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Perhaps you want to create a software training on your Mac, or you just want to show people something that can be done with an application. For that, you’ll need to have a screencast recording program, and on the Mac there are at least five of these that are usable to professionals: ScreenFlow, Screenium, iShowU, iShowU HD Pro, and Snapz Pro with QuickTime recording option. We tested all five of them on performance and quality.
You can record a screencast in two ways. You either record the entire screen or a small portion of it. If you choose the second method it’s best to let the area follow your mouse wherever it goes. Actually, there’s a third way to record which is to record a fixed area of your screen, but that’s only efficient when you know in advance you’ll be working within that small area all the time.
I tested the five applications on my old Power Mac and on the latest (loan) Mac Mini. The applications were nowhere close to each other in terms of performance. However, in terms of output quality, much depends on the codecs you can use. In other words, if you have QuickTime Pro or perhaps Final Cut Pro on your Mac, you can choose from an extensive list of codecs. If you don’t, the list may be a lot shorter and the output options a lot more limited. On the Power Mac I tested the applications using an area of 800 x 600 pixels with the “follow the mouse” method. I repeated this with every application that supports this (only ScreenFlow does not). This area is the biggest my machine’s basic video card can handle without dropping frames. In addition, I tested every application with a complete screen recording, but only on the Mac Mini.
I started with the last version of Snapz Pro with QuickTime movie recording option. Many people these days find Snapz Pro an under-performing application because it lacks the visual appeal of most Leopard programs. That may well be true, but Snapz Pro’s screen recording feature is the fastest of the lot.
Snapz Pro’s recording algorithm was the fastest when recording. Snapz Pro, as well as all the other screen recording programs that allow you to record “follow the mouse” areas, allows you to display a border around the recording area while recording. There were no lags nor did I notice the recording border dragging its heels. The compression into a QuickTime movie afterwards was as fast or slow as with any of the other five screen recording programs, except perhaps iShowU HD, which compresses video in realtime on the Mac Mini.
On the Mac Mini, Snapz Pro behaved even faster, as could be expected. The second program that I tested was ScreenFlow. On the Power Mac, ScreenFlow was simply unusable. The 1600 x 1200 pixels display simply is too much for the graphics card (an nVidia GeForce 5200 with 64 MB of VRAM), resulting in a very choppy recording with many frames dropping.
On the Mac Mini, however, ScreenFlow behaved as it is supposed to. No frames were dropping, no lags with screen actions like pulling down a menu, moving a window, etc. Telestream acquired ScreenFlow and made it a standard for professional screencasting, but it does need an Intel Mac or at least a Power Mac with a decent video card. For a professional product, I consider that to be normal requirements.
Screenium's mouse following lagged seriously behind the cursor
New to me were the three last contenders. I got Screenium before I received iShowU and iShowU HD, so I tested Screenium first. Screenium has a compellingly simple interface, offering you the opportunity to record full screen, a fixed or moving area, or the foremost (active) window. As in ScreenFlow and unlike Snapz Pro, Screenium also lets you turn on mouse click effects, keys being pressed, etc, etc.
The window only recording capability seemed like unique to me, so I thought I’d give that one a try. It worked nicely until I decided to resize the window. Screenium doesn’t update this—I doubt if any recording software can—so I ended up with a recording that started with a full window being recorded and ending with only part of that window still visible.
I then tried out Screenium’s mouse following option. That proved to be a bit of a challenge in its own right: the recording area was lagging far behind to what my cursor was doing with a strange looking, choppy screencast as a result. All this as tested on the Power Mac. As soon as I switched to the Mac Mini, Screenium performed brilliantly—which made me conclude Screenium’s optimisation really needs an Intel Mac or at least a video card with more VRAM on board.
The last two screencast recording applications were iShowU and iShowU HD Pro. The difference between these two are the interface and the capabilities. iShowU is the least powerful of the two. It has basic screencast recording features like mouse following, recording parts of the screen and audio recording.
iShowU HD has a lot more going for it. It additionally allows for on the fly scaling and webcam support. It will also record OpenGL applications (games) and has a built-in web uploading functionality. The Pro version that I was allowed to review has higher-end professional features, including the ability to embed watermarks, record keystrokes, CoreAudio support (multi-channel mixer), support for Final Cut Pro and a Low CPU usage mode.
iShowU performed almost as good as Snapz Pro. The only difference with Snapz Pro was that it potentially output the resulting video directly, instead of having to go trhough an extra compression step. It has roughly the same features, so that was a nice surprise, since neither ScreenFlow nor Screenium performed really good on the Power Mac.
iShowU HD was a different beast. This is software that is meant to record and output in one streaming operation. You might therefore be excused to think iShowU HD needs a hefty machine. That couldn’t be further from the truth, although an Intel Mac is not a luxury—but the Mac Mini did fine. iShowU HD integrates with Final Cut Pro but also lets you directly export your screencast to YouTube or other online video services. It records your screen any way you want, and when recording is over—and on a fast machine in real time, while recording still occurs—the movie clip is compressed. Once compressed, it is available inside iShowU HD’s filmstrip.
That’s very convenient because you never have to leave the program, saving time in-between recordings. Exporting to Final Cut Pro proved equally a no-brainer: you just start Final Cut, bring iShowU HD forward and drag the clip onto the timeline. Presto: a Final Cut clip that immediately renders!
And the Winner is...
What makes iShowU HD unique is that you can set the program to use less CPU power when it can (Auto mode), and that you can even force the program to do so. In forced mode, if other applications require more CPU power, you’ll get dropped frames. In Auto mode, iShowU HD will decide for you when it can afford to consume less CPU power. The Low CPU mode made iShowU HD perform at an acceptable rate on the Power Mac for areas up to the test area, although that was really the limit.
It really came into its own on the Mac Mini, though. Additionally, iShowU HD is the only software that has a monitoring window, which shows you in realtime how much CPU/GPU load the recording session is generating.
So, which screencast recording software do you need? Well, the two best performing and most appealing solutions on Intel Macs are ScreenFlow and iShowU HD. ScreenFlow has an easier to use interface in my opinion, but both programs perform very close to each other on all parameters. Screenium is certainly a nice application, but I found it less performing than the two just mentioned. On Power Macs, the two winners are Snapz Pro and iShowU. It’s hard to choose between these two as they are so close to each other. If you can live with a smaller area for comfort, iShowU HD is also a viable option on the Power Mac.
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