With the video filters in ScreenFlow 4, there are some pretty cool effects that we can create directly in ScreenFlow.

Take a look at this one, created with a transition on the Edge Work filter. With this filter, I can turn a regular color clip into an artistic line drawing that transitions from very blocky to more detailed and finally to the regular camera shot.

Using Video Filters

If you haven’t tried them yet, I encourage you to check out all the new video filters. There’s Chroma key, blurs, distortion effects, color effects, stylized effects and more.

You can add any of these effects to a video clip by selecting your clip then clicking the “+” next to Video Properties > Video Filters to reveal the available filters. Select a filter and click “Add”. Once you’ve added your filter, you can adjust its parameters (if applicable) in the Filter property box that appears.

Adding transitions to the effects

What you’ll find is that when you add these filters they apply to the whole clip. So what if you want to add a transition effect to the appearance of the filter?

For example, what if I want a clip to slowly go from normal to a blurred or stylized look? We can do that by using Video Actions.

Here are the steps to create a transition effect on a Video filter:

1. Add a video filter effect to your clip and set the parameters of that effect to what you want it to look like when it starts (in the guitar clip above, I chose “Edge Work” and set the radius to 3)
2. Place your scrubber somewhere on the clip and , with clip selected, hit “Add Video Action”
3. With your cursor at the end of the Video Action box,  change the parameters of the effect to what you want it to look like at the end of the action. (in the guitar clip, I changed the radius to less than 1.)

By adding the video action, you tell the effect to ‘transition’ from the parameters at the beginning (a radius of 3) to the parameters at the end (a radius of less than 1).

Watch this quick 1:30 minute video to see how I made the effect on the guitar video above.

This can also be a creative way to transition a clip or a logo into your video. Take a look at these examples – silly, I know… but fun to make :) :

Do you have some creative ways you’ve been using the Video Filter effects in ScreenFlow 4? If so, include a link in the comments below. We’d love to see them!

With great fanfare and celebration, we are happy to announce the release of ScreenFlow 4.0.3 on both our website and on the Mac App Store.

With this release, we’ve fixed nearly 50 niggling bugs, including:

• The inability to export to Windows Media using the Mac App Store version of ScreenFlow
• A bug where splitting a clip removed a transition
• …plus a few crashes that would occur in certain systems under certain circumstances.

For a complete list of changes in this release, view our release notes.

We continue to fight the good fight, eradicating bugs, and making ScreenFlow ever more stable and reliable.

I want to thank all our wonderful customers for taking the time to report and help us diagnose some of these issues.

Enjoy 4.0.3 and keep making great ScreenFlows!

In ScreenFlow 4, due to popular demand, we implemented a new shortcut feature that allows you to zoom in and out of the preview canvas by using your mouse scroll wheel or a pinch/zoom motion on your trackpad.

In our latest 4.0.2 release, we’ve updated that feature (also due to popular demand). This new updated adds the ability to resize items on your preview canvas by pressing command and using the scroll wheel, or pinch/zoom.

Watch this quick 1 minute video to see how it’s done:

In this short video, I will show you how to create a the 3D text effect used most famously by George Lucas in his Star Wars intros, like the one pictured here.

In summary, the steps are:

1) Create a text box and put it into a nested timeline

2) Add a video action to scroll the text from bottom to top

3) On the main timeline add an X Rotation to the nested clip

4) Adjust and enjoy!

We’ve had a lot of questions about our new Mp4 web export format in ScreenFlow 4, so I thought I’d take a little space here to explain in depth what changed, why, and what some of the settings mean.

What changed and why?

As  a quick overview: the ScreenFlow 4 Web-High and Web-Low encoding presets now use the x264 codec to encode to H.264 video format, wrapped in an MP4 container. (As a comparison, ScreenFlow 3 presets used the Apple H.264 codec to encode H.264 format, and wrapped it in a .MOV container).

What are Codecs?

Codecs are like translators; they tell the program and hardware how to encode and decode a file for optimal viewing. (The word ‘codec’ literally comes from a contraction of COmpressor-DECompressor (or COder-DECoder). ) The goal of most lossy video codecs is to compress the data enough to keep file sizes low, while not sacrificing too much image quality.

