The book has just recently been published and is available in both print and e-book format, a characteristic of the Packt Publishing service. Needless to say my love of the electronic format and fascination with the Mahara software resulted in a day one purchase, something which I can recommend to anyone wishing to learn more about the open source e-portfolio solution. Mahara 1.2 E-Portfolio Beginners Guide is written by Richard William Hand, Derrin Michael Kent, Glenys Gillian Bradbury and Margaret Anne Kent – educational developers, Mahara learning designers and geeks one and all, which is evident as you read it’s pages. The book provides a step-by-step guide to building an impressive professional e-portfolio using Mahara. It covers the key features of Mahara that will help you set up your customised digital portfolio and display artifacts in your preferred way allowing contribution from selected users only.

It introduces the reader to the exciting features of Mahara framework and helps the reader develop a feature-rich e-portfolio. Sections deal with features such as how to create folders, upload multiple files like journals, project documents, pictures, and videos and share them with your friends. You will learn to set up views of these files,  choosing to make them visible to your chosen friends only or be shared with whatever people you desire. You will learn to create blogs and forums and get connected to the rest of the world. Customisation and administration of your Mahara site will become easy after you have gone through this book. Imagine how good you will feel when you will see your knowledge, success, and ideas going live and available to your chosen audiences for their inputs.

The pacing is just right with a logical progression followed from the opening chapter through the various aspects of Mahara configuration and usage. I have always found the Packt Publishing books to be informative and educational but I believe this titles along with some of their Moodle books raises the bar in terms of instructional content. Each page provides valuable knowledge and insight into the use of an application which fascinates me and furthermore provides an invaluable service to my students at absolutely no cost. Packt Publishing’s targeting of open source software provides a unique resource for those embracing the new media culture and indeed the emerging culture of e-learning. The provides knowledge for just about every aspect of Mahara installation and use, some of the key concepts learnt include:

•    Create folders in Mahara
•    Upload multiple files – journals, reports, presentations, videos, and sound clips – easily and set permissions for your group to view, edit, and delete them
•    Create a blog in Mahara
•    Make an impressive profile using Mahara profile fields and tailor your own profile view
•    Create a new web page entirely from scratch and customize it to allow much more flexibility and control over who sees what and when
•    Set an environment to receive public or private feedback on your pictures, videos, and articles
•    Connect with other Mahara users and get social: discuss topics of common interest in forums and share views with each other
•    Customize and administer your Mahara site to our own preferences using a number of configuration settings for easy administration

I believe this book to be an incredible resource for anyone working in education or developing learning solutions, particularly those interested or working in the field of e-learning. It assumes no prior knowledge and covers in clear and concise detail everything that an academic, student or developer needs to know about the Mahara platform. It has provided me with hours of informative and engaging reading and resulted in the implementation of my own Mahara resource.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Competition

The lovely people at Packt Publishing have kindly offered to provide blog readers with the opportunity to win a copy of of one of their e-publications. The competition offers the winners to select any title from the Packt range more than three months old. The competition is open from now until the 12th March with one winner selected on Friday 5th March and another on the 12th. Entrants need to leave a reply to this post stating how they would use Mahara in their work flow to  support and enhance the learning process. Packt Publishing offer a great range of titles so I’m sure that everyone will find something of interest. Good luck.

I have talked a little about Moodle in the past and will do so again in the very near future on the blog but I would like to focus this post on Mahara. It is perhaps a little less well known but nonetheless an invaluable tool in supporting 21st century learning. Mahara is an open source e-portfolio platform and can be best understood by exploration of the concept of an e-portfolio.

E-Portfolios

An electronic portfolio or ePortfolio is a generic term encompassing as wide a range of types and products as there are reasons for using them. The simplest starting point is to consider an ePortfolio as an extension of the paper based-portfolio, bringing with it the obvious benefit of making a portfolio of evidence portable and shareable anywhere that you have Internet access – “the new generation of the three ring binder” JISC My World Project Final Report, Roberts. 2006

The Hama 61 folds to just 60cm while at full extension it stands 153cm tall – this provides a compact solution for carrying and transport while offering a good fixed height for recording while set up. The frame is sturdy and solid and the feet are designed to grip and adjust to the ground they are placed on via a self leveling process. Placement is aided by two built in spirit levels, allowing for precision recording and the legs have quick release mechanisms for quick setup and packing up. The camera/camcorder plate has a quick release mechanism for attachment purposes and the screw mechanism has a nice drop down screw to make things quick and easy.

