A new screen capture program has just come out (a few months ago) called ScreenFlow. I'm sure you good folks at Ambrosia know about it. As a loyal and long time user (many years) of Snapz Pro, I feel a little saddened. I want Snapz Pro to be as good as ScreenFlow. And unfortunately as it stands now, it isn't. Not even close. I want you guys to look at all the great features (in ScreeFlow) that are missing in Snapz Pro and put them into a new revise. I know it would be a major rewrite of the program for sure. For the longest time, you were the only good player on the block. But now you have a major, major competitor. If you don't want to go the way of zip disks, do an update. I want to keep loving Snapz Pro. Help me out here.

Don,

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and express your input. There's already another thread that discusses this very topic:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=118350

I promise you that Snapz is not going away, and we are doing a complete rewrite of the program. When we release what we're currently developing (and no, there's no release date to give!), you'll be pleased.

With that said, Snapz is still a powerful and more flexible utility. For example, while ScreenFlow allows you to make a complete screencast, you cannot quickly grab a movie that you might want for reference purposes. Snapz is a powerful utility that is easily and always accessible, allowing you to capture movies with ease. Of course, there are features like Live Preview, and the quick export function after you take your movie.

But you already knew all of this being a loyal and long time user, right?

So I'd assume you guys are going to be porting it to windoze? Since you're doing a complete rewrite already...

Isn't screenflow $100? I'm not paying that for shareware.

"But you already knew all of this being a loyal and long time user, right?" (quote from Michael)

Nice sarcasm Michael. Making wise crack remarks like that don't help your company keep there 'long time' customers.

FYI: I use Live Preview all the time. But it doesn't have anything to do with the subject we're discussing, which is movies. Live Preview can only be used for stills.

But you already knew all of this being a loyal and long time Ambrosia employee, right?

It's unlikely that we'll do a Windows version. While we're doing a rewrite, we're leveraging technologies that are exclusive to Mac OS X, plus we want to focus our resources on doing what we do best and also what we love to do.


I'm sorry that you read that line negatively -- I meant it as a light-hearted, friendly statement, hence the emoticon wink afterwards.

Since you took the time to post the original message and share your support for Snapz, I was simply trying to point out the features that still make Snapz a powerful and viable solution, and I followed it up with my comment, as if to say, "why am I telling you this, as you know all this already!".

Again, my apologies on how you interpreted my reply, and if you have any outstanding concerns, please let me know.

I'm also long-time Ambrosia customer (oh, the early days were fun!), and I felt the need to reply to this. Michael replied quickly to your original post, and was helpful to your concern. His comment was clearly just being lighthearted... note the wink there. Please don't be so harsh on him for trying to be a bit jovial and responsive. Just my 2¢... Since I like the product (have just updated to the latest version), I'm interested to know what it doesn't do that you think it should. I love the interface, its ability to keep a low footprint, the customizability and high frame rate for recording. My company makes "Serious Games" and find that it's a fabulous tool to capture content to show customers from the games. Thoughts?

Okay Michael, maybe I was wrong. Sorry I even mentioned it. It's already forgotten.

Now as far as the question from "schalliol" about what features I think SnapzPro should have that it doesn't have now... the short answer is everything that ScreenFlow has.

If you want the long (way too long) answer, here are a few of my favorite features of ScreenFlow:

• When clicking the mouse, a click sound can be recorded. A lot of movie tutorials use this kind of idea in their movies.

• If wanted, the keys pressed on your keyboard will show up on the screen as type. Handy to let folks know what keys you are using.

• The cursor can be highlighted, in different ways, at any time during the recording. The cursor can even be made bigger, so people can see it better.

• Some folks think that ScreenFlow only takes full screen recordings. Yes, initially it does. But right after you record the full screen, you can crop to any size (if you don't want the full screen), just like you can in SnapzPro.

Now here's where the features really get good:

• You can zoom in/out of any section of the screen/at any time of the movie. This is determined at the editing stage (yes, there's an editing stage,) not during the initial recording. This way, you can preview the movie (yes, there's another feature, preview) after it's recorded but before the final QuickTime movie is made and decide where you want the zoom (in or out). A really great feature. Also in the preview mode, you can edit/cut out sections of the movie you don't want/need.

• Then there's the ability to create multiple recordings BEFORE creating the final QuickTime movie. For instance, make your first recording, save it (without yet making the final QuickTime movie), go back to it later, and then make another recording and it's added as an addition to the first movie (with or without a cut/break in between the two movies). Keep this up until you've made all the recordings you want (at separate times) and then make your one final Quick Time movie! Helps me a lot. I make a recording for a few minutes, stop to get my thoughts together with whatever time break I want (don't move the cursor or change anything on the screen), and then continue along with another recording of the rest of the movie. The final QuickTime movie comes out seamlessly with no breaks in it at all (unless you want breaks, which you can create.)

• You also have the ability to have multiple tracks in the editing stage (similar to Final Cut). On these tracks can be any combination of: video (multiple QuickTime movies or other ScreenFlow recordings), audio, still images (brought in from Photoshop, for instance, to pop in small, in a corner somewhere over the full movie), type (created in another program), etc. I can then arrange the tracks/elements any way I want, with dissolve transitions between elements (using the Video Action Opacity feature) and then after I get everything the way I want it, create the final Quick Time movie! I can hear somebody saying, hey this sounds like Final Cut. Not really. But ScreenFlow does have tracks like Final Cut. With the ability to edit in a preview mode. And I'm finding the multiple tracks/preview invaluable in creating screen recordings. Here's just one reason this is so great. Ever tried to put 2 SnapzPro Quick Time movies together and make one movie out of them. You could string them together using QuickTimePro. But you couldn't get the transitions in it. Try using Final Cut to do this. Won't work. Final Cut (both the Pro and light versions) won't accept or render SnapzPro movies. Neither will iMovie (the older version where you had tracks). After a lot of time/trouble/research I finally figured out how to put together 2 or more SnapzPro Quick Time movies: use Keynote. Keynote accepts SnapzPro movies and does a pretty good job of re-rendering them into one final movie. But the problem with Keynote is that you go through 2 generations of QuickTime movies (thus loosing some quality) to get the final single movie. This is how I've worked for a while (using Keynote). Now with multiple tracks in ScreenFlow, there's a new and simpler way to work.

