As you can see, we do a lot of screencasting here at PCMech. Rich does almost all of it, but he uses Windows. Windows is lucky to have a program called Camtasia which is the de facto standard for screencasting on the Windows platform. But, once you get to the Mac side of things, you’re left scratching your head.

This isn’t to say that there are no decent options, but Mac users will immediately be stumped by the fact that there is no Camtasia available for OS X. Not yet anyway…I hear they are working on one.

In the meantime, what are the best options for an OS X user? Let’s jump right to some links because I know you are reading this article for solutions.

• iShowU. iShowU is a nice little utility for doing screencasting. I have purchased this application and have used it. It works quite well for me. You can capture either a section of your screen or the whole thing. If you are using multi-monitors, you can select which screen to record. It does not do a great job if you try to span more than one screen, but this is something I would expect with any program. IShowU offers easily configurable presets for quick export of your videos. You can even re-size them on the fly, which is convenient.

  

• Snapz Pro X. This is another decent option, but on my trial I ultimately decided I didn’t want to use it. The problem I was having was losing the recording window as I was recording. Also, I would start the program and be unable to find it. You have to call it up using a keyboard shortcut and I found it counter-intuitive. I’m not going to rip on the product, though. Many people swear by it. It just didn’t fit my personal preferences.

  

• Jing Project. Jing is a Techsmith (the company behind Camtasia) service that DOES work on OS X. This obviously means the company is doing OS X screen capturing so it is only a matter of time to see a Mac version of Camtasia. But, for now, we have Jing. Jing operates like a little OS add-on that allows you to quickly record a video and put it up on Techsmith’s servers at Screencast.com.

  

• ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is perhaps the closest thing to Camtasia that I have found so far for the Mac and it is quite impressive. It can record pretty much anything and offers no hiccups at all (I’ve tried it). You can even perform after-recording editing functions like adding callouts, zooms, pans, trims, drop shadows, etc. It is not a full-blown movie editor, but there is nothing from stopping you from doing the convenient stuff with ScreenFlow and then exporting to MOV and editing in iMovie. ScreenFlow can only work on OS X 10.5 Leopard. I highly recommend ScreenFlow and I, myself, plan on purchasing the program soon.

  

So, those are the options I have played around with. Expect to see some more screencasts done by your’s truly using my new Mac Pro. Honestly speaking, Techsmith probably waited too long to tap the Apple market. Camtasia will definitely be a big kahuna in this market when they finally release for the Mac, but ScreenFlow is a great application that does things Camtasia can’t – even on Windows.

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