Turn your average-to-great home videos into amazing masterpieces, with ScreenFlow7

My children and I are huge fans of YouTube.  We often watch videos, mesmerized by their content and quality.  How do people make such intricate introductions, jingles, transitions? I have tried to create a few videos, using my iPhone 7 plus, iPad Air 2, MacBook Pro and iMovie. These videos have been incredibly basic, but fun to make. I have personally grown beyond the capabilities of the iMovie application and wanted more features. I had perused the IOS app store and saw a variety of options.  However, I was uncertain of which option to try.  With millions of options, it becomes difficult to know which apps are great, good, mediocre or poor.  Nick, a colleague, and friend, suggested I give ScreenFlow7 a shot.

As a mostly free app user, the price of this app was a little steep at $129.  However, when you think about the hours, days, and weeks that you may spend working on projects, the time to value price is likely cheaper than a cup of Starbucks coffee.  Before you suffer from sticker shock and navigate to a different page, I want to let you know that ScreenFlow7, by telestream.net, does offer an unlimited free trial period.  This outstanding offer is available through the ScreenFlow7 website.  The company offers all of the features, effects, graphics, and options during your unlimited trial period.  The only downside is the watermark that is placed upon exported videos.  When we come to our senses and realize the value of this application, it is easy to purchase a license.  You can buy this within the application or buy it from the website.  Within the app, you can select preferences, then select licenses and then purchase a license.  You will need to create a profile with a user name, email, and password.  You now have a very powerful video editing software at your disposal, with watermark free videos.  The ability to have an unlimited trial period is quite considerate.  You can learn the app, use the app, experience the features, experience the quality improvement in your final product and decide if this is the app for you.  With buyers’ remorse removed, feel free to purchase the app anytime.

As alluded to previously, the ScreenFlow7 website is absolutely amazing.  Instead of relying upon wordy tutorials and images, the company opted to provide video education.  You will find an array of 12 features (11 have videos) detailed by the website:  Highest quality recording, partial screen capture, iOS recording. Easy to learn/Easy to use, Powerful video editing tools, Professional Animations & Motions Graphics, Better Tools for Software Tutorials, Streamlined media management, closed caption support (no movie), More publishing options (handful of hosting sites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc), Animated GIF export, and ProRes MP4 Encoding and more.  You do not have to muddle through the application to create a quality movie.  Using the online videos, you can quickly learn the software.  Additionally, below the features, you will find a list of the new features available to Screenflow7: MP4 editing improvements, quickly toggle between 30 and 60 fps, add built in text animation effects, play timeline clips in reverse, customize your hot keys, updated user interface, supports the new OLED Touch Bar from the new MacBook Pro, a variety of new export options (IMGUR.com and Box.com), automatic export options. a clock alerting you to audio rendering, new library features, saved audio mixing preferences. Along the bottom of the page, you will find additional links for helpful hints.  StreamFlom7 has continued to advance from its birth in February of 2008.  It is reassuring to know that Telestream continues to enhance an already stellar application.

The ScreenFlow app is perfect for teachers, marketing specialists, app developers, training videos, vloggers (add videos to your blog), gamers and really for anyone interested in any kind of video editing.  Do you want to make tutorials? Do you want to make video game recordings and record from your iOS device?  All you need is a MAC computer and a little bit of time.  There are some software limitations to consider, however.  To utilize the app, you will need a Mac computer with an Intel-based chip Core i3 or better, MacOS Sierra 10.12, OS X El Capitan 10.11, a minimum of 2 GB RAM, and a minimum of a 20 GB HD.  If you have already purchased a previous version of ScreenFlow (version 4-6), you can choose to upgrade to ScreenFlow7, the latest edition.   This price is a very reasonable $39.00 USD.  There is a convenient video on the how-to upgrade feature.  Very similar to the initial purchasing option, you can choose to add the other ScreenFlow products to your cart.  Add pre-built transitions, animations etc by purchasing the accessory apps: Flowtility Motion Graphics Library and Flowtility Pro Transitions Pak.  If you are interested in further enhancements, definitely consider downloading the add-ons.

Once downloaded, open the app and notice the main rectangular screen.  Although this may seem rather plain at first glance, the design is quite user-friendly.  You will be taken to the main gray and black rectangular screen, which may seem rather plain at first glance.  Across the top left of the screen, you can choose the following options: “Welcome, New Recording, New Document, Recent Documents.”  Across the bottom, you can select among “What’s New, Get Help, Watch Tutorials.”  Touching any of the options across the bottom will direct you to the ScreenFlow website. To record your iOS device, you will need to plug the lightning end into your iPhone (5 or newer) or iPad into the computer, and then have the computer trust the device/recognize the device.  From the main screen, you can click “New Recording” and then select “Record IOS screen.”  You will see a screen that appears alerting you to the recording start time in 5 seconds.  The screen will then go to the desktop.  You can press (Shift+ Command+2) to start/stop the recording.  When you stop the recording, it will take you to the editing panel. Add an intro, add transitions, add a text box, duplicate sections, reverse clips, etc. The options are varied, depending on your desire.  If you go to the bar across the top of the screen, you will notice more options.  One of my favorite options allowed me to add voice clips, spoken by Siri.  You can play around with forward/reverse clips and you can also change the voice to numerous options.  You can shift the view of the movie by clicking it and dragging it around, crop in/out, zoom in/out, play/reverse the clip.  You can add new clips, add speech, etc.  There are so many features to enjoy.

Now that I have had an initial exposure and trial period of the app, I plan to utilize this to create a video review of my current favorite IOS game War Robots.  I love that you can create an intro, create a theme and add this to future videos.  Create a new opening to your sites movies and never have to recreate it again.  I have played around with this application and I plan to do both a written and video review within the next month.  I am very pleased that the app was recommended to me and will definitely rethink my “Free only” mindset.  I give the app 5 stars out of a possible 5 stars.

DOWNLOAD – Screenflow 7 for Mac – $129.99

Learn more about the ScreenFlow7 App from telestream.net.
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