31 Days, 31 Products: ScreenFlow

Day 05: ScreenFlow

This post is part of a larger series where for 31 days I’m posting a story about a particular product or service I’ve come to enjoy.

ScreenFlow is a best in class tool for screen capturing and video editing. Typically I use ScreenFlow to make screencasts, short videos primary featuring action from my desktop with a voice narration. These screencasts are incredibly powerful, wether it’s a short demo to accompany a code pull request or feature walkthrough for the client. Having these screencasts not only answers questions but creates archivable value in that they can be replayed for new developers or stakeholders in the future. I also use ScreenFlow to assemble and edit the video and audio sources for our CocoaHead videos.

So even though modern OS X has limited support in QuickTime for capturing the screen, I still recommend ScreenFlow. Its capture tools are really easy to use and can capture multiple things at once (like the desktop, your camera, your voice and the computer audio — all on separate editing tracks). Once your editing you’ll have even more power to trim the movie, speed up boring things like text entry, and cleanup the audio track.

ScreenFlow has a free trial download available on it’s website and when your ready to buy a license it will cost you $99 from Telestream’s store or the Mac App Store.