People often bring up the question of how to record your computer screen or how do you create a screencast.  This leads to a bit of a debate over Camtasia vs Screenflow.  Actually, if you have a PC, it narrows that debate a bit, since screenflow only works on a Mac; therefore, Camtasia for PC would be the obvious choice.   And if you do have a Mac, be ready for a good due diligence afternoon spent reading reviews; because both Screenflow for Mac and Camtasia for Mac have some excellent selling points.  If you’re new to this, you might ask, why would I want to record my computer screen?  First let me say, that you may be thinking that recording your screen might  yield a grainy picture with low fidelity audio.  Actually, these programs have the option to record system audio or from a microphone; so if recording from system audio this is flawless loss-less digital recording.   As far as picture quality, in many situations, there is little to no noticeable degradation of the recording vs the original.

Here are some of those situations where you might want to record your computer screen:

1. You are putting on a webinar where you are manually going through a slideshow while narrating.
2. You need to produce a tutorial and explain how to do something on a computer and would rather record your mouse movements instead of write everything out.
3. You need to record a video because you are not sure if there will be a replay or not.
4. You want to record someone’s webcam because you are a bit of a deviant (enough said).

Here are a few videos reviewing Camtasia for PC:

If you have a Mac, things get a bit more complicated. Do you pick Camtasia for Mac or Screenflow for Mac?  The videos below will discuss both Camtasia and Screenflow for Mac.

Camtasia is a solid contender for both being feature rich and ease of use. Some (not all) say there is a bit more of a learning curve with Screenflow, albeit, screenflow does offer a few features Camtasia does not.

Note: Just to throw a monkey wrench into this, I’m going to take a detour for a moment and talk about a product launched in 2015 called Video Motion Pro.

VideoMotionPro was launched in April 2015. It was promoted by some rogue affiliates as the Camtasia Killer or Camtasia Replacement; it’s neither.  The creators never endorsed those claims, nor was it ever meant to replace camtasia.   It was promoted to take care of many of the functions of Camtasia, Screenflow, Sony Vegas, and  Adobe After Effects.   It doesn’t do all that perfectly……..but if you can’t afford Camtasia, VideoMotionPro is a good jump off point.   If all you need is a screen recorder but you don’t want to pay the full price of camtasia–while VideoMotionPro will do some basic screen recording–I’d recommend Camtasia’s little brother, Snagit at this point.  However, if you’re needing to add lower third animations, outros, or edit green screens, you will find some redemption in VideoMotionPro; because it does those things pretty well.  The price is still cheap.  As they upgrade the editor, I’m sure the price will rise.  So for the money, at this time, it’s still a bargain.  Below is a pretty good video review and below that is a link to the software if you care to take a look.  As mentioned in the review, one thing this software really excels at is green screen editing.  If you look at this as a tool to enhance your other videos, you won’t be disappointed.

I’m not sure what the price will go up to. But today, this is a good bargain for PC users!