The center column has a three way tilt/pan/flip head that works a treat allowing for professional pans and overall excellent movement – some of the cheaper priced tripods suffer from a jerky mechanism but the Hama is smooth with optional tightening mechanisms to control speed of movement. The carry case is a nice addition and has a full length should strap which makes carrying effortless and the unit itself has an integrated handle. Weighing in at just 1.2kg the unit never feels heavy while providing a solid dependable frame.

The Hama 61 will provide me with an excellent tool to develop professional movies with, videos produced with my Zi8 now have an extra level of polish. The Hama 61 retails for £30 but has features and a build quality of tripods at double that price and more. If you’re looking for a quality tripod solution at an affordable price look no further.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

After conducting some research I decided upon On The Job from Stuntsoftware. On The Job is an application designed to help you track your time and expenses, and bill your clients by easily and quickly creating professional invoices. The application is straightforward and easy to use letting you focus on what’s important. On The Job provides for the management of client details and the jobs associated with each. From there you can create fully customisable settings for invoice number generation. Clients contain Jobs and Invoices, both of which can be organized into folders. Jobs can contain four basic types of items: Timed, Fixed Cost, Quantity, and Mileage. These items correspond to line items on an invoice.

Timed items track time in timing sessions. A new session is added each time the timer is run. If you need to quickly add or adjust times, you can use Quick Add (for those times a client calls you at one in the morning and the last thing on your mind is starting a timer) and Quick Modify (in case you forgot to stop the timer when you started working on something else). Automatic idle time detection is built in. If you’ve left the timer running and walked away from your computer, On The Job will alert you when you return and give you the option of removing the time from your job. Furthermore you can see the status of your timer at a glance with the handy menu bar status item. Quickly start or stop the timer, or switch to a different task without ever bringing up the main window.

On The Job offers flexible invoice creation including invoices for specific date ranges, covering a single job, or spanning multiple jobs. Several invoice templates are included, but the real power shines through when you use the integrated template editor to create your own templates. Easily match existing stationery by dropping in a PDF background, or lay out graphical elements within the editor. Choose exactly what you would like to appear on the invoice. Include information such as footers, payment terms or tax information. The template editor is flexible enough to create more than just invoices. Quotes or time-sheets are just a few clicks away, since you can arrange tasks by type or date, and hide any columns you don’t want to show up. Invoices can also be custom tailored into any language or wording you like – you’re not stuck with the built-in choices.

I have some freelance work lined up over the coming months and I really don’t think I could effectively manage it all without the help of On The Job, it’s intuitive, powerful and caters for every need of freelance work.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The Screencasting handbook then is just such a guide, a comprehensive introduction to the world of screencasting with exploration of many of the fundamental concepts and practical advice on the production of screencasts with a variety of leading screencast development applications. The book is written by Ian Ozsvald co-founder of the screencast tutorial site ShowMeDo and founder of the professional screencasting company ProCasts. Ian has taken an interesting and new media centric approach to the creation and distribution of the book, interested parties can purchase the book from the Screencasting handbook website for a reduced cost at the moment as the book is not yet complete. Certain chapters are finished and already there is a wealth of information in place, but distribution is iterative with new releases being made available to paid users as they become available. The book is currently distributed in PDF format.

Screencasting is something which must be approached in a logical sense, much planning is needed before the recording phase and even more post production may be required before the screencast is complete. The Screencasting handbook thankfully follows a logical approach to the concept first making clear to readers what exactly screencasts are and how they may be used. From there various software applications are explored such as ScreenFlow & Camtasia studio with supporting chapters on developing screencasts in a given amount of time. The conflict of approaches between the “Making A Screencast In The Next 30 Minutes” and “Making A Screencast In 1-2 Days” is testament to the complexity involved in the production of professional industry standard screencasts as opposed to short quick means of communication or demonstration. Both are valid uses and both are explored here but it is a nice counter balance in terms of expectation and work involved. Subsequent chapters look at post production, distribution and the hardware requirements for successful screencast production such as microphone selection.

Even in it’s incomplete form the screencasting handbook makes for very informative and engaging reading for those interested in screencast production. The book caters for novices and experts alike and even those who consider themselves well exposed to the concept should find something of interest here. As an academic I find any resource that furthers the knowledge of educators in the terminology and creation of screencasting worthy of investment but I also appreciate that screencasts have many other outlets and others will find worth in investing here. The book to date is an excellent resource and I look forward to it’s completion in the coming months. I suggest anyone interested in screencasting or who makes use of screencasts with any degree of regularity investigate further. More information can be found at the books Google group here.

