Done Moving
Check out the new blog: http://www.zettt.com/blog/done-moving/
Xuebing Du
Misplaced Lens Cap

izzy's playlists!
noise dept.
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

blake kathryn
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Product Placement
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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Claire Keane

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Today's Document
styofa doing anything
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
dirt enthusiast

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@mosx
Done Moving
Check out the new blog: http://www.zettt.com/blog/done-moving/
Moving
TL;DR: I want to move to a new blog. I try to move old posts too, but first tests revealed it is causing too much work, I therefore might start afresh. View the new blog on blog.macosxscreencasts.com.
Background and a little info where I'm at
I'm moving! Not in real life, but this blog. I'm not satisfied with Tumblr anymore. Too often have the changes interfered with the way I want to blog. Right now there's a new design up that doesn't allow to upload images to text posts anymore. Stupid idiots.
I haven't yet decided what the new blog is going to be like. Since I've stated that this is now my personal blog it might go to zettt.com or zettt.de but since it originated from Mac OS X Screencasts, it might go to a subdomain like blog.macosxscreencasts.com as well.
Right now the blog is available with most of its posts on blog.macosxscreencasts.com.
Topics will be the same as it is right now. Feed readers do hopefully not need to update. I try my best to make this as painless for my readers as possible.
Possible paths
I've been trying to migrate the old posts using Jekyll's tumblr-import but it doesn't work very well. I archive my posts regularly using tumblr-utils, which works really well, but only generates rendered HTML.
Path 1:
The old MOSX Tumblr will move to blog.macosxscreencasts.com. It will contain the tumblr-utils backup.
A new blog will be created on zettt.com where I'm going to write new content. New start, new feed, new everything.
Path 2:
I figure out how to move the old content.
In this case I will move everything to blog.macosxscreencasts.com or zettt.com. I don't see this coming though.
Path 3:
mosx.tumblr.com stays where it is.
The new blog will be hosted somewhere else, like Medium or Ghost. (Unlikely. Checked out both, and they are not so cool.)
Path 4:
mosx.tumblr.com stays where it is.
No new content.
I create a new blog.
You have to update manually.
I lose all my readers.
The change will be painful.
I probably have to cherrypick my favorite posts for migration.
I'm sorry.
Path 4 is my favorite at the moment. I keep you updated and post a definitive last post when time is ready. Note that this could take from weeks to months, so don't get your feet wet, when it takes longer. This is just a spare time thing, and I don't have much time to spare these days.
Enlight is finally in the App Store. This is one of the *best photo apps* that I've ever had the joy to beta test. Enlight could bring a huge change to the iOS photo game. I honestly don't know where to start. What immediately ccaught my eye was a full-fledged curves tool. It has fonts built in, effects built in. Such a lot of stuff *built in*. You buy the app, there are no in-app purchases. Period. The app is from the guys who make [Facetune](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facetune/id606310581?mt=8&at=1l3vpUb&ct=mosx). Check out the screenshots in the App Store, watch the App Preview and see for yourself. I really like the onboarding videos too.
The Sad Hole Soundtrack Pro Left
Soundtrack Pro is not even mentioned on Apple's webpages anymore by now. And although it is gone from sales, it is still on my hard drive. And I still use it to this day.
Why? Because it had such a good Denoiser, that other tools of similar price and feature rich-ness just couldn't compete. There were other things where Soundtrack Pro excelled, and I just like to briefly write about them, because I have big big heart, and Soundtrack Pro is gone, and that makes me sad.
Soundtrack Pro was not just an app, its file format had some nifty features up its sleeve. A Soundtrack Pro Audio Project (.stap) was presented to the file system as a flat ".aiff" file, but also had all the editing information in it. What does that mean? Well, basically, you could double-click it, and play the file through QuickTime Player, with all the edits you've made, intact. But you could also open the file in Soundtrack Pro again, do more edits, save again, and the flat file would update. And that was seriously cool!
The app saved all (destructive) edits in a "history". Many modern DAW's do this now, but Soundtrack Pro was one of the first. Essentially what this does is, it saves edit points and effects, like a reverse, denoise, equalize, etc., to a list. The app would "render" all those edits, on top of an existing audio file. You were able to drag edits above or below others. This means you could do stuff like: "let's do a filter first, then a bit crush. Oh, no, doesn't sound good, let's try it the other way around." The beauty was that all of that dragging would be rendered to that "flattened" audio file. So if you imported the .stap into a Logic project, you could update the original file, and it would update in Logic.
