Seriously, how often are you ever going to need to record a video of what's on the screen of your Mac? Unless you are the sort who routinely demonstrates things, you know it's not a very big number of times -- but we're going to tell you that it is precisely the same number of times that you should be using
ScreenFlow 5.01.
People record their Mac screens when they're, for instance, trying to show someone how to do something but can't be there in person -- say, a relative or friend. A video is worth a thousand "no, the green button" emails. There's also recording FaceTime calls, assuming you have the permission of your caller, and there are now ways to plug in cameras or iOS devices, and record from those. While those new features must add many users, any way you cut it, this is not a mass-market product.
Especially not since there is also the fact that OS X includes a screen-recording feature as standard. QuickTime Player is, despite the name, also a recorder -- and there is an option right there in the menus for recording your screen. It's not bad, either: you can specify whether you want the whole screen recorded, or just drag to select a particular portion -- which is especially handy if you need to record a tiny Skype window on your 27-inch iMac screen. Then when you've recorded something, you can make a very basic edit by optionally trimming the start and the end, until you have just what you want.
That could be enough for many people, and maybe it even should be enough, but there are problems. Under OS X Yosemite, QuickTime Player's recording may crash in the first thirty seconds or so because of a bug with the audio. If that's happening to you, change the audio setting to a different microphone, or to no mic at all, and it will work. It'll record in silence, but it'll work. We also tried other screen capture utilities, and found that they worked okay on general recordings -- but failed on FaceTime or Skype. They made both of those judder: not just the recording of it, but also the live phone calls. We have to put a lot of the blame on a slow Mac or we'd name names here, but whether it was our iMac's fault or the QuickTime software we're not sure -- however, ScreenFlow gave us no trouble at all.
One thing we didn't like at first about Screenflow was that it records your entire screen. QuickTime lets you drag across a portion of your screen to record only that. When we recently did a Dragon Dictate video, we in truth had notes on screen next to the Dragon Dictate window, reminding us what points we wanted to make. You couldn't see that, because we didn't record it. With ScreenFlow, we would have had to record it. However, ScreenFlow gives you vastly more control
after you've recorded something: to hide our notes like we did, we could just (later) crop in around just whatever area we wanted to show you. The end result is the same, but the facilities in ScreenFlow are smarter and better, and they feel faster.
There is also a delicious extra in the controls for editing videos you've recorded. Say you're recording a FaceTime call: ScreenFlow now captures both what you see on the screen -- so the caller you're talking to, and a small window with you in it -- and also what your Mac's camera is sending to the other person. They are separate tracks, so you can play your side back to see how great you look on a 27-inch screen (or not). Were you to need to "change camera angles" in your finished video for variety's sake, this makes that effortless.
ScreenFlow has so many nice, fine touches such as this: when you're recording your Mac's desktop, one menu option will hide all the messy icons there (not that
you have any on your desktop, lovely organized reader). Of course it does that -- but we hadn't seen it in other tools, and we like it a lot. It's a bit disconcerting at first, as you somehow expect them to come back after you've finished recording, and instead you have to un-tick that menu option.
It worked flawlessly, it worked delightfully, if we were the sort of site to try putting numbers on ratings, then ScreenFlow wouldn't just get five out of five, it would get 10 out of five. Instead, we don't like fiddling about with subjective numbers so instead, we'll say this plainly: if you can conceive of a use for it, buy ScreenFlow 5.01. That's it. Just buy it.
ScreenFlow 5.01 requires OS X 10.9.5 or higher, and
costs $100 from the official site, where you can also download a free trial.
Who is ScreenFlow 5.01 for:
Everyone in the world who needs to record what's on the screen of their Mac. We reckon that's about 17 people, apart from perhaps your YouTube producers, but they will be 17 very happy people with this app.
Who is ScreenFlow 5.01 not for:
The millions of sensible Mac users who have never even thought of recording their screen, and so will forever miss out on how good this app is.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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