Things We Love: Screencasting Tools

Here at Wistia, we’ve been a bit selfish. For a while now, we’ve been using awesome screencasting tools, but we haven’t let you in on our secrets. So today, we’re going to tell you all about our favorite screencasting services, ScreenFlow and Camtasia!

For the uninitiated, screencasting is an extremely useful tool that lets you record and edit a video of exactly what happens on your screen. There are many screencasting services out there, but we love ScreenFlow and Camtasia because they have an abundance of helpful features, but they are still intuitive and easy to use.

Camtasia and ScreenFlow are overflowing with so many features that we can only list the first sampling of what they have to offer. Both tools let you record your screencast while simultaneously recording other media (like a video of you in front of your computer). You can record your entire screen or selected areas of the screen. When you edit your screencast in ScreenFlow or Camtasia, you can add voiceovers, text, animation and interesting transitions. You can also zoom in and out, pan, adjust audio levels, highlight parts of the screen, and integrate existing media into your screencast. ScreenFlow and Camtasia let you easily export your screencast into common video formats, like mp4 and WMV.

Screenflow clocks in at $99 while Camtasia costs $99 for the Mac and $299 for the PC. Almost every video we have on our site was made using the tools. There are even some companies, like DemoDuck, who will use these screencasting tools to do screencasting for you.

Most of all, we love ScreenFlow and Camtasia because they make it so easy to simplify a very complex process.