iShowU: Review and Giveaway
Posted by Michael Mistretta on 12/2/07 in Featured, Podcasting, Video
As rich media on the internet continues to evolve, text becomes a more mundane way of expressing yourself. This is where iShowU shines. iShowU is the easiest, and quickest way to record your screen, and share it with anyone around the world.
Video capturing applications have always been few and far between, because video is so much more complicated to deal with than still pictures. However, iShowU is able to overcome this difficulty, and provides a seamless experience for the user.
iShowU is a powerful app with a simple interface. It’s single-window gives you a variety of options that let you choose the video format that is best for what you want. Want a HD video to be burned on a DVD? Want a small file, with highly compressed video, but good voice quality? Want a video with very high frame rate, and no audio? iShowU can give you that with just a click of a button. It comes populated with a variety of video formats for you to choose from. And unlike other applications, iShowU does not give you complex compression types. Instead, it surpasses the actual compression, and focuses on what the user wants. If you want a small video for the web, click the preset “Small, High Quality, Small file”. It’s really that easy.
Recording a video is as easy as clicking the Record button after clicking a preset. The video begins to record, and is noticeable by a red light in the menu bar. However, the best thing about this application comes when you are finished the video. When you click the Stop Recording button, the video immediately shows up on your desktop. You don’t need to wait for compressing or encoding. You are done. This saves a lot of time, and allows the application to be used more experimentally, knowing that there won’t be a long wait rendering.
Once you start to use more of the advanced features in iShowU, you can modify the current pre-sets, or make your own. iShowU allows you to choose whether you want to record the microphone or the system audio. It lets you choose the quality of the audio, and gives you an audio level indicator so you can see how well your microphone is working.
iShowU offers a bunch of video options, and makes it so easy that really anyone jump right in. The quality options are on a slider, that make it easy for anyone to choose how much quality they want or need. And if you don’t know which compression type or quality type to choose from, you can experiment with different mini-videos. There is nothing to risk, because you don’t have the long render time at the end. Finally, iShowU even allows you to add a countdown before your video recording, which allows you to have all of your windows ready before the recording starts.
There is one feature in iShowU that is executed perfectly. Many video recording apps will give you a spot to enter your capture size, or the size of the video you are recording. You will have to enter a predetermined size such as ‘640 x 480′. iShowU offers this option for advanced users, but also provides a much easier solution. By clicking the Edit Recording Size button, iShowU will dim your entire screen, except for the area that will be recorded. You can easily drag the corners of this window bigger or smaller to increase or decrease the recording area. You can also hit Cmd-1 through Cmd-4 to use their helpful presets, which are in determined by the size of your screen.
iShowU is a unique application that acheives something very complex flawlessly. With the easy, understandable presets, no render times, and ability to edit recording size fast and easily, iShowU stands out as an application that was thought out from a user interface perspective. At the same time, iShowU is not a watered down version of screen recording software. It also includes high-end and professional options that are easy to grasp and understand, yet very powerful. For $20, you can’t go wrong with iShowU, and you will end up with a very professional result.
Shinywhitebox, the makers of iShowU, have offered to give away one license of iShowU randomly to one lucky MacApper reader. To enter the contest simply comment, and describe one feature that you’d like to see added in a future version of iShowU.
Be sure to subscribe to MacApper to not miss any of our regular giveaways!
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As mentioned before, an automatic export to iMovie 08 would be awesome. And further a function for some simple macros would be great, e.g. to hide all the windows except for the activ when you hover the left bottom corner of the recorded field.
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