Mac Options For Capturing A Video of Your Screen
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Since I started working on the video series for Mac servers, I had the opportunity to try out a few different application for video screen captures. Some are good, some are better. Here are the Mac screen recorder options I found and what I thought of them.
ScreenRecord
Website: http://www.miensoftware.com/screenrecord.html
Price: $19.95
Demo: No time limit but “Demo Version” appears on movie
The product had a few neat options like the ability to stream to a DV camera and updated feedback on free disk space. The program can also record audio and full screen. The only problem was that it crashed on me everytime I tried to record a movie. I am on an Intel iMac and this app is not a Universal Binary. It doesn’t seem to run under Rosetta at all.
FreeMacBlog Score: 2/10 It may be a nice Mac screen recorder, but it needs to be updated to work with Intel Macs.
Screen Movie Recorder
Website: http://alphaomega.software.free.fr/screenmovierecorder
Price: $18.83 (15 Euros)
Demo: Time Limit On Movies
This application has a very easy interface. There are three options to choose from upon startup. You can choose the frame recording speed, you can chose to have the recording follow the mouse and you can choose whether to show the mouse or display it as a cross. Personally, I had a hard time seeing the cross on the recording so I’d prefer to keep the mouse as the regular icon, but I don’t think that is an option.
You start the recording with the item in the menu bar. This menu item gives feedback. Green means ready, Red means recording, yellow means encoding. As soon as you start, you’ll be asked to draw the size of your frame and then off you go. Once you are done, the encoding is fast, but Quicktime is the only option.
I didn’t like the fact that there was no audio recording option. Also, the Application needs to stay in the dock while you are recording.
FreeMacBlog Score: 7/10 - Easy interface. Needs audio recording and a hot key combo for recording start. Mouse should be visible if desired.
Screen Mimic
Website: http://www.polarian.com/products/ScreenMimic.php
Price: $24.95
Demo: 15 second movies only
The obvious advantage this app has is the ability to export the movie as SWF, FLV, and Quicktime. This is great for those who prefer to use flash for size and compatibility. However, there is no audio recording option.
You can choose whether to record a certain area, just one window, or the whole screen and recording is started with a key combination. But, the application stays there in the dock while recording. I like the fact that the frame rate is chose automatically because sometimes that is hard to gauge for inexperienced users.
When you are finished with the movie, the encoding is pretty quick. You can choose to save the movie in all three formats at once. Also, once it is finished, the app gives you the chance to take a look at the movie. If it is not what you were looking for, you can re-encode it changing the frame rate and the mouse settings.
FreeMacBlog Score: 8/10 The flash output is a huge benefit. Also, I like the second chance encoding options. I’d really like to see a audio recording option and a more lenient demo.
iShowU
Website: http://shinywhitebox.com/home/features/features.html
Price: $20
Demo: Large text on video recording
The first thing you notice about this app is the ability to set presets. This is incredibly useful. You can have different ones for podcasts, online tutorials, Love CPU Usage, etc. There are three there by default, but you can add as many as you’d like.
You have the option to record different quality levels of audio (with visual feedback and AAC compression), and can encode the video with any of a large list of options. (H.264 by default) You can choose whether or not to record the mouse. Also, you can slow the capture rate when the mouse is not moving. This is great for while you are just talking. It keeps the final file size down.
There are four capture sizes to choose from, you can can drag the corners to your desired size. You have full control over whether iShowU has an icon in the dock, automatically hides itself when you begin recording and whether or not it shows up in the status bar.
FreeMacBlog.com score: 9/10 This Mac screen recorder is close to perfect, but I wish the demo was a little less annoying so you could really see the finished video.
Snapz Pro X
Website: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
Price: $69
Demo: 30 days unlimited, with annoying pop-ups
This is the grand daddy of video screen capture programs, but personally I think it is being surpassed. First, there is no Universal Binary for this app. It ran fine under Rosetta on my Intel iMac, but it wouldn’t start up at all on my MacBook.
The demo on this product is very giving. They really let you try it out. There are a ton of options to tweak…maybe too many. Personally, I don’t like the way it takes over your regular screen capture. I prefer an application that I can start up when I need to record my screen, and then quit when I’m done.
I do like that the application runs headless and records audio.
The encoding take a LONG time when you are finished with your video. I suppose this has to do with the fact that it is running under Rosetta for me. The finished product does look good though, and I like that you can change the size in encoding. (For example, have the movie be 60% actual size)
FreeMacBlog Score: 6/10 I may catch some heat for this low score, but I just think the app is too all-encompasing when you just want to do a quick video or two. The lack of support for Intel is going to be more and more obvious as people switch over. Also, the price is incredibly high. (Update: 6/28, They have now released a new version of Snapz Pro X. It is not Universal, but it is said to perform better on Intel Macs.)
Final Conclusion
When I started looking for video recording options, I didn’t know there were this many Mac screen recorder options out there. After trying them all, I think I’ll stick with iShowU. The developer offers a good product at a good price. Also, he is quick to offer support. The second option would be Screen Mimic, especially if you are intending to work with flash videos.
When it comes down to it, I’d love to see this ability included in Mac OS X.
(Are you a digg user? Please digg this article)
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:43 am
For a similar, equally cool, overview, see http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2006/07/getting-ready-for-screencasting.html
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Thank you for posting this information! I am in a nonprofit organization and money is always tight. I have been looking for screen video capture software for awhile that was cheaper than Snapz, but they’re all anybody talks about.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Patrick, I know the feeling. That is why I went out sarching for some different ones. Glad it helped you.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:31 am
thanks for the aticle, quite often, when you go to MUGs, and ask about video capture apps, the only one that gets mentioned is snapz, and I kept telling myself “there has to be a better option out there”. And, there was, thankyou, I don’t like it how snapz takes over the system aswell. Also, I would like to see apple incorporate this feature into leopard (or maby 10.6), it’s (normally) impossible to beat features built into the OS.
