It hasn't exactly been a secret that I (and several others at TUAW) have been big fans of ScreenFlow since its release. Up until yesterday, I didn't really think it had much serious competition in the professional screencasting field. That seems to have changed with the release of Camtasia for Mac. At the same $99US price tag as ScreenFlow, Camtasia is offering a very similar interface with some impressive capabilities.

Camtasia has long been considered a heavyweight in the PC world, and its Mac debut has been anxiously awaited. While it hasn't exactly reached feature-parity with the PC version, it's been quite a pleasure to try out. Some of the features it's lacking in comparison to its PC counterpart include region recording, narration-only recording and ScreenDraw. However, its capabilities in the area of direct media manipulation are quite well-developed. For a complete feature comparison, check the TechSmith website or grab the comparison PDF.

A quick run-through with a review copy convinced me that this is some serious competition for ScreenFlow. One of the coolest features I played with was the SmartFocus action, which can be applied to an entire clip or just a region in the editor. It automatically determines what the point of focus at any given time should be, and zooms that area. Additionally, you can highlight the foreground window, add text and shape callouts, and work with imported media. The only problem I noticed immediately was with changing colors of library elements (arrows, etc.). I haven't figured that out in my brief trial, and haven't had a chance to ask yet. I'm hoping that's not a missing feature, as it seems relatively important to me.

A complete array of QuickTime formats can be exported, and presets for YouTube, Screencast.com and iTunes are included. There's a default export which gave me a 10.5MB QuickTime file for a 47-second clip, at a 960x600 resolution. The "Advanced Export" option provides the opportunity to tweak settings and export to all the standard formats. There's some mismatch between the PC and Mac export capabilities, though, making cross-platform projects difficult (file format comparison).

Camtasia for Mac requires that all of your video cards be Quartz Extreme-enabled. If you run any USB->DVI hardware, be sure to disconnect it before you launch the application. Also, TechSmith warns against running Perian with Camtasia. I tried it and didn't have any problems -- but it was for a short record/export experiment and I'm guessing they have good reason for pointing out the potential conflict. I would probably heed that advice when working on a more important project. Camtasia for Mac is currently available at the Camtasia website as a free trial, and can be purchased for $99US, or a 5-pack for $495US.

We've mentioned a few screen capture and screencasting apps here recently, but interest in finding new and shiny tools for the job still seems high. There are a couple of possibilities on the porting and development front that might excite the screencast community:

First, Jing Project developer TechSmith - long a dominant vendor for Windows screencasting tools - has indicated that further Mac development is in the cards: the Mac plans page says "...we are actively pursuing a Mac version of Camtasia Studio" and evaluating a release of SnagIt for the Mac. I've used Camtasia on the Windows side and I like it, which makes me optimistic for the Mac version's future. You can sign up for email updates at the TechSmith Mac page, or follow the feature request link if there's something you can't live without.

On the other side of the fence is Adobe's Captivate 3, a high-end screencasting and presentation tool for Windows that's aimed at instructional designers and training applications. While it's pricey, casual users can leverage it to create podcasts or 'casual learning' environments quickly and easily. There isn't an official roadmap for Captivate development on the Mac yet, but Adobe representatives were clear in a recent conference call on the product: if you want to see Captivate come to the Mac, let Adobe know via the company's feature request form.

It's always something: just as I start to write up a Mac 101 on screen grabbing, along comes something cool, free and pretty: Jing for Mac. Built by the screen capture savants at TechSmith (developers of Windows tools Camtasia and SnagIt), Jing combines a lightweight, one-click image or motion capture tool with a free 200 MB hosting account at Screencast.com. The result is a fine way to quickly get 'casual' captures online and shared with a minimum of fuss. The motion captures are saved as .swf Flash video, which is either a bonus or a drawback depending on your perspective.

The current-but-one version (labeled a 'project,' not a beta) gave me a smidge of trouble on a dual-monitor setup, but the current 1.2.4 version seems to be working better, and it also cleared up a conflict with Growl. I'll do a few captures here and get a gallery together to see how they look. Jing isn't going to replace power tools like Snapz Pro, ImageWell or Skitch, but it's pretty good at what it does. Also, as Laurie pointed out, the Jing installer comes with a handy 'autoinstall' AppleScript that copies the application and then unmounts the disk image -- particularly useful for those friends and family (you know who they are) that seem to get confused and end up running applications from a mounted .dmg instead of installing them properly.

Thanks Laurie & Dave