Small World News began developing a pilot for a new show this past weekend. I can’t go into any of the details yet. But to create the show we had to finally break down and buy some software for screencasting. (There has to be a better name for this technology/idea then this right?) Our primary editing machine is our fancy MacBook Pro (Thanks Vloggies 2006!) so staying in the OS X software pool was a requirement, although Captive did make me drool when I stumbled across it.
About 6 months ago Snapz Pro X was the popular program among all the cool kids. Maybe it’s the stinginess my father instilled in me, or maybe I just was trying to avoid the actual task at hand. But when I saw it would cost $70 dollars for Snapz Pro X (it’s only $30 to take still images, but we need video capabilities) I couldn’t help but think there has to be a cheaper way to do this.
Using the amazingly intuitive keywords “OS X Screencast Software” I found a thread on 37 signals from last year. There was a lot of talk about Snapz Pro and a couple of other key players. But the early link to IShowU from the folks at ShinyWhiteBox was everything I wanted and it only costs $20.
No, it doesn’t have a lot of the bells and whistles that Snapz Pro has, like creating trails or any other visual effects. The biggest feature it has though is being able to encode directly into a native DV format. This allows to be able to inter-cut captured clips inside of Final Cut Pro without anymore encoding beyond the initial recording.
The interface is really simple and highly customizable, without any of the annoying over sized buttons and or hidden complex options that plague a lot of software for the mac. So if you’re looking for a cheap alternative to SnapzPro look no further then IShowU, display capturing pure and simple.
I showed up late to work today, and then I had to let a certain someone back into their home so by the time I started working it was already 2:00 in the afternoon. I spent a large portion of the day fighting with a translation which still has yet to be subtitled because I was entirely too easily distracted by the million other things we need to do.
We got around to recording the second N3 show sometime around 11. I think they’re coming together quite well, we’ll put together an intro over the weekend and it should work out fairly well. I got it edited and online for a few folks to check out (sorry, you’re probably not one of them) and I was still wide awake, so I cleaned up the office. And now here I am, a little after 6 in the morning Saturday, informing you, the good people at SWN.TV about it all.
Lets hope I’m able to function by noon tomorrow.
-Steve
Yesterday we started recording the commentary tracks for the N3 show. They’re going well but there’s plenty of work left to do!
Small World News is lumbering to life, we’re still a little too busy over here to document things properly. But enjoy this shot from the first night in the new digs.
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