As a university professor, I am doing a lot of video these days. I’m reasonably comfortable with iMovie and Screenflow. Final Cut Pro and Camtasia intrigue me with some different features. Thoughts on pro and con? Share your experience?
2 Likes
While I haven’t done a ton of work in it myself, it’s worth pointing out that if you’re familiar with iMovie but hitting its limits you qualify for the Pro Apps Bundle for Education as a university professor. That lowers to the price to $200 and gets you Logic at the same time.
1 Like
I would happily recommend Final Cut - and as @AndrewHD points out, you can get it as part of the bundle for a reduced price
Yes, that is a good discount. I have the trial version of FCP now—just have to learn it!!
Retired now, but I was doing class videos from about 2008 to 2015. I started with iMovie and iShowU and ended up with Final Cut Pro and still iShowU.
I used a video camera on a tripod aimed at the white board and iShowU to capture my computer screen which was projected for the class. Sometimes I used a second camera aimed at my desktop.
iShowU doesn’t have any editing capability but basically captures to disk in real-time without post processing time required. So at the end of class I had two or sometimes three simultaneously recorded video files that I would then easily merge in FCP (it wasn’t easy with iMovie!) and inserted titles that I made in advance. I exported using compressor dropping the frame rate and image size to get the file size down. It would be only a couple of hours after class until the lecture was available for students to download. I even hosted the files on my website because the school’s facility (only available in the last few years) was cumbersome to use for both my students and myself.
2 Likes
My wife found that she hit the limits of iMovie recently when working on a graduation video with the orchestra at one of our local middle schools. She was trying to combine all the clips of the kids performing into a single video. She researched options using Youtube tutorials and we bought Final Cut Pro. With FCP she is able to do it the way she wants. (Or at least, she’s stopped complaining that it doesn’t work.)
1 Like
@violagail I’m curious which you decided on, and how it’s going?
I need to create a few lectures and explainers this semester, and don’t think BlueJeans capture will do it for me.
Fun—I have good intentions of learning FCP, but COVID has occupied my brain and my time—Lots of planning for teaching and for a community program that’s part of my position. I like Screenflow. I don’t half of what it can do but it’s very intuitive (and I’ve already paid for it). My students speak highly of WeVideo. One of my colleagues is a big time Camtasia fan—I’ve used it in the past but I think it overlaps too much with Screenflow. Let me know what you decide!
1 Like