Default Folder X then solves this problem providing an intuitive and easy to use approach to the concept of saving files. An additional GUI component forms around the standard save dialog box within applications that provides a quick and easy way of accessing any directory on the Mac. Moreover the application allows for the setup of frequently accessed folders on an application basis, so if for example there are three or four folders that you use frequently when working on writing reports for example you can establish default folders for applications when doing that. There are a lot of customisation options such as the ability to have an icon in the menu bar for access to directories.

While this functionality may seem to already be available to you it really isn’t in any sort of usable way. The amount of time I spent trying to navigate between folders when working on projects is significant and more often than not I would save files to the desktop and move them to the directory of choice afterward. I really can’t stress how much of an improvement Default Folder X has made to my daily work flow, navigating the file structure of my MacBook Pro has never been easier and saving files is a breeze now. I can even perform additional tasks such as renaming files from within the save dialog box and can access recently used directories in seconds. It makes working with any application so much better.

I highly recommend that you check Default Folder X out, it may seem like something you can live without to begin with but the more you use it the more you will realise that it is a fantastic addition to any work flow. I am delighted to announced that the lovely people at St Clair Software have provided me with one copy to give away for free. All you have do is leave a comment in response to this post on the blog between now and 1st January stating how you think Default Folder would help with your work flow. The winner will be announced at the beginning of January. Best of luck.

Competition Winner is Erica – congratulations, check your email for further instructions. Thanks to everyone for taking part.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Over the past few days then I have been busy shopping, I spent Friday in the city with my brother picking up some presents and soaking up some of the changes that have developed since I was last there. I’m not a city person, I’ve worked in the two major ones in this part of the world and didn’t get on well with either. They can be great however for one day visits etc – I picked up some new comics from Forbidden Planet & some new gear in Cult as well as some goodies from the Apple store!! Saturday was spent in town doing some more shopping and visiting a few people I have barely had the time to say hello to over the past few months. I also established some fundamental goals for the blog and development projects over the weekend including the final conceptualisation of the GeekCaster Store and how that will function.

I’m really excited by the idea and look forward to getting that up and running in the near future. Speaking of development I really do love the software that I have on the Mac, I’ve said it before but I have no hesitation in saying it again – best computing experience ever. From the wonders of ScreenFlow to the awesomeness of Final Cut Express, with some Things to manage everything in between – it’s smooth development all the time. My primary focus in the last couple of sessions has been RapidWeaver development of the GeekCaster store and branding for the content. I have invested in some e-commerce software and need to spend time with that to establish how best to support store delivery etc. It’s all really interesting and engaging though so I don’t even think of it as work.

I need to put together some taster screencasts and tutorials to give people an idea of what to expect in the near future, those should be available in the next couple of days. The blog should also see some new articles being published in the very near future, commenting on topics such as the concept of screencasting, the year ahead, Dragon Age Origins, digital downloads and the Underworld movies – what a diverse range of topics. I hope to have the first of these available later tonight. For now I think some more Assassins Creed II followed by more LOTR is on the agenda, my digital copy of Dragon Age Origins for the MacBook Pro is almost 50% complete, still a good few hours to wait for that I imagine, still it’s gonna be awesome.

The HP Photosmart C4780 provides photo lab quality images, laser-quality text output and a host of features useful in my daily work flow. Out of the box setup was quick and painless, everything was wonderfully packaged and installation consists of power supply connection, ink cartridge installation, cartridge alignment and software installation. The printer functions on both Windows & Mac with my installation taking place on Mac OS X 10.6.2. The software CD provided is a little outdated so I advise that you visit HP and download the most current version to maximise functionality, the file is approximately 130MB in size. Once installation is complete the first thing that grabbed my attention was just how cool the printer looked, gone are the days of vanilla coloured beige machines – this is 2009 and black is back!!

In addition to printing the C4780 also provides for scanning and copying, which can even be performed while your computer is turned off. The device features a touch sensitive control panel that allows for all operations to be performed with ease. With the HP Photosmart C4780, you can print direct from your memory card. The inbuilt memory card reader lets you simply slip your card into the slot, and instantly view your pictures on the colour display. The all-in-one automatically removes red-eye and makes other adjustments to make sure you get perfect prints every time. Print speeds are very competitive with 29ppm black and 23 ppm colour, moreover the quality of the prints is the best I have seen for a non-laser device – crisp, sharp black text and vibrant bright colours are produced each and every time. This is largely due to the dual drop weight technology whereby small and large ink droplets are combined to create greater ink coverage on the page, increasing image quality and reducing the visibility of ink droplets.

