Are there any free or inexpensive tools for doing a video screen capture on the Mac? I have iMovie too, if that helps. I want to start putting together some previews and a tutorial for my iphone game. thanks
ScreenFlow is probably the best for Macs:
OK thanks!
Yeah, I swear by ScreenFlow.
That’s a lot of money for something that ought to be included in the OS. I think this pricing is more reasonable:
Yes, ScreenFlow is better. It’s also 4x as much.
I bought iShowU from Shinywhitebox. I haven’t used it much, but the times that I have it’s worked great, and its quite cheap.
I’ve had a lot of luck with screenflow as well.
Another three thumbs up for ScreenFlow. It doesn’t just do screen captures with all the bells n’ whistles, it also lets you mix video and sound… much better than iMovie IMHO.
I have had good experience with SnapzPro from ambrosia software. It’s pretty cheap and does the trick. I’ve used it in the context of gathering content for youtube videos edited in iMovie. Haven’t used it for in-game footage
Btw, this subject has come up before 
One very nice thread (in which a couple of really nice solutions including screenflow have been posted about):
Other threads:
What desktop recording software was used?
(this one also links to a blog posting Tonio aka podperson wrote with a review of various tools)
… I think this qualifies for an FAQ entry
Sunny regards,
Jashan
Second for “IShowU”… very flexible capture utility that can capture both still shots and movies containing system audio as well as audio from external sources.
I’m also a happy ScreenFlow user. However I do agree that this functionality should be part of Grap.app - could integrate nice with iMovie.
Thanks for all the suggestions! Sorry for starting a FAQ again. I am going to try out several of these with free trials.
Does anyone have a top pick for this requirement?
To record a bunch of short clips of my game, and edit them together with sound to make a tutorial? I assume I would have to import it into iMovie to do the editing.
I did this video using ScreenFlow and GIMP only: 0.4b navmesh demo.mov.
Cool! that must be Unity 2.5 as well
I Own both SnapzPro and IShowU. Snapz is definitively the superior product, for ease of use and the fact that it runs in the background and takes over the screen capture Command-Shift-3, allowing you to capture movies of any size and images of any size, including detecting objects, like menus and windows.
SnapzPro forever!
if you got a mac its pretty easy to make your own… in x-code look at some of the developer resources and you will find it is basically made for you. if you know max msp they have an object called called jit.desktop that you can make via visual programing if your not inclined to copy some code.
i use a program called screenium. search google for “screenium beta” ran by it one day. has some great features. i have seen peoples screen casts in spapz or what ever but i like sceenium for the beta price 0. it does mouse events so you can see where the user is clicking etc… plus if you don’t want to do a HD sreen cast you can do a follow mouse window, which is best if you are to be using you tube or something. that is where you select a resolution lets 600x300 or what ever so the result video is more of a zoomed up view of your mouse. see if you do a HD capture then resize to go on youtube, all the parameters and stuff get so tiny they can not be read.
so if you are going to make any coding tutorials where the user has to read do a mouse area capture to the target size of youtube or what ever. tutorials are useless if you can not see what is going on.