Apple H.264 and x264 are just two of the available codec implementations that encode to the H.264 compression standard. X264 is considered by many (including us!) to be the best choice in terms of quality and file size for the H.264 file it renders. Moscow State University, Graphics & Media Lab Video Group, an authority on compression, tested and verified that x264 is the best choice in terms of quality and file size for the H.264 file it renders. Here’s a report of their most recent comparison of various H.264 codecs. (If you really want to geek out, here’s MSU’s full report. They do this test every year.)

What is a container?

We are happy to announce the release of ScreenFlow 4.0.2 into the world!

Our engineers have been prolific – this release has more than 60 fixes -  mostly minor and annoying – but a few highlights include:

• Feature addition: Many of you will be happy to hear we’ve brought back the ability to resize an object on the canvas by holding down the Command key when pinching in the canvas (or scrolling with mouse)
• Fixed issue causing video export to be darker than it appears in editing
• Fixed issue that caused transitions to appear low-res when exported in certain circumstances
• Fixed issue causing an inability to access the Elgato Turbo H.264 USB device
• Fixed issued that caused certain H.264 / Apple Animation files to not display on canvas

And many, many more fixes.  Read the release notes for a full list of changes in this release.

This is a free update for existing ScreenFlow 4.0 customers and a $29 paid upgrade for ScreenFlow 3.x, 2.x and 1.x customers.

If you’re already a 4.x user, the easiest way to update is to “Check for updates” from within the ScreenFlow application. Alternatively, you can go to our website, where there are instructions on how to upgrade.

Enjoy!

This week I’m pleased to introduce Aaron Nace.  Aaron is the President & CCO of an online Photoshop tutorial website called Phlearn. He has used ScreenFlow to record over 400 episodes and tutorials for Phlearn, helping people to become better photographers. He’s got some great tips and insights into how to create effective online tutorials. Read on:

How long have you been working on Phlearn?

I founded Phlearn in March of 2011 and have been working on the project full time ever since. It was started out of my house in North Carolina as something I thought could benefit the photography community. The company is now located in Chicago with a studio, full time employees, and over 250,000 people watching every month.

Prior to this, what was your experience with making video or screencasts?

Before Phlearn I used other programs like Camtasia to create screen recordings, but was never happy with the result. I really wanted to add better audio and a dedicated video camera. ScreenFlow is the best option out there when it comes to making professional screen recordings.

 How do you go about creating a tutorial screencast? What’s your process or workflow?

Our process of making screen recordings has changed a number of times over the past year, and right now we have a solution we are very happy with.
Our screen recordings are relatively complex, as we record separate audio and video on external devices and sync everything in the editor. We use a Sony NEX-5N to record video of my talking during the ScreenFlow which gives the audience someone they can relate to. Audio is recorded via an Audio Technica AT831b lavalier microphone into a Zoom H4n Audio recorder. Before making a screen recording, I change the resolution of my 15” Macbook Pro screen to 1280 x 800. This is very close to the 1280 x 720 common HD size that we output.

When we are ready to create a screen recording all of the devices are turned to record at about the same time. This way it is very easy to sync in the editor. The Sony NEX-5N camera and the Zoom H4n Audio recorder both record to SD cards, while ScreenFlow records directly to the hard drive of the computer. Once the episode is done, we stop recording on all of the devices and import the media from the SD Cards. The screen recording shows up in the editor window, and we bring the video and audio clips into the ScreenFlow editor. Lining up all of the clips by using the visible sound wavelengths is very easy, and from there we trim and edit the entire video.

For some time we were using a USB condenser microphone to capture audio which required one less step of sync in post, but having a giant microphone (AT 2020) in the frame was less than optimal. That is why we switched to using a lavalier microphone and with it comes a separate audio recorder. If I was not visible in the episodes, the AT-2020 USB would have been a perfect solution.

In your opinion, what are the most important elements of a tutorial screencast/video?