For the first time ever I now don’t have to concern myself with the ugliness of a long USB cable between my desk and the placement of my printer. The distance was never far but it was inconvenient, now I can connect to the C4870 via a wireless connection and print documents & indeed scan images without the need for any cables. The wow factor continues with the HP iPrint Photo application which is available for free from the iTunes App store. It allows for quick and easy wireless printing of 4 x 6 photos from your iPod Touch or iPhone to the printer. The application is fully compatible with Apple’s Bonjour technology. ENERGY STAR qualified, this printer is optimised for efficient energy use. That means it will save you money by reducing energy costs and help to protect the environment without sacrificing features or performance. HP products that earn the ENERGY STAR qualification minimise greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the risk of climate change by meeting strict energy guidelines set by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The combination of wireless technology, high quality print functionality, sleek design and rich feature set make the C4780 the best printer I have purchased. I have always been a fan of HP all-in-one printers and this is the perfect example of why.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I don’t want to get into details just yet but lets just say it will involve ScreenFlow, Final Cut Express, various Mac software applications and a new website… I’m going to be a very busy chap in the weeks ahead, I’m still in the very early stages of development – research really : ) but I would like to think that I should have something concrete to discuss before the end of the year. Even though there still is a lot of actual development to be done I do have some very clear goals in mind. Firstly anything that I sell will be affordable relevant to the target audience – content will be primarily aimed at those looking to expand their knowledge base, both students and professionals. Furthermore content specific to certain scenarios will be made available – similar to the way in which a text book might target a given curriculum. Content will not be limited to educational provision however – there are many broader aspects to the content I have in mind, to keep with the motto of my Moodle VLE I wish to Educate, Inspire and help Create.

Keep checking the blog in the days ahead for more details.

Out of the box the headset looks pretty damn cool, it oozes professionalism; from it’s cool black tones, to the chunky build design. The goose-neck microphone provides additional geek admiration and the 2m long cable means that with the microphone placed back I have a very comfortable pair of headphones for listening. When I first saw the headset online it screamed instant buy right back at me. Apart from being aesthetically pleasing it also is extremely comfortable to wear and use, featuring an adjustable headband and microphone for comfort and precision.

The cool factor continues with the in-line volume control featuring instant mute capability and a blue LED connectivity indicator. The microphone itself has noise canceling functionality, a frequency response of 100 – 10 KHz and a sensitivity of -46 +- 3dB. I have performed several recordings for screencasts, used the headset for video conferencing and listened to music all with equal enjoyment and satisfaction. Sound quality is clear, sharp and of consistently high quality.

The Bush headset connects via USB and requires no additional driver install. Both the Windows and Mac OS platforms are supported and I can say with first hand experience that the headset performs without any issue on Mac OS X 10.6.2. If you require a production microphone for audio recording, podcasting, screencasting or broadcasting or are involved in audio production in just about any way I highly recommend the Bush headset as a worthy purchase.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Setup was quick and painless, simply connect the microphone via USB and change the input selection within systems preferences and your good to go. I did some test recordings in Garageband and I have to say that I was quite blown away with the difference in quality compared to the integrated MacBook Pro microphone. There is a great warmth to the sound and vocal narration seems to be clearer, the microphone also seems capable of picking up a greater variation in my voice tones so the sound seems more natural.

The Snowflake can be rested on a desk or can be attached over the top of the MacBook Pro screen to get the microphone to mouth level with hands free for production. It’s a nice little feature that I am sure will come in handy in the future. I hope to make regular use of the Snowflake in the weeks and months ahead, I feel it is a great investment, providing a professional level sound at an affordable price with the added bonus of working nicely with my MacBook Pro portable setup.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Check out the unboxing video below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zknUn8I1ld0

In conjunction with an upcoming e-learning event to be held on November 11^th the very kind people at Telestream have provided me with a copy of ScreenFlow 2.0 to give away to one lucky winner. The competition is open to viewers of the blog, listeners of the podcast and to those attending the event on the 11^th November.

