Commenting on my recent review of ScreenFlow, my esteemed colleague David Battino wondered if this screencast recording software could also serve as a replacement for Apple's iMovie for quickly editing videos. The short answer to that is, no, ScreenFlow can't replace iMovie, but -- it does have some tricks up its sleeve that you can use to create cool effects not found in iMovie.
The longer answer to David's question is that, in principle, ScreenFlow does have the required basic features for using it as a simple movie editor, like cutting clips and arranging them on the time line. However, the set of video transitions is limited to fades, resizing, panning, and rotating the movie pane in 3D space, and there are no iMovie-like video or audio effects whatsoever.
What's more, in its current incarnation, handling the transitions that ScreenFlow does offer -- "Video Actions" in ScreenFlow-speak -- is a bit awkward, as they cannot be copied. Consequently, every Video Action you add to a video track is created with default settings for duration, etc., so you have to manually fine-tune each and every one of 'em, and you can't save templates for these Actions, either.
Still, ScreenFlow has one specific feature that sets it apart from iMovie and, even with the limited set of transitions, lets you create some very cool video effects. That feature is multiple video tracks.
In iMovie, video clips are arranged on a single video track, meaning that you can only place a video project's clips in sequence on that single time line. Not so in ScreenFlow: you can have multiple video tracks and individually place each track's video on the canvas of the movie you're creating. The only limitation is the performance of your computer, because, according to the developers, there is no hard-coded limit to the number of simultaneous video tracks you can use in a ScreenFlow project.
Thanks to the flexible settings for a video's size, placement, opacity, and layering in ScreenFlow, creating picture-in-picture videos or even mosaics with multiple videos is a snap. Add animitation to the mix -- independently for each track, of course! --, and you can create some seriously cool effects!
If a picture's worth a thousand words, then a video's worth a cool 50k per second (depending on frame rate, of course...), so here's a quick example of a few of the things you can do in ScreenFlow, and can't in iMovie.
Unfortunately, getting to the result shown in the example movie is very tedious. The main obstacle to an effective workflow for this kind of editing is ScreenFlow's lack of copy-n-paste functionality for the "Video Actions" that generate all these transitions and animations, as mentioned earlier already. As a result, being able to flexibly configure each video action is both a gift and a curse (my apologies to Adrian M.), because you not only can fine-tune each transition individually, you must.
For example, should you decide that you'd like to swap two video clips in a project -- say, the top right and bottom left in the example movie above -- you cannot just move them on the Canvas and copy all the edits from one track and apply it to the other to preserve video positions, animations and transitions. Instead, you have to manually re-create every one of the Actions for both videos.
But let's not forget, though, that ScreenFlow was never designed for this kind of usage. It's a welcome by-product of its support for picture-in-picture movies, e.g., for showing the presenter's face while demonstrating a piece of software. And yet, if you're willing to invest a bit of time and effort, it does make for some very cool effects for your videos that you simply cannot create in iMovie. And, as you could see in the example, the resulting video quality is excellent.
To learn more about ScreenFlow, have a look at my review and visit the ScreenFlow website.
Have you also found unusual ways to coerce a piece of creative software into doing something that it originally was not designed for? Please share. Comments are open below, and there's also a discussion thread welcoming your stories.
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Nico
ScreenFlow always records at full-screen resolution, and the resulting videos inside the project are stored at that resolution, as well. Even when you edit a ScreenFlow project on another machine, the video's resolution in the project remain the same.
What's more, editing in ScreenFlow is non-destructive, so regardless of how you modify video by scaling, cropping, and cutting, you will always be able to revert to the original, full-size recording. To change the size of a screencast's video produced in ScreenFlow, you have two options: modifying the canvas size and/or scaling the exported video.
To modify the canvas size, click on the left-most button in the control bar (with the play button, etc., right below the preview area and above the track editor). This button brings up a dialog in which you can set the canvas size for the screencast.
It is usually a good idea to set this size to the resolution of the target video, so you get a precise idea of what the final product will look like while you edit it inside ScreenFlow.
Once you've decided on a canvas size and set it, use the Scale slider in the video's Video Properties panel to adjust the video to the new canvas size as needed.
By the way, for the multi-track example in this blog post, I set the canvas size to 545 x 400 pixels, because that is the native size of the Flash video player I used.
As an alternative approach (that you can also use together with changing the canvas size, of course), when exporting the completed screencast via the File > Export command, use the Dimensions options in the export dialog sheet to scale the video to the output size you want.
Again, keep in mind that ScreenFlow's editing is non-destructive: regardless of which (combination) of these two approaches you choose, you will never lose the original recordings. Hence, you are not locked in by any decisions you make regarding video resolution before or during editing your screencast project.
Hi,
I tried to do that but how do you set the initial size of a new project ?
I mean when you start screenflow you are supposed to record some screen actions and the resulting video is used as a base for your project that implicitly defines the size of your video ?
To take an extreme example: what if I have a 1920x1080 video (and want to keep its original size) bur have a 1024 x 768 screen ?
do you know how to proceed ?
N.
Thanks, glad to hear that, Terri!
great job: in fact, your explanations and videos were so effective, I bought it! :-)
Thanks for your kind words, Dmitri.
Regarding your comment about sparse documentation, you're definitely preaching to the choir.
As for tutorials or documentation beyond those included in the application (accessible via ScreenFlow's Help menu) or found on the Vara Software website, try searching for "screenflow tutorial" on Google or YouTube.
Also, as a general note on creating screencasts: originally, I thought this would be rather easy and straight-forward, and I couldn't have been more wrong. It takes a lot of practice and preparation to come up with a satisfactory result. Hence, besides checking out those tutorials you will find via the search(es), you may want to keep playing around, and experimenting, with the ScreenFlow application, so you become more familiar with it, even though that approach may not be as effective as a more in-depth tutorial.
Good luck!
Thanks for this great post.
Screenflow looks GREAT, but I have one major problem with it: the lack of documentation.
If you go to varasoft's website and look at the demo videos, they say "all this was done in screenflow!" And in fact it looks pretty cool.
But the HOW of making those effects happen is vague. Their tutorial and user's guide show a few basics and pretty much say "have fun discovering more things you can do with screenflow." I emailed them and they basically admitted there is no manual.
If anyone knows of any online training or book about screenflow, I'd be grateful. I'm baffled.
Kieran:
Glad you enjoyed the blog post.
So far, I haven't run into any corrupted screencast movies with ScreenFlow. I suggest you get directly in touch with the developers via their support website. I've found the people at Vara Software to be very friendly and helpful, and I'm sure they will be able to hunt down the cause of this issue.
Enjoyed your article and wondered if you have any ideas on a problem I've run into. I'm in the demo phase of Screenflow, have become comfortable with it, did short demo project and when I export, the final Quicktime movie comes out with the screen partially scrambled. (can send an example if you like).
I really want to buy the software but don't want to until I resolve this. Am I the only one experiencing this?
I'm working on a Power Mac G5 dual 1.8.
Thank you if you have any suggestions.
Kieran