $99.99. They also have other programs like Wirecast and Videocue for high-end users. If you like to capture video, this is a product that may well meet your needs.
