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Vara Software ships ScreenFlow for Mac OS X

Vara Software today shipped ScreenFlow, the most advanced Screencasting software package for Mac OS X Leopard. ScreenFlow’s powerful screen, camera, and audio capture systems allow you to capture everything you do. With ScreenFlow’s advanced timeline-based editing features, you can mix down your Screencast, with such effects as: 3D or 2D Zoom & Pan, Mouse Callouts, Foreground Window Callouts, Picture-in-Picture, Reflection, Drop Shadow, and much more.

Record Everything: Screen, Camera, Microphone, and Computer Audio


Not only does ScreenFlow capture everything on screen, it can simultaneously record an iSight, DV or any QuickTime compatible USB camera, and any attached Microphone. ScreenFlow also includes a custom system extension which allows seamless, simultaneous capture of all computer audio.


“Forget the technical details, just remember this: ScreenFlow can capture everything,” Says Paul Carnine, President of Products at Vara Software. “Just tell ScreenFlow what to record and then present your presentation as if your viewers were right in front of you. ScreenFlow captures it all and you decide later how to make that perfect mix.”


“Where this really shines is when presenting a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation with ScreenFlow. You can record your screen, camera and microphone at the same time,” continues Mr. Carnine. “If you do this, ScreenFlow automatically makes a Picture in Picture output. It’s so simple to make a video of you delivering your presentation. Be it Keynote, or any other application you are showing your viewers.”


Go outside the box


ScreenFlow captures your entire screen, all the time. Gone are the days of trying to draw a box and stay within it during your screeencast capture sessions. Just start recording and decide later how you want to focus your viewers attention.


“It’s actually very liberating. When we designed the ScreenFlow capture system, we knew this would be possible, but never realized how enjoyable it is to make screencasts when you don’t have to worry about staying in some prescribed area. With ScreenFlow you make those decisions in post production,” Says Simon Clarke, President of Technology at Vara Software.


Finally, a legible Screencasting system


Most screencasting systems today do nothing to help you produce legible screencasts. This forces screencast producers to go to extreme methods to make their screencasts readable : by zooming in so close to the content that viewers lose overall perspective, or by restricting themselves to tiny screen resolutions.


ScreenFlow elegantly solves this problem with a proprietary GPU-enhanced export scaling system. The result is legible output even at high scaling factors. Never again will screencast viewers say, “But I can’t read what you’re doing.”


Focusing the viewers attention : Screencasting Effects


ScreenFlow offers several features to help screencasters focus their viewers attention on a particular area of the screencast. Since the Mouse Pointer is often a focal point, ScreenFlow offers the ability to change the size of the Mouse Pointer, show a radar effect every time the Mouse is clicked or even make a visual callout area around the Mouse Pointer.


The Mouse Callout Feature highlights the area just around the mouse by dimming other areas on screen, and optionally zooming up the area just around the mouse.


The Callout feature is also available for the Foreground Window in the recording screen capture. Since ScreenFlow records the position of the current Foreground Window , the ScreenFlow editor offers the possibility of highlighting that window, and even zooming into just that window, leaving the background blurred and obscured.


Producing Zoom & Pan (Ken Burns Effect) is a snap with ScreenFlow. Since the ScreenFlow editor offers the ability to zoom and move clips around the canvas, making Zoom & Pan effects are as simple as adding a Video Action, and zooming / moving the clip.


These editing tools simplify the task of focusing the viewers attention on specific parts of the screencast.


Elegant Timeline Editor


When a recording session is finished, ScreenFlow provides a simple timeline based editor allowing the user to mix down and add effects to their presentation. ScreenFlow can import any media into the presentation by just dragging and dropping it into the timeline.


“It is during the editing phase that you make decisions about how large to make the Mouse Pointer and what parts of the screen to show your viewers,” says Mr. Carnine. “It’s also where you can cut out mistakes you’ve made in the screencast, or add additional voice overs.”


If users need to import their finished screencasts into an existing editor workflow (such as Final Cut Pro), it’s easy to do simple editing tasks in ScreenFlow and then export in a lossless format. This gives advanced users the best of both worlds: an amazing capture tool that is capable of doing the first cuts and effects, with the power of an advanced editing tool.


“Even advanced users will change their workflow with ScreenFlow” continues Mr. Clarke. “Since you can immediately scrub through your presentation and do first cuts, you’ll find yourself using ScreenFlow more and more before exporting to Final Cut. We’ve had beta testers that have even stopped using their final editing step as it was no longer necessary.”


The Power Under the Hood


All of the advanced features that ScreenFlow offers are due to the underlying capture system. Without the speed, efficiency and quality of the underlying capture system, it would be impossible to capture everything and offer the ability to crop the output post-capture.


ScreenFlow has the most advanced intermediate encoding format available for capturing and compressing full motion desktop video. In development for several years, this technology uses an internal custom adaptive encoder fully optimized to use as little CPU and disk space possible while delivering on the promise of full screen, full motion capture.


“We use every trick in the book to squeeze each cycle out of our compression algorithms,” says Mr. Carnine. “Bit for bit, it out performs every screen capture compression system available, on any platform. It is only with this technology that ScreenFlow can deliver the features it has today.”


Designed and built for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and beyond


ScreenFlow is designed for the future of the Mac, while built to shine on platforms that exist today. It makes extensive use of key modern Mac OS X technologies: Core Animation, QuickLook, Spotlight, QTKit, Quartz Composer, OpenGL, Core Data, and many others.




Use the future of Screencasting today


A demonstration version of ScreenFlow is available on the Vara Software website. Although fully functional, the demonstration includes a water-mark on your audio and video output. 




Pricing and Availability


ScreenFlow is available today only at the Vara Software online store: http://www.varasoftware.com/store for only $99.99. Academic and volume pricing schedules are also available.




Requirements


Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 or greater (10.5.2 recommended). A Quartz Extreme graphics card. Some features (High Quality Export, Blur, etc), require a Programmable Graphics card. G4 or Intel based CPU required. Core Duo 2 recommended.

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