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Mac OS X users have several screen-casting applications to choose from, but the best one by a margin remains ScreenFlow. With the release of version 2 Telestream has upped the bar for other screen-cast software developers.
After having played with ScreenFlow 2 for about a week, I do believe ScreenFlow 2 has everything a professional online educator or presentator will need in a package that is extremely well designed and user friendly. That’s not to say ScreenFlow 2 is an all-in-one package; all-in-one packages often do a lot of things well on average but few things excellently.
ScreenFlow 2 is excellent at recording screen motion and events. It can even add sophisticated effects, but if perfection and the integration of a screen recording with Keynote presentations, etc. is what you’re after, you’ll still want to use the most appropriate tools for those jobs—Final Cut, SoundTrack, Logic, etc.
The most interesting new features Telestream has developed for ScreenFlow 2 (in my opinion anyway) are transitions, clip speed adjustment, screen recording pause, separate audio channels, and action curves. Audio ducking is nice, and so are drag and drop, document packaging, YouTube publishing and freeze frames. Personally I think colour correction is not something you’ll be craving for.
Almost all the new features work without you ever having to reach out for a menu. Transitions, for example, are simply created by dragging a clip over another one and right-clicking the context menu if you want to change the default transition type.
What I found extremely important is the ability to separate the audio channel from the video channel. It allows you to reuse audio in more than one project. Personally, I would have liked to be able to drag both audio and video to the desktop in some default export format. Instead, wen you drag the media out of ScreenFlow 2, you’ll get ScreenFlow files that on my system were by default associated with Final Cut Studio’s Color application.
Separate audio from the video channel
Action curves let you ease-in and ease-out (or not) screen actions, including recording and mouse pointer actions. They add sophistication to these actions that wasn’t available in the previous version.
On my system, the audio (mic) channel was automatically separated from the video channel. If you’re also using system audio, that channel can now be separated from video as well. Audio has also gained effect functionality, i.e. you can change the way your recordings sound, e.g. the echoes of a large church or the sound dampening of a wine cellar. However, if you want to finish the whole project to perfection and apply mastering effects such as iZotope’s Ozone to your audio, you’ll have to export your project and edit it in Final Cut Studio or similar software.
Slowing down a clip’s playing speed is great when you realise you can’t talk as fast as the events you’re recording; the same applies to freeze frames. The latter allow you to create a 2-second (by default) clip that has nothing happening so you can catch up with your voice-over and keep on breathing as well. Adjusting speed is done by dragging a slider and creating freeze frames is little more than selecting “Add Freeze Frame” or keying in “Command-Shift-F” with the cursor on the playhead.
YouTube export is a good idea, but better yet: ScreenFlow exports to any format much faster than its predecessor.
To conclude, I was very excited about the new version and most of that excitement has been met with excellently implemented new functionality. Some users may be disappointed to find ScreenFlow 2 isn’t Camtasia with its “one-application-does-all” approach. I’ve never used Camtasia, so I can’t tell if it’s any good at what it does, but I do know this: ScreenFlow is excellent at what it does, and I personally don’t mind a bit to finish a project to perfection in software that’s better suited for broadcast quality output than anything else on the market.
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