This all basically changed one thing for the editing process: edits that were once considered destructive, i.e. non-reversible, were all of a sudden reversible. Not only that, but it was also possible to delete them -- freely at will. Others caught onto that feature, and Soundtrack lent it from somewhere else, but the way the app implemented it, especially in regards to the operating system and third-party apps was just amazingly beautiful, from a technical perspective.
Soundtrack Pro also had a very nice denoiser. I still use this denoiser to this day. It's not the most miraculous thing in the world anymore, by a 2015 standpoint of view, but the combination with the non-destructive destructive editedness and this relatively good denoiser makes Soundtrack Pro the weapon of choice for me. STP is a great pick, because when later in the process I realize that something gets compressed so heavily that suddenly the denoise artifacts are audible, I can simply re-edit and export and everything's fine. The power of STP really shows up when used as external editor. That's why the app was Logic's external editor by default. And it made sense, by the time…
As you can read from my words, I'm a little sad that Soundtrack Pro has vanished. It was the app to use for podcasts. It was able to export "enhanced" podcasts, with chapter markers. It was a full blown surround mixer for movies. It had so many good things. But… I think what caused Soundtrack Pro's inevitable death was that users didn't grok how it worked. I think sound folks don't get how computers work. I can tell from the work that I've done in the past, with students, that's true. Users didn't get that the same file you clicked on in the Finder would be able to play in QuickTime, but also would be the same thing that contained all the editing information. I think that some other concepts were also incomprehensible. Soundtrack Pro also crashed, a lot. And I mean a lot. You had to know its quirks to know what kind of steps to do in which order to make it not crash. Once you've figured it out, though, it was fine.1
Man, and all I did was look at the icon.
Still stupidly annoying to reverse a two hour edit. ↩︎
> Build truly native apps with JavaScript. To me it looks like JavaScript is slowly eating up everything else. Haven't yet decided whether I should be happy or sad about this development.
40% off during beta.
> Node-RED is a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. Looks impressive.
Automating Invoices With Hazel
I’ve been working on a new way to automate my invoicing system for a while now. It’s been annoying me that I have to do so much stuff by myself where I could just have the computer handle it for me. It may be discouraging to some because one might feel they miss out on an invoice, but honestly I haven’t because I still see every invoice.
Basics
Hazel is obviously the key to the system.
I don’t think I have talk about my invoice naming scheme, but TextExpander and Hazel are able to help me here:
%filltext:name=Invoice Date(YYYYMMDD):width=8% - %fillpopup:name=Payee:MasterCard:VVS:default=%%fillpart:name=Non-Predefined Payee?:default=yes%%filltext:name=Name:width=30%%fillpartend% %filltext:name=Invoice Number:width=15%%fillpart:name=Invoice Period% - %filltext:name=Start Date:width=8%-%filltext:name=End Date:width=8%%fillpartend%
In pseudo-blocks this means:
{{Invoice date in YYYYMMDD}} - {{Payee}} {{Invoice Number}} - {{Invoice Period Start}}-{{Invoice Period End}}
The good thing is that Hazel is able to do almost everything by itself. I would recommend that you check out my Hazel tutorial for the basic and other workflows, but this goes beyond my tutorial screencast.
I have a folder for invoices, named Filed Documents. Hazel is watching this folder for new documents coming in. I have several folders created for parties I receive invoices monthly, and I will only highlight one or two, as example. The others follow the same principles.
Invoices That Have All Information in Their Filename
When an invoice has all the important in the filename, it’s easy. Just setup a Hazel rule where:
Name → matches → Token for invoice number - Token for payee - Token for …
Tokens allow to re-use text elements from the conditions, in the actions below. With a text token that matches 6 consecutive digits, labelled invoice number, you can use the rename action to use the invoice number token to set the new filename.
Note that you can also do a lot more stuff, as you can see in the picture:
Dynamic Tags: One dynamic tag can contain multiple tokens, and it can be combined with text as well. This sounds complicated but is very powerful and useful. Say the original filename has the year, but only the last two characters, e.g. 15 for 2015. Then you can create a dynamic tag that looks like this: 20{{year token}}. It will expand to one tag that says 2015. You can also combine two tokens into one tag. A dynamic tag with {{year token}} - {{month token}} will have one tag with 2015 - 02 as text. I create four tags for invoices: Invoice (as general tag), Payee, Year, Month.
Sort into subfolder: The same works for sorting. You can use tokens to sort into a year and month folder. Simply use the tokens from the conditions and Hazel will take care of the rest.
Invoices That Have No, Or Almost No, Information in Their Filename
Thank you, everyone, for these by the way!