I use the built in software whenever I can.
- Ben
August 24th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Hi, have you thought about Vertical Moon’s Screenography?
http://www.verticalmoon.com/products/screenography/screenography.htm
it exports to AVI, DV, FLC, Image Sequence, MPEG-4, MOV, SWF, FLV, and Flash Projector files (self-executable). Altough I don’t know if there’s universal binary yet but it seems powerful.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Unfortunately, your experience with Snapz does not end there. My experience with Ambrosia’s offering as a whole is that they are overpriced, second-rate apps, and slow to receive updates to boot. Thanks for the review, I’ll be sure to check the others out.
August 24th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
I agree. I just bought IShowU yesterday after doing my own research.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Thanks for the rundown. I’m a happy Snapz user, but can understand some of the negative comments. FWIW, you can keep Snapz from “taking over your machine” in a couple of ways. First, deselect it from your login items (system prefs). You can start it only when you need it that way. Second, just change the keyboard shortcut. Mine is Ctrl`, which is used for no other app I know of.
Perhaps Ambrosia has gotten a bit lazy these days. I still depend on Snapz for more than just movies, but I’ll check out IShowU as well.
Thanks again.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Thanks for the reviews. The price for Snapz Pro was a bit of a sting, but overall I’m pretty satisfied with it. It did what I needed to do at the time. I’m definitely going to check out iShowU.
August 28th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I am afraid you are completely wrong about ScreenMovieRecorder. It is overall, a piece of ____. The app causes immense systemwide lag when you are recording with it, and has a horrible interface. It does not allow you to choose the compressor so you get gigantic files (about 1 gb every 2 minutes 400 x 400 px) and worst of all, when you register, you realize, that there was never any limit to begin with. It is a horrible app, and I give it a 0 of 10. It plain sucks.
September 14th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
I’m in a situation similar to Patrick’s (see above). I bought IShowU based upon your recommendation, and I have not been disappointed. Thanks.
October 4th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Another recorder that is not mentioned is Display Eater.
http://www.reversecode.com/displayEater/displayeater.html
October 13th, 2006 at 3:54 am
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October 26th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
I tried all these apps, but all of them (at least in the demos) seem to have very choppy recording. Is there anything I need to do to fix this, or is my hardware just not powerful enough (Powerbook G4, 1.25 Ghz, 1.25 GB RAM)?
October 26th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
If you dig through the old files on your hard drive, you might just find an older version of iShowU. It used to be free, and you can tell it not to take the new updates. Even the old versions have all the features described here, although they are not universal.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:58 am
I found the iShowU recording to be ok but a little more choppy than I’d like (as Mithun describes) when trying to capture a youtube video. What I’m noticing is that the youtube video is running fine (is not choppy at all) until I turn on the iShowU recorder. Then the video becomes choppy. Perhaps this is a sign that it is a computer performance issue? Anyone who knows more about these things have a thought on this?
March 12th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Nick — why don’t you just download the .flv from youtube (check your activity monitor in safari) and open it in quicktime (using perian)?
May 13th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I really liked iShowU and Screenmimic, both ran great on my Macbook. The Flash export seemed nice, but the exported swf has no controls:-(. A nice app. on Win is BBFlashback, which puts a usable control bar on the swf files it makes. It looks like I’ll get iShowU and convert to wmv for my windows clients.
August 14th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Hi, I will buy ishowu, I use sibelius and with their score scroll I can finally see a moving screen without pages, and use it to peform, well when I’ve made a movie of it!!
August 18th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Thanks a ton! You saved me $50!!
August 28th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Thanks to your honest opinions, I’ve had great success with iShow You!
I love it, it’s easy to use, it i can iMovie can easily edit it. Even when I compress the vids to 15 frames per second,…the quality of the video is awesome!
September 20th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Thanks for the info! I think I am going to use iShowU. I had tried Screen Movie Recorder before I found your reviews, but it’s worthless. It doesn’t record sound, runs real slow, and doesn’t produce good results. Luckily I didn’t need to buy it.
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:25 am
I went to the Genius Bar at Apple London the other day with this very question, they and the other staff did not give me the time of day. VERY unhelpful. Thanks for your review
October 4th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I just tried Screenography and it sucks. I tried to capture full screen on my 24″ core 2 duo iMac and it choked up completely. I was lucky enough to kill it after about 5 minutes.
I tried Snapz and it recorded full screen just fine w/ no hiccups at all. The encoding takes a few minutes though. I think the Snapz Intel version is much better now. I may buy that one, we’ll see.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:40 am
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October 20th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Thanks for sharing the review, as I want to record screen and couldn’t find good software for it, but your review is very good to let me know there are so many softwares around for recording screen. ^_^
March 20th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I agree with the above comments, and you helped me a lot.
Thanks from France for this great review!
March 20th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Thanks for the great review! A few months back, I saw a demo movie that highlighted the movement of the mouse– the screen was dimmed but a circle surrounded the mouse as it moved– and whenever the demonstrator typed on the keyboard, the keystrokes popped up on the screen, complete with modifier keys. It was an awesome setup, but when I emailed the site owner, he was gracious enough to completely ignore my question about what software he was using to do this.
Anybody seen this before? Is this maybe a Quicksilver feature? Useability? Anybody?
Thanks!