Rochester, NY -- August 25, 2006 -- Ambrosia Software, Inc. announced today the release of Snapz Pro X 2.0.3, an Intel-compatible update to the popular video capture product Snapz Pro X. This updated version, which is free to registered users of Snapz Pro X 2.0.x, may be downloaded here:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Snapz Pro X 2.0.3 features the following changes/enhancements:

-- Snapz Pro X 2.0.3 runs without known issues on Intel machines; performance is excellent

-- Tuned performance to run optimally on single processor machines to avoid sound stuttering while recording movies with sound

-- If you are running on Tiger (MacOS X 10.4) or later, movie recording in Snapz Pro X will now respect the cursor visibility checkbox, and will just "do the right thing." In the past, we had to work around a bug in an Apple API such that if "Cursor visible" was checked, the cursor in a movie was ALWAYS visible. Now it will do what you'd expect: if "Cursor visible" is checked, the cursor will be drawn in the movie if it is visible on the screen. If "Cursor visible" us unchecked, no cursor will be drawn onto the movie.

-- Fixed an crashing bug that would occur when Snapz Pro X was invoked on an Intel Mac Mini or an Intel MacBook (but no other Intel machines that I'm aware of).

Why take a static screenshot when Snapz Pro X 2 makes creating a movie just as easy? Snapz Pro X 2 does that, and so much more -- what a difference a version makes! Download a free demo version from our web site today or check out the demo movies we've created and see for yourself:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Snapz Pro X is a quantum leap in video capture technology, adroitly capturing full motion video of anything on your screen at a blistering pace, complete with digital audio, and an optional microphone voiceover. Think of it as a digital video camera for your screen. Snapz Pro X makes short work of making training videos, producing product demos, creating tutorials, archiving streaming video, and anything else you can think of.

Find out why companies like Apple Computer, Inc., Adobe Systems Inc., Macromedia, Inc., and countless others rely on Snapz Pro X 2.0 when they need to convey an idea effectively. Find out why average users are taking full motion video screen captures rather than the static screenshots of old. Join the video capture revolution.

Oh, man, I was really hoping that this release would be a universal binary. Instead, it runs under Rosetta and that means it's a memory hog. Looking at the memory/cpu usage via Activity Monitor reveals that Snapz Pro is at the top of the list for CPU %, Threads and, especially, Real Memory at 90.12MB and Virtual Memory at 506.25 MB.

Me hopes a native Intel version is in the works.

An Intel version is preferable, for sure. But kudos to Ambrosia for releasing something in the interim. I was worried for a while that I'd have to wait for a full-version upgrade to get all the PowerPC functionality on my IntelMac.

top shows Snapz Pro using 30.9M on my system and only 0.3% CPU and 2 threads.

So this is not a Universal Binary? It's still running in Rosetta?

I notice Ambrosia is really careful to say "Intel Compatible", but never mentions true Universal Binary (or the UB logo). Is a UB version still on its way?

Way to go Ambrosia! Works fine on my MB. A little lagish at times but I am thinking that is due to Rosetta. As for my Powermac G5, works wonderfully as usual.

One thing that I noticed that 2.0.3 does when making a movie is that right when the move starts, it makes a .mo or .mov real quickly and deletes it. Is that normal?

I feel like I have been ripped off by Ambrosia. They have had more than one year to develop full Intel compatibility. Xcode 2.1 which supported Universal Binaries was released in June, 2005 and here we are in August, 2006 and still no Universal Binary, with barely Intel support at all with an introduction of a non-universal application here in August.

I paid my money for the app, I did not pirate it or anything. I paid for the app, and then I expect it to work. But noooo, throughout one year they haven't managed to create a Universal Binary at all. And I would guess that there will be none until Snapz Pro X 3.

And please don't pull in applications like Photoshop and so on into this. These are huge applications and a rewrite would not be efficient, they will create a new application and introduce Universal support there. Converting the entire suite today would take to much time.

I think it would be appropriate to bring in Adobe into this though. The Adobe dev team is huge for a huge project such as Photoshop. The Ambrosia team is small for a smaller project such as Snapz Pro X. Rewriting Snapz Pro X 2.x would not be efficient. Instead they will create Snapz Pro X 3.x from the ground up and introduce Universal support there. Converting Snapz Pro X 2.x would take too much time.

How do you feel you have been ripped off? I'm really not sure I understand the rationale?



That should not be. This is from top -u on my Intel MacBook Pro:

1153 Snapz Pro 0.4% 11:10.54 4 182 328 31.9M 32.5M 51.0M 525M

It should not be using much CPU at all unless you're actually recording something.

Is anyone else having trouble waking their Intel Mac from sleep since installing this new version? My Mac'll sleep fine, but it won't wake up, and this is the only thing I've installed since it was working...

Cheers,

Matt

So when exactly will Snapz Pro 3 be available? v2.0 was released 2 1/2 years ago.

This is more than enough... Probably Snapz Pro X 3 should be Universal, but is not really necessary for this release. It runs smooth under Rosetta and doesn't take that much ram. Other applications eats more... Also, have you read about Rosetta on Leopard?... Is super-fast!... (almost) native speed

Hello-
As you point out, Intel compatible, not Universal Binary. We ran the compatible version through it's paces and found the performance was excellent. We wanted the update out the door and any increase in performance would be way off set by the delay.

The next major revision of Snapz Pro X will be a Universal Binary.




Hello-
I'm not finding this problem on any test machines here.

Try this, invoke SP X so it is on screen, and then press the command q keys to quit out of it.

Does the wake from sleep problem still happen?

Enormous amount of thanks for this: a friend was wanting to see a streaming promo video from Microsoft's site that wasn't working on his version of Flip4Mac, and I was able to launch Parallels, run the video and capture a QuickTime version from there as smooth as silk. Heaven knows what kind of juddery mess I would've got on a PowerPC using VirtualPC.

H.264 video encoding seems to be broken. The first frame is the correct image, but all subsequent frames are white/blank. I've tested this on a MacBook and a MacBookPro, and the behavior is identical on both. It doesn't matter what application I'm recording from.

Both computers are running 10.4.7.

Hello-
This is covered in the Snapz Pro X FAQs and extensively in these forums.

Please people, use the Search function, and check the FAQs before posting.

YESSS!!! It was about time! I'm so glad my good ol' Snapz Pro is back in action!
Thanks folks from Ambrosia.