To have a chance of winning all you have to do is identify how you would use ScreenFlow in your daily work flow. All entries will be judged in terms of creativity and usefulness and a winner announced on the 12^th November via the blog & podcast. If you are new to the concept of screencasting you can get some ideas via online research or by visiting Telestream. For example I use ScreenFlow for both software tutorial demonstrations and for providing students with video feedback on the work they have done.

Online entrants should add a comment to this post on the blog and will be asked to provide their email address for identification purposes, please make sure this is correct as details will be forwarded to this address. Only one entry per person please. Comments can be made by clicking the little sticky note to the right of the post.

Attendees at the e-learning conference will need to complete a paper based form available on the day.

The closing date & time for the competition will be 5.00pm GMT 11^th November.

Good luck, get creative and you could bag yourself a copy of the most powerful screencasting development application on the Mac.

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: 5 out of 5 stars

ProfCast creates ‘enhanced media files’ in the .m4a, .m4b, .m4v or .mov formats. These are audio files which contain chapter markers where you can include titles, images and web links. The images in these files can be viewed on an iPod with photo capabilities or video capabilities, through iTunes or even in QuickTime. The file extension m4b can be used so that the resulting AAC file will be “bookmarkable” and have chapter markers on non-clickwheel ipods as well (though chapter names and images will be missing) because that is the filename used for audiobooks, however clickwheel iPods with the new firmware installed treat m4a files the same as m4b files, so m4a files on those iPods will be bookmarkable and have chapters/chapter art/chapter links.

The integrated Podcast Manager will generate and publish RSS files (needed to create a podcast). You can add any media (even files not recorded with ProfCast) to your podcast by simply dragging the file onto the episode selector well (this will create a new episode for the media file) From the podcast manager you can publish to various servers including FTP, SFTP, MobileMe WebDAV or even a local folder. ProfCast also allows you to send your recorded presentation to GarageBand (version 3 or higher) for further editing. The Send to GarageBand option will export the raw materials (the recordings, the slides and the synchronization) for editing within Garage Band. You can edit all aspects of your podcast within GarageBand. When you have finished, you can use GarageBand to export your podcast episode to iWeb or save it as a file.

ProfCast gives you the ability to easily take a snap shot of a non-presentation images (Full Screen, Window or a Selection that you choose) and integrate it with your enhanced podcast! The new Screenshot utility can be called with an f-key that you configure and allows you to capture stationary screen shots of your demonstration, or a web page that you visit during your presentation. Use ⌘-tab to leave your presentation for demonstrations as opposed to the escape key. Already several of my students have commented on the video podcasts of lectures that I have made available, the new chapters thumbnail option in QuickTime X allows students to access the material they need quickly and effectively, this can also be done in a slightly less impressive manner via older version of QuickTime.

ProfCast is a revolutionary e-learning development tool that is now cemented into my development work flow, it makes lectures my lectures available to all my students at whatever time suits them and provides a rich multimedia centric approach to learning. It comes highly recommended.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

• Halo 3 ODST
• WET
• Pearl Jam & Monsters of Folk
• Neoprene Sleeve & HDD Case
• MobileMe
• Screencasts For Feedback
• Blood The Last Vampire / Doll House
• WD Studio HDD
• Transport Gear

This week is going to be insane at work – there is an inspection ongoing and the HE students start back – what was already an insane schedule just got crazier… But I should be able to work things in if I plan accordingly.

There are two great albums out tomorrow, well one of them actually got released today on the iTunes store – Monsters of Folk’s debut album and Pearl Jam’s latest Backspacer – I should be able to grab that at midnight tonight and should then be well kitted out in the audio entertainment department for a while. Review of both will feature in the upcoming podcast.

I ordered some really nice kit from Amazon recently and will be uploading an unboxing video for such to YouTube in the near future. Again I will have discussion on all in the podcast.

I’m just about finished working for the day, I just need to pack up and tidy this place a bit. I fancy some takeaway in a bit and have Blood The Last Vampire & more Doll House to watch this evening. Speaking of which the new season kicks off this week – if the greatness of the later half of last season is anyway maintained it’s gonna be epic stuff.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizi2mqTrUc

The design and implementation of learning materials has been revolutionised with the introduction of screencasting, never before have educators been able to develop materials that show first hand how to conduct a given procedure or use a particular piece of software with such visual clarity, apart from face to face consultation. Educational screencasts provide students with step by step instruction for viewing in their own time, wherever they choose and allow for repeated viewing and delivery at a rate that suits the student. Moreover educators can use screencasts to enrich the learning experience providing individual assignment feedback; imagine downloading a video where your tutor explains your grade, where you went wrong, what you could do to improve, all via video.

