iShowU HD and HD Pro: A Super-HD Upgrade

About a year ago shinywhitebox’s iShowU, the amazing and simple screen capturing app, was reviewed by Michael. Today, I am here to tell you about their newest versions of iShowU, called iShowU HD and HD Pro.

iShowU HD and HD Pro still have the same basis as iShowU: real time screen capturing. This means that there is no need to encode your move after it has been made, because it is being encoded in real time. This is a feature that, in my opinion, moves iShowU ahead of most other screen capturing apps. It also has the usual system audio and microphone recording, pausing, and mouse following.

One of the simplest ‘duh’ features that was added in HD and HD pro is custom backgrounds. Instead of having to use another app to cover everything on your desktop, and change to a simple wallpaper, you can just do it right in the app. In the advanced pane, just choose an image under the ‘Custom background’ field, and that will be set as your desktop every time it opens. If you want to have no icons on your desktop, just uncheck ‘Show icons on desktop’. Of course, when you quit, your icons will be displayed and your background will be set back to your original one.

Another feature that has been added in most other screen capturing apps already is iSight and webcam support. If you want to be in your video along with your computer, you just click the Camera toolbar item, and a box will appear with your iSight. You can move, resize and adjust settings of this box, too. To adjust the settings, change the items in the Quick Properties HUD that popped up. When you are finished editing it, just click elsewhere on the screen.

One amazing feature for those of us with slow computers, though only available with HD Pro, is the Low CPU usage mode. When I say amazing, I really mean it. This mode uses about 1/3 the amount of CPU that regular mode uses! To enable it, just hit the checkbox labeled ‘Start in Low CPU mode’, and when you record, this mode will be enabled. The only downside to it is the fact that iShowU will have to compress the video afterwards, so it won’t end up being real-time capturing.

There are a few other nice improvements that are worth mentioning. You can now upload directly to a service like YouTube, by just right-clicking on a video in the bottom of the window, and clicking Upload > YouTube. Right now it only supports YouTube, but the folks at shinywhitebox have released an API, so users can make uploaders for others and release them to the public.

Another improvement is its ability to record fullscreen apps. Before, if you opened a game that went fullscreen, you would have to worry about the capture area, resolution, etc. But now, you don’t. As soon as you open up a fullscreen app, it automatically adjusts all the settings for you! How’s that for service!

shinywhitebox’s iShowU HD Pro retails for $59.95, and HD retails for only $29.95. For a screen capturing app, that is pretty cheap. It also has many features that other screen capturing apps don’t have, so I suggest that you give it a try.

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