Camtasia v Screenflow on the Mac

I have always preferred ScreenFlow, mostly because of it being designed by Mac programmers way back in '05. During my trials of Camatasia for Mac, I found that most good things about it were simply copied from ScreenFlow.

To me they just did not improve anything over ScreenFlow, so there was little point in changing.

However, most competitive programs are well made, and more or less, a matter of personal opinion. Luckily you don't have to fret over the $99 for either program as both products have a free trial. In the time it took you to write this OP, you could have downloaded both, with no obligation.

Take a half day to play around with both of them and you are probably going to know right away which is for you.

I have use both and screen flow is better the #1 reason it crashes less on the mac. Before I moved to the mac I did 100's of screenrecordings on windows for years and it constantly would crash. Screenflow for mac is very very amazing software!

I prefer using my Mac so I got Screenflow. If I preferred using my PC I would have gotten Camtasia. That's about the extent of how my decision making process went because I had come across people recommending both left and right so felt I couldn't go wrong either way.

Either program will be used on the Mac for me, but I hadn't noticed that both had a free trial thanks for that heads up.

If all you're looking to do is create videos from your screen, you don't need to spend any money at all on a Mac! Quicktime does it. Super easy and I've never had it crash.

I can't believe that isn't known by more people! I don't even use Mac's, I love my PC. But I found it out because Photoshop was on my wife's Mac P.O.S and I needed to record some training videos.

I'm experienced as a Mac user my second computer in 1992 was a Mac. My first was an Atari 800 XL in 1980s a massive 64KB system with a tape drive! I was well aware of the ability to use QuickTime to screen capture. The advantage of a specialty program like Camtasia or Screenflow over QuickTime and iMovie or FinalCut is workflow.

If I'm editing a feature film iMovie could handle it, but probably doesn't have the horsepower I want. When I'm editing screen captures iMovie could handle it as could FinalCut, but they may be overkill and it isn't the task they were designed to handle. Camtasia and Screenflow are built to pan, zoom and focus attention within a shot and unlike a simple QuickTime screen capture they are designed to follow a cursor and highlight key information. This provides a considerable ability to speed up the workflow.

P.S. I'm rocking the Mac OSx on a Hackintosh I built two years ago with dual monitors a 1GB video card, 16 GB of ram a 3.8 GHz Core i7 2600k Sandy Bridge processor a 1TB HD, with multiple FireWire ports, a card reader for just about anything multiple USB 2 and 3 ports and I got everything, including the monitors for less than I would spend on a tricked out Mac Mini with no monitors. Since getting the kexts right to make it work it has never crashed or hung up and will render even the most complicated lengthy video in very little time.

P.P.S. I inadvertently lied in my first post because I didn't realize they both had free trials. As one of the tests is screen capture of Gimp as an animated whiteboard, I had to run to Best Buy and pick up a Wacom Bamboo for a hundred bucks for use during the trial period. Started testing Camtasia last night and I like it. Not entirely intuitive, but in less than a few hours I figure out how to do multiple things I needed to do to make my presentations work. Screenflow tests will begin shortly.

I vote for camtasia because I am using it well on Windows

I haven't used Screenflow enough yet to fully understand its User Interface, but Camtasia doesn't have much of a learning curve, and Screenflow doesn't look like it has much of a learning curve either.

They both appear fairly comparable. Camtasia has a lengthy rendering time for a twenty minute presentation.

I don't know what the rendering time for Screenflow looks like because I haven't fully tested it yet, but I should know in a day or two.

No comparison. On a Mac, get Screenflow for sure. On a PC, Camtasia is the way to go.

Another vote for Screenflow. When using Camtasia, it just doesn't feel as "organically Mac" as Screenflow, which can be very frustrating.

I actually own both. I purchased Camtasia first then fled to Screenflow and now use that regularly.

And I don't entirely dislike Techsmith, as I use Jing frequently and have Snagit also (crashes a lot, though).

Since I've decided to use Screenflow, I don't use Camtasia anymore and one feature I love that screenflow has over Camtasia is Screenflow records the entire screen then you crop later, whereas with Camtasia you pre-select your screen size. I know that's minor and you can use Camtasia and select the entire screen area, but still.

I have also used Quicktime/iMovie and I find iMovie to be tedious and time consuming for screen cast video editing. Well, overall I find it to be more tedious than Screenflow plus I like the Screenflow "workspace" better. I felt that the same videos were taking way too long to edit in iMovie.

Also if you're into doing a lot of video, get something to compress those huge file sizes, makes a big difference.