I’ve been reading so many different opinions about whether Camtasia Zoom should be used, so thanks for putting forward such a well argued point about why it is so important

As an aside, most slide presentations are boring because of the slides. The standard templates that most people follow are awful. They don’t have to have pyrotechnics as long as they tell a good story.Cliff Atkinson’s book “Beyond Bullet Points” is a good example of how to do this

I have to say that I’ve become quite a big user of Screenflow, but that’s only because of the absence. So to answer your question, I’ve used (and continue to use) both of them together.

However to be perfectly clear about it, Camtasia does a superb job—and especially—especially when you’re trying to show something as boring as a sales page, or web page. Those are boring things and trying to do video with web pages requires you to juggle with audio, video, and movement. It’s hard enough having to do one of them, but to do all is quite a task.

This is why I recommend Camtasia. It creates the movement and it helps you very quickly put together a video that you’d put together in Screenflow. The only big difference—and this is a big difference for me—is that with Camtasia, I have less manual stuff to do with regard to zooming in and out.

I’m fussy about the stuff I do. I still believe that 70% is good enough, but I’m still fussy about that 70%. And I can tell you one thing. I don’t have the time to yank a video back and forth to create movement.

It’s hard to choose definitely between Screenflow and Camtasia. They’re similar but different. However to me, movement is the big missing link in a video screencast. And from that perspective alone I’d recommend you get Camtasia.

I could also tell you that you could download both and evaluate them for 30 days, but I know that would waste a lot of your time. So if you asked me, I’d say Camtasia first. I have to admit, I’ve gotten used to Screenflow and I will revert to it in a pinch. But that’s only because Camtasia for Mac is new to me. As I get the familiarity back, I’m pretty darned sure Camtasia will take the driver’s seat for all my video.

I’m wondering how you like the new version of Camtasia on the Mac. I’m trying to decide between that and Screenflow which also has a lot of nice features, including (apparently) a better video rendering engine than Camtasia. On the other side, Camtasia has the whole Sceencast affiliation for sharing high-quality videos. Have you done a side-by-side comparison of the two?

On another note, I came across a possible replacement for Snag-it on the Mac: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/

As Camtasia will tell you: They don’t pay me for this stuff. I’ve been a Camtasia fan forever. It was so hard moving over to the Mac because they don’t have Camtasia (um, didn’t have Camtasia).

Now I’m bugging them for Snag-It.

And especially video conferences. The most boring thing in the world (after watching paint dry) is to watch a single slide for close to five minutes.