First–and at the risk of sounding like a fanboy–I love Screenflow. I paid $89 or whatever for it, and I think that in every manner it’s the best value out there. For your mac, it does everything it does, it does about right. There are some counter intuitive interface things, but they are all balanced out by the ease of use and easyness of the editor.
Still, it could be fun to have a ‘pro’ version. Screenflow isn’t about slick transitions and effects, it’s about being easy to make good videos.
With that said, here’s what I want:
- Usability: Open file -> creates new file. Right now to make a new file, you have to record 2-3 seconds of video. That’s dopey. It’s tolerable, but just have a ‘create new file.’ I often use screenflow as my NLE when I’m doing stuff that I don’t need to putz with final cut for.
- Autosave when finished recording: this is a feature I want because if you start working (and it’s easy to just start working) you can lose data if the mac goes to sleep. Autosaving on a mac isn’t part of the norm, but I’ve lost work catastrophically 2-3 times because of this, and it’s an easy (enough) fix.
- Bring In Media (pack & go) if you want to, it should do what Audacity does and bring in all the files it’s searching for and using if you want it to. This will increase the file size, but it will also mean that it’s not a PITA if I move some file to some other part of my hard drive or delete an old version of something.
- Chroma Key: Look, with today’s webcams starting to kick ass (my Eyeball by Blue) why not use this thing? It could be an awesome, gamechanging feature since you guys are so far ahead of the field. doing a chroma key/greenscreen video right would make you beat the TAR out of your competition.
- Crop Different: I’d like to make different shaped videos. I’d like to cut around someone when possible, instead of being limited to square shapes. If I want to cut out the space over my shoulder, let me.
- More Precise Editor: The editor’s habit of ‘snapping to’ is an irritant, and it should be able to be just a little more precise than it is if we set it to be that way.
- Save Effects: If we’ve made an effect that brings a video in, and then makes it fly away from whence it came, we should be able to save the effect/effects as something so we can save time creating it.
- Hotkeys: Evetything that Screenflow CAN do should be done via hotkey. Insert text box, for example
- Text Boxes: Let’s do a better job with those. Let’s be able to save text box styles and apply them correctly, and precisely. Font size and stuff are there, but having to mouse around to make all of our changes is a bummer.
- Colors: Being able to make things B+W or sepia or whatnot can’t be that hard, and if I’m a talking head, I want to be in black and white? Damnit make me in black and white. Or red. Or whatever. The current workaround is to export out into imove, make black and white and bring back in. Doable, but why?
That’s it for now. This would make an excellent ‘pro’ product, and I’d kill to have it. The distance between Screenflow and Snapz would get wider. Still, this said, there probably isn’t any better value in software than Screenflow at the present time. Amazing NLE and amazing what CAN be done. Let’s make it just a little easier.
Note: Transitions and peel aways would be great, but that doesn’t impact workflow that much.
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