Screencasting is not limited to education however, it can be used for effective marketing of products particularly software via demonstration. It can allow help desk operators to provide tailor made solutions to problems, going through step by step how to resolve them. The possibilities really are endless. As an educator myself I have been making use of screencasts for some time now, up until this point my development has been based on the Windows platform via products like Camtasia Studio and Jing. Now using the Mac platform I thought it would be worthwhile to explore the concept of screencasting on the Mac.

After doing some research visiting various Mac forums and websites I identified that they were perhaps three or maybe four viable screencast solutions on the Mac namely IShowU, Screenium, Snapz Pro X and Screenflow. I experimented with all of these and while they all do a comparable job in producing quality screencasts, Screenflow stood out as the best of the lot. To begin with Screenflow is unique in it’s approach to screencasting, it records the entire screen all the time. Most of the other applications request that you select and area of the screen or a given window and while they allow for full screen capture it is treated almost as an exceptional circumstance. Won’t full screen capture mean choppy video and extremely large files I hear you say, well no and no. Screenflow is without doubt the most optimised screencast production suite I have used, my CPU never strains when recording screencasts and quite often I multitask as I record. Telestream, the developers of the product, have done a fantastic job in optimising the recording algorithm to maximise quality but keep operational overheads at a minimum.

When Screenflow launches you get some options to configure what you want to record; the screen, the computer audio, a secondary camera like the built in iSight and microphone audio. With your options configured you get a five second countdown before recording seamlessly begins. There are no distracting flashing icons, no processing slow down, just sleak professional production goodness. If you select a camera feed to be recorded this is not displayed on screen at record time, thus saving the need to adjust it’s placement according to the on screen display or it becoming a distraction, rather it is displayed in the post production stage where you have full editorial control. There are no time limits on a recording and once the process is complete Command + Shift + 2 will stop the recording process. From here the magic really happens!

The Screenflow editing interface is clean and well presented allowing viewing of the recorded screencast, the audio and video feeds and the inspector panels to control various elements of post production. As Screenflow is a screencasting suite creative control is given in post to allow for screen movement, zoom and pan effects, rotations, callouts, transitions, pointer effects, opacity controls, focus controls and many others. A good screencast is not simply recording your screen and saving the output as a video to distribute, a good screencast takes post production time to make it as effective as possible, the addition of motion blur, reflection and window focuses may be matter of aesthetics to some, but once you see how much better they make a production look, you will be prepared to take the time to add them to your production. In addition to video post production you can also edit the recorded sound, adding mix effects, muting the audio or adding fades are all possible.

The post production options really deserve a special mention here, everything about them from the intuitive manner in which they are presented to the simple procedures involved in their execution means that you don’t have to waste time making things look really good. Watermarks can be added via imported graphics, titles with the touch of a button, and jazzy off to on screen movements with a little animation. There are tutorial screencasts and documentation available for Screenflow but to be honest I have never needed them. Screenflow provides professional quality screencasts without having to be a media specialist.

Screenflow files can be saved native to the application for future editing or exported in variety of formats including iPod, Apple TV & HD. The export options do however give complete customisation options compliant with Quicktime for both audio and video, so pretty much every eventuality is covered. Another great benefit of Screenflow is the export time and quality, I usually use Web High or Highest as my export option and scale the video by 50% to 960×600 pixels, this is achieved in a matter of minutes resulting in high quality screencast productions with manageable files sizes. The playback quality really must be seen to be believed, whether you are capturing full motion HD video, World of Warcraft or a Moodle software tutorial the audio and visual components are top notch.

In conclusion then I think it’s obvious to say that I am really impressed with Screenflow, it is hands down the most powerful and intuitive screencasting application that I have used and that includes Camtasia and Jing. As a lecturer I know the importance of quality screencast production and know the benefit it brings to students, Screenflow then is the definitive application for professional screencast development on the Mac. For $99 it is an affordable investment for anyone that can make use of it, particular those working in the fields identified. It provides a robust and extensive work flow to cater for professional screencast production and comes highly recommended. I know at the time of writing that Camtasia for Mac is due for release very soon, it is going to have to be very special indeed to make me want to change my screencast production solution and I believe I will not be alone in my thinking.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars