Screen-Capturing Face-Off

As Mac users, we have many choices for screen-capturing. Some are great, some are okay, but not many are horrible — for the most part, they work. Well, I am here to talk about what are, in my opinion, the top five. I am going to go by price, just to make it easy for you to find what you want.

Screenflick ($20)

The point of Screenflick seems to be making screen-capturing easy. All you have to do to create a recording is set a size, set some audio and keyboard settings, and then hit record. It does all of the encoding after you record, so your processor is not running hot during the recording, but you have to wait a while after. When you are done recording, you can choose how to encode the video, and (if you want audio) how to encode that, too. What Screenflick doesn’t have in features, it makes up for in performance and simplicity.

Another thing that Screenflick offers is a library of recordings. Instead of creating a recording, and then just saving when it’s done, all of your videos are stored in a folder at full quality, allowing you to export as many times as you would like. You can also enable things like showing mouse clicks and keyboard actions.

Grade: B

Séquence ($29)

The purpose of Séquence seems to be the ability to just open it up and get going. But yet, this does take away from its feature set. Séquence does allow you to draw before and during a screen-recording. So instead of having options to show keyboard shortcuts or mouse clicks, you can point things out with a drawing. Nice concept, and it does work, but this is really one of only two special features in Séquence. The other special feature is the ability to record from an iSight or other Webcam at the same time as your screen so you can put yourself in the video without having to record twice.

Séquence gives you barely any audio and video export options (comparatively), and there is no library. But, for what it’s worth, you can also take screen-snapshots in it, too (with the drawing tool). I think that for someone who likes ease-of-use and doesn’t care about export options, Séquence is right, but I’m personally not willing to give up nice features for this.

Grade: C

Screenium ($29)

Screenium may not be the easiest to use, but it’s not lacking at all in features. Its first major feature is its vast audio support. You can choose from many audio sources that you might not even know about. The second is that it has a library, so you can export later and record at a lossless format. The third is its Webcam support. Like Séquence, you can attach a Webcam (or use a built-in iSight) and have your face in your video. But, not only can you just record it, you can also have it flipped vertically and horizontally. The next one (I lost count!) is called HotText. With this you can create a keyboard shortcut that will display a nice little transparent window to show text for a certain duration. You can place it in 9 different positions, and have it displayed for anywhere from 1 to 120 seconds. The last notable feature in Screenium is its Single window recording. Some apps say they do single window recording, but they really just record the area where the window started. Screenium actually follows the window! Granted, if you move it, it gets a bit jagged, but it is still really nice to have.

I must say that you cannot go wrong with Screenium. It has many of the features in more expensive screen-capturing apps, and more. And what’s better, it was just released, meaning it will only get much better!

Grade: A-

iShowU HD & HD Pro ($29.95 & $59.95)

iShowU has been out for a while, and just recently has shinywhitebox released the HD and HD Pro versions. The main reason you would want to use iShowU HD is for real-time recording and features. It has many formats (not as many as others) to record to, and you can even upload directly to services like YouTube. iShowU HD contains a library, but not one with lossless files — they are just the files in their lossy format. Like many of the others, you can record from your iSight. iShowU does do single-window recording, but it is not nearly as good as Screenium’s. It just expects that the window stays still. Because of its real-time recording, HD Pro can be processor intensive, so it has a mode called Low-CPU mode. This just records the changes from the last frame, and then puts it together at the end. I have noticed a huge difference on my MacBook when using this mode, so it does work. One thing that I just don’t get is why there is no option for non-real-time recording, if we really don’t need it fast. A nice little feature that iShowU HD has is the ability to preview what your video will look like in the main window. However, it can be a processor hog.

The differences between HD and HD Pro are the Low-CPU mode, watermarking, audio mixing, key recording, and compatibility with Final Cut. Some of these features should be in HD, but HD is cheap enough that it doesn’t matter that much. Overall, iShowU HD looks very polished, and works well.

Grade: B+

ScreenFlow ($99)

You cannot really talk about Mac screen-capturing without talking about ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow makes it easy to create a screen-capturing session (just the click of a button), but also gives you many post-production tools. Like most of the others, ScreenFlow supports iSights. One neat feature is support for multiple video sources. You can click the Add Media button, and then you can use other videos too. The nice thing about ScreenFlow is everything that you do to your video is post-production. You don’t have to worry about anything beforehand. It really gives you a miniature studio to edit your video, all in one application.

In most ways, ScreenFlow has the biggest feature set, but it comes at a price — it is almost double any of the others. If you do screencasts professionally, or for something important, you may find it worth it, but I don’t think it’s the app for the average user.

Grade: B+

I hope this has given you a good idea of the good screen-capturing apps out there. In case you didn’t read it, my favorite is Screenium, but they are all good apps — you really can’t go too wrong. If there are any apps that you think were left out, or should be added, just tell us.

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