If I wouldn’t have Hazel, this would be much more complicated. Hazel is awesome in the way it can handle these types of documents, because Hazel has a condition where it can match the contents of a file. As we’ve just learned, when Hazel can match something, we can make tokens out of it.1
In the worst case the filename only contains a 12 string long cryptic filename. (Kabel BW, you are the most awesomest folks of all!) Luckily the text inside the PDF is not as cryptic. Normally a payee would write things like:
Invoice Number: 23894239-W30
Hazel can search for this entire text, but it can also match it. Create a condition that matches for:
Invoice number{{anything}}{{8 digits, followed by "-", followed by 1 letter and 2 digits}}
Hazel will match this text and we are able to use it as an action. Of course the same works for invoice month, and year, too. You can get very creative here!
Invoices Where Hopfen And Malz is Verloren
The German saying “da ist Hopfen und Malz verloren” means “it’s hopeless”. Where it’s hopeless to auto-file, I have one more rule at the very bottom that looks for a {{4 digit}} token as year, and a {{2 digit}} token for the month. If Hazel find these, then I can at least sort them into the year and month subfolders. Oh well.
More on the workflow
This workflow is more elaborate as it looks, because my tax accountant needs to get new invoices regularly. This is why I also have a Copy action at the end. This copies all new invoices to a folder where I keep everything new, temporarily. Every 1st of the month I move everything to a new folder that gets auto-uploaded to my consultant, so she can work with it. (This goes beyond this post, but I’ll give you a glimpse on this auto-copying thing.)
It’s really not complicated. I watch this folder, and every first of the month at a specific time I sort everything into a subfolder. Another action runs a couple of minutes later and does the uploading.
Want something even more powerful? Hazel has an option for "everything" this contains all the information Spotlight indexes, you can create tokens out of almost everything. ↩︎
Not the most beautiful thing in the world, but probably gets the job done. (Untested)
Replacing Slogger with IFTTT
This year I've been experimenting with an alternative to Slogger that, I think, looks more promising for the time being: IFTTT. IFTTT can pull from a lot of sources, providing enough metadata. Where IFTTT falls short because there's no integration yet, or no API exists, we can fall back to RSS feeds.
That said, my current solution built on IFTTT is nowhere near perfect. What my version lacks is some sort of viewing capability. I merely record the most meaningful data in a somewhat standardized way.
Sidenote: If you are looking for an app that records all your activties from a couple of the most common social networks, then I would recommend to give Momento a shot. It's been rocking social activity recording ever since it was released in 2011. An alternative would be ThinkUp, but you have to run this on your own server.
Also, have a look at Saga. The app is clumsy and ugly, but it does log quite nicely. It also integrates with Moves, and it has an IFTTT channel from which you can create new diary entries.
Where an Integration Is Available
When IFTTT has an integration, we can just use that integration to record everything to text file. The template is esentially like this:
[title](url) some content maybe some more metadata date ----
I've done this for:
Instapaper
Facebook (shouldn't be too hard to figure out)
Last.fm
YouTube
IMDb Check-Ins
GoodReads
Caveats
When the API is down, so is this solution. IFTTT is pretty dumb about its integrations. Meaning that when it can't reach a service, it doesn't try to "catch up", i.e. it doesn't fill in the holes in between. The YouTube API is really finicky. I don't know why exactly, but for whatever reason, Google changes that particular API constantly, making clients break almost every month. IFTTT works very unreliably with it. Just saying.
I also had similar issues with RSS feeds. IMDb doesn't care too much about their check-ins. The Watchlist is more important to them. Both have an RSS feed, but only one seems to be actively maintained.1 Same thing goes for GoodReads. RSS, yes, but doesn't work so well with IFTTT. I presume though, that in this case, it is IFTTT's fault, since I checked with curl and got an XML file back.
Anyway, I hope this helps some folks. It's not perfect, nor is it beautiful. I hope I have a much better version for you soon, but we're still trying to come up with it.
Hint: It's not check-ins. ↩︎
How to Start to Meditate. A Small Guide.
TL;DR: Read the last section containing the how to guide, if that's all you're interested in.
Recently a friend asked me: "how do I start to meditate? I want to do it too, but I have no idea how to start."
This question has been popping up in my head a couple of times since, and honestly, I have no idea how to start. The only thing I know is that you have to start, if you want to do it.
The more interesting question to answer is not how to start, but how to make it stick? And as I just been "meditating" here I realized that it's not "I want to meditate" that has made it stick for me. As I wrote before, it's been hard for me to calm down regularly for some time now, but also that the meditative experience itself has changed. The thing that made me sit down and do my meditation was my hyperactivity.
The