The Screen Recording War: Who Is King?

A challenger appears! For as long as I could remember, there has always been a battle between which screen recording application is the best. ScreenFlow, iShowU HD, and now Camtasia. But now we have someone new in the fight, Apple's own Quicktime X. I have used all of them, pit them against each other to see which one is the best out of the 4. The criteria were video quality, ease of use, features, and how easy source video can be integrated into video editing software like Final Cut.

Let's start off with video quality. All 4 have very good video quality, but for this test I used the same compression I use to upload videos to YouTube. These are H.264 compression, 30 FPS, 1280x720 resolution, and a 1800 Kbit/sec bit rate. With Quicktime X, you don't have much choice in compression, your options are medium and high. That's it, no specifics at all. It does encode it in H.264 but at a very low frame rate of 12 FPS. The quality is pretty good, but there is some pixelation near darker colors. ScreenFlow on the other hand does great with this compression, the quality is amazing, it looks as if it were the screen itself. iShowU HD has some nice quality, but there are some issues with choppiness. If you activate Exposé or minimize a window, it does seem to skip a few frames, and sometimes not show the animation at all. Camtasia, in my opinion, did the worst with this compression. At full quality, the video looked great, but at this compression, the video was very fuzzy, and unappealing to the eye. So for this round, ScreenFlow is the winner.

And now to ease of use. Quicktime X is by far the easiest to use. You open up Quicktime X, hit File>New Screen Recording, and thats it. A little window comes up with a big record button in the middle. You have a little arrow on the side to choose your quality and audio source, but thats about it. After you hit record, a stop record button shows up in your menu bar. Can't get any simpler than that. ScreenFlow is basically just as simple, as soon as you open up ScreenFlow, a HUD comes up that gives you the options to record your screen, your iSight, and your computers audio. You choose your options, hit record, and go. A little icon appears in your menu bar too, but with a few more options than just to stop recording. Camtasia is just as simple as ScreenFlow, a window comes up with options for audio and video. Then you hit a record button and boom, you're ready to go. iShowU HD on the other hand, is simple to use, just not as simple as the others. You get a window with a small preview of your screen, then you can choose the area you want to record, the compression options, and some extra effects.

Now it's time for the feature list. Quicktime X doesn't really have any features besides screen recording. The others are full of features though. iShowU HD has one feature that none of the others have that can be quite useful, the ability to capture a certain part of the screen. Quicktime X, ScreenFlow, and Camtasia all default to recording the whole screen. On the other hand, ScreenFlow and Camtasia have many features including video effects, transitions, and callouts. Camtasia has just a little bit more than ScreenFlow does though.

And finally, how easy is it to use the video we captured with video editing software? Well, Quicktime X and iShowU HD are tied. Both of them send the raw recorded video to any folder you choose. From there you can just import those files to any video editing software you have. Now, both ScreenFlow and Camtasia are video editing apps in themselves. So you will have to either edit the whole video in the app or export everything unedited and then take it into another video editing application. I am a huge Final Cut user, so having the raw video saved on it own rather than having it needed to be edited first is very valuable to me. But for others it isn't. But for my needs, I have to give this round to Quicktime X and iShowU HD.

In the end, these applications are all great, but there can only be one winner. Remember, everyone has different needs, so you might have a different opinion on which is best. In my opinion, the winner is.......*drumroll*....ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is the most balanced out of all the applications. I said I would like to have the source video saved to a specific folder over a built in editor, but it was something I could overlook due to how great the video quality was. Camtasia might have some more effects, but the video quality wasn't anywhere near ScreenFlow's when using my compression. So there you have it, the king has been chosen. Keep in mind I didn't consider price as one of the criteria, so you might want something in your budget. Quicktime X is free with OS X Snow Leopard, iShowU HD is $59.95 for the Pro version, ScreenFlow is $99, and Camtasia is also $99 but will go up to $149 soon. Thanks for reading everyone, I'll see you in the next post.

-David (periahdark)

 YouTube:  http://youtube.com/periahdark