In the past few weeks I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to participate in the ScreenFlow 2.0 Beta. For those that are new to the blog and perhaps unfamiliar with ScreenFlow it is a screencasting development application for the Mac platform. I have been a user and admirer of the software for some time and use it extensively in my daily work flow as an academic, it provides what I consider the best screencasting development solution available and is pivotal in my development of e-learning materials.
The previous available version was 1.5.4 which although fantastic suffers from some limitations, features such as 2D & 3D transitions and direct export to YouTube are not available, despite being popular features among screencasters. Audio cannot be separated from video in a combined clip and overall production features such as pausing of video, audio ducking & clip speed manipulation are missing. Additionally although 1.5.4 works in Snow Leopard, there are some little GUI bugs and glitches. The good news is that all of these issues have been addressed in version 2.0, and it’s finally here – you can grab your copy now over at Telestream.
I downloaded and installed ScreenFlow 2.0 Beta approximately three weeks ago and spent the last few weeks “playing” with the new features. To start with the installation procedure was painless and hassle free, once installed the application seems to launch a little faster – perhaps optimisation has been made for Snow Leopard. The main GUI bug in the previous version has been addressed and now the interface displays as expected in all it’s wondrous glory. I first tried opening some of my existing recordings to see how the new version would handle these, to my delight everything worked fine – I sampled about ten different files each making use of some of the old features and all behaved as expected.
Next I tried creating some new Screencasts, one of the things that particularly impresses me about ScreenFlow is how efficient the application is. Even when recording my system never feels like it is being strained as is the case with other screencasting applications. I have a 2.8GHz Intel Core Duo with 4GB DDR3 RAM & an nVidia 9600GT graphics card running Mac OS 10.6 – activity monitor never indicated a CPU usage of over 28% even when recording HD video, which I consider very impressive. Some new recordings made then I decided to experiment with some of the new transitions, these are easy to use and work really well. Dragging clips together provides a transition state which you use to determine what type of transition you wish to make use of. They provide an extra level of polish and just raise the bar that little bit higher on the professional presentation level. The new audio ducking features works really well lowering a background track in conjunction with voice over or commentary and the ability to change clip speeds has many uses.
From there I experimented with export settings and I believe it is safe to say that ScreenFlow’s usual quality has been maintained if not improved upon – a variety of presets are available including multi-pass exports for when the need arises. The export time is now quicker also, it’s hard to say exactly by how much, but certainly from using the application for a variety of exports I feel it is nippier. Exports are also possible directly to your YouTube account which works really well – you don’t even need to leave ScreenFlow to share your content with your channel subscribers – very handy and something I’m sure I will be making use of.
I’m very excited that everyone finally has the chance to try out the definitive screencasting application on the Mac – having sampled many others I can say with no hesitation that this is the pinnacle of screencasting development on the platform. Nothing comes close in terms of quality, performance and professional screencasts. If you work in education, are responsible for e-learning development or simply want an effective way of communicating I strongly suggest that you check ScreenFlow 2.0 out.Pricing details can be found here
Well done everyone at Telestream – you guys deserve much credit for the the development & marketing of such a fantastic application.
Rating: 
