This was incredibly exciting for me! As anyone who follows me, or has taken Video Idiot Boot Camp, or heard my podcast knows, I love Screenflow. It’s my go-to application for recording and editing video from my desktop. I even created a free video course showing how to use it, which I’m going to have to update now. Why? Because the new Screenflow 5 ROCKS!!! So here is my Screenflow 5 review, because there is no way I was not going to share this info with my peeps. I will not cover the things that Screenflow4 already had, liked nested clips, callouts, actions, text and titles, transitions, chroma key support, freeze frames, and video and audio filters. They are still there, and still fab.
I was offered the opportunity to do this review because I’m a super fan, and became an affiliate. Again, as anyone who follows me knows, I don’t recommend anything I don’t use and love myself.
Because so many of my readers and listeners to my podcast are educators, I thought I’d first share some info from Screenflow’s site:
Why use video for education:
- Engage students and reach those with a variety of learning styles
- Stimulate classroom discussion
- Reinforce lectures and assignments
- Provide a common experience for students to discuss
- Maximize teacher’s time – one explanation, thousands of views
Positive: Screenflow still sells for only $99 which I think is pretty amazing when you consider all it can do. If you want to record your screen, you can, even on Retina Displays. You can capture DVD video and audio, Keynote and PowerPoint presentations which is great if you want to record a presentation for a webinar, conference, or info product, like the courses I create for writers at coursesforwriters.com.
Negative: Though the Reviewer Guide claimed that “you can capture your entire screen with the highest quality and keep your file sizes low,” I have to disagree with that. Screenflow files are enormous. That said, one new piece of awesomeness is that you can now set the frame rate of recording so you improve efficiency and decrease overall file size. At the time of this review I haven’t gotten to try that.
Important tip: Never, and I mean never save a Screenflow document to anything other than your hard drive unless you zip it first. You are in severe danger of it getting corrupted, as happened to me when I uploaded to Dropbox. This also happened when I saved to an external hard drive.
New Awesomeness: You can now record your iPhone and iPad screens right into Screenflow! It works just like your iSight or DV camera! How cool is that?!
New Awesomeness: You can now add more devices and options, and more ways to create videos. You can also choose more ways to record via iPhone or iPad.
Audio: In Video Idiot Boot Camp I stress how important audio is – you can have a shaky video but if your viewer can’t hear, you’re sunk! With Screenflow 5, it ducks your audio tracks automatically, which means all your overlapping tracks aren’t at the same levels, and you can get better sound more easily.
Check out Screenflow’s overview here on their site. Or if you want to go buy this piece of awesomeness click here!
Sometimes I’ll tell you about something that has impressed the heck out of me. If you decide to purchase what I’ve recommended, you do not pay any more but I’ll get a referral fee. But I will only use a referral (or affiliate) link if it has earned my trust.