• And since I'm on a roll here, I'll mention one last thing that I like about ScreenFlow. It's the rendering of the H.264 codec. H.264 is by far the codec of choice these days because of it's small file size/good resolution. The problem with it in SnapzPro is that the color (not to be mistaken with resolution/sharpness, which is different) is washed out and faded. Try this: make 2 SnapzPro movies with the same medium blue background. One using the Animation codec and the other using H.264. You'll see a major difference in color. I always thought that was the trade off. Use H.264 and get a very small file size and just deal with the fact that you won't get the great color or deep blacks that you want (washed out black is what you get). Well, that's not the case anymore. The H.264 codec in ScreenFlow is very close to what you'd get with Animation (the best color rendering of any QuickTime movie codec). So now I can get small file size and really good color!

BOTTOM LINE AND WHY I STILL WANT TO USE SNAPZ PRO!:
If I sound like a salesman for ScreenFlow, I'm not. The reason I wrote all this is as I've stated before. I just want to let Ambrosia know that I'd love to have a company like Ambrosia, with their long history of creating very stable products, come up with a competitor (SnapzPro in super drive?) to ScreenFlow. Why? In a word: STABILITY. That's what Ambrosia is all about. Along with creating really good looking user interfaces. Ambrosia software just plain works. And you know what: ScreenFlow doesn't! It has great features but is one of the most UNSTABLE programs I've used in a very long time. And without stability, all the rest doesn't matter. I guess if they ever fixed all their bugs (there a many, including the UI) I wouldn't even be writing this. But as of now, the program drives me crazy. So if SnapzPro comes up with even some of features mentioned above, I'd be more than happy to stick with a program I've use almost from its inception. I have the same girlfriend for as many years as I've used SnapzPro. And I don't want to change either of them!

Don,

Your (very detailed) list is appreciated. While we don't discuss features or technologies in upcoming products, I can tell you that I've already forwarded it to the development team, and you can be sure we'll consider your feature and use requests.

Thanks again for your feedback and input, and for your support of Ambrosia!

I don't have much experience with Snapz, but I do know Final Cut Pro, and I can tell you that it will accept practically anything if configured correctly. Try saving the Snapz movie uncompressed, or in Apple Pixlet, and then change your Final Cut Pro sequence settings to match the codec, pixel dimensions, (lack of) interlacing, and pixel aspect ratio, and I'd be very surprised if it still refuses the movie.



Again, the solution here would to be to go uncompressed/lossless until you do the final output, and so avoid generational loss. Similarly, for your problems with H.264, you can output uncompressed and then use QuickTime Player to export to H.264, so that you have full control over the encoding. As a general rule in video, you'll always get better quality if you leave compression until the last stage - that's why Compressor is a separate application from Final Cut Pro.

If you're using QuickTime Pro and want to add transitions, you may also find Apple's MakeEffectMovie useful, although it isn't as powerful or user-friendly as a real editing application.

To David Arthur:
Thanks for the info. I thought I exhausted all my options using SnapzPro & Final Cut together. Now there still might be hope. Thought I had tried most of the obvious codecs in SnapzPro (before bringing the movie into Final Cut). But I'm sure I never tried uncompressed or, for that matter, Apple Pixlet. Will do it now and see what happens. Oh, by the way, I just checked SnapzPro and I don't have the 'uncompressed' codec listed (I do in QuickTime but not SnapzPro). I know I use to in Tiger. Now I'm running Leopard. Any help on how I could get it would be greatly appreciated. Again, thanks for the help.

If Snapz uses the standard QuickTime compression dialogue box, you should be able to get uncompressed video by setting Compression Type to ‘None’. The files will be significantly larger, but that doesn’t matter much if you’re going to compress them after editing.

I use Pixlet extensively for my animation work, and find that it's good for preserving good quality while reducing the sizes enough to allow me to keep everything I need handy and render it quickly in Final Cut Pro. H.264, by contrast, is one of those complicated multi-pass encoders that shouldn't be applied until the very last stage (the MPEG2 format used on DVDs is another).

I have no inside knowledge, but having seen the new WireTap Studio come about, I can only imagine they're going to be bringing over a lot of those features to a new version of Snapz, such as a the same kind of lossless editing and effects as they've done with sound in WireTap. Again, I have no inside knowledge, but I strongly suspect they're interested in making a "Snapz Studio" kind of thing.

One other note, the feature you listed: "When clicking the mouse, a click sound can be recorded. A lot of movie tutorials use this kind of idea in their movies." Isn't that already in Snapz Pro? I might be wrong, but I thought it was an option.

Just please don't make Snapz Pro into ScreenFlow.

I use Ambrosia products because they're slim, efficient, and look slick. As far as I can tell, Snapz Pro doesn't need multiple recordings, complex video editing, and all that stuff; if you have to add them, do it discreetly, but Snapz Pro really doesn't need all that.

-Peter

edit: It needs more spiff!