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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/839
112 MacDirectory
REVIEW | PRODUCTIVITY
SCREENFLOW > VIDEO TUTORIALS WORTHY OF A MAC
It's not hard to compare the Design Awards
at Apple's Worldwide Developers Confer-
ence with Hollywood's Directors' Guild
Awards. In both cases, the work is judged
by its most knowledgeable critics: the
creator's professional peers. In 2008, one
program walked away with both the Best
Leopard Application and the best Leopard
Graphics and Media Application. Like one
of the year's great films whose only
exposure is a limited, art house release,
Vara Software's ScreenFlow has received
little of the attention that it deserves.
ScreenFlow from Vara Software, which was
recently acquired by Telestream, is a
powerful, exquisitely designed screen and
audio recording application that can create
some of the best screen-based video
tutorials in the computer business. It
harnesses the remarkable power of
Leopard's core animation capabilities and
merges it with an interface that makes it
easy to start simple but has the flexibility to
give full reign to your creative skills and
instructional design experience. The
program offers a workflow very similar to
conventional video or multimedia
production: you create your content, edit it
down to what you really want, add effects
and then export it out in the best format
(or formats) for your audience.
ScreenFlow's workflow begins with the
screen capture phase. Start the recorder
and the program will display an onscreen
countdown and then begin recording
your actions in real time with full-motion
video. If you're planning on adding a
narration track, you can either record it in
real time or add it later as a voiceover. A
ScreenFlow project can, and probably
should, contain multiple clips, so there's
no need to get through your entire demo
without a glitch on the first pass. You tell
ScreenFlow that you're done with a
keystroke combination (command-shift-2,
by default) and the clip you recorded
appears in an iMovie-like library panel.
You can record audio or video sequences
with a microphone and video camera or
import sound, video or graphics with
drag-and-drop simplicity. Editing and
trimming clips work just like a video
editing system. Play back a clip in the
viewer and use the "I" and "O" keys to set
in and out points to trim the clip down to
just the action you want people to see.
Once you have your clips collected, add
them to the timeline tracks at the bottom
of the screen. A recorded track can also be
split and placed in different parts of the
timeline. When you cut a section out of
the timeline, ScreenFlow lets you either
leave a gap or perform what editors call a
"ripple delete", sliding the following scenes
back to automatically fill the gap.
The program incorporates several unique
effects designed to create great training
videos. One of the most impressive is the
Callout Action, which automatically
magnifies and follows the area around the
cursor, so you can zoom in and highlight an
important action. The effect lets you either
track the cursor or enlarge the element (like
a dialog box) that you're interacting with.
For a very professional touch, you can fade
in and out of the effect to smooth the
transition. Because it uses multiple video
and audio tracks, ScreenFlow lets you build
layers of video. This is particularly useful if
you what to show what some activity looks
like on a client and host, or it can import an
outside graphic, video or audio source if
you want to show something from the real
world, even a talking head shot of the
instructor. What makes this really cool is the
ability to crop, resize and rotate screens
and even give them a tasteful bit of
reflection on the mirror-like black stage
(thanks to Leopard's core animation tools).
The effect is a little like what you're used to
seeing in Keynote and iChat. Audio
recording and editing works well but you
can also produce a more lavish soundtrack
in another application and import it back
into ScreenFlow.
In spite of the
raison d'être of the
program, the one element that is sorely
lacking is the training component.
ScreenFlow includes a brief tutorial that
will get you started on the basics, but a
huge number of its features and functions
are not immediately obvious. A few of
these are revealed in videos on Vara's
Web site, but the rich feature set is
worthy of far more coverage. You'll need
to sift carefully through the Help file and
do a lot of experimentation to understand
the program's most sophisticated
features. If you have any experience with
timeline-based media editing systems, you
should be able to pick up most aspects of
the program without too much difficulty.
ScreenFlow is unquestionably the best
video tutorial tool available on the Mac.
WORDS BY RIC GETTER
Product ScreenFlow
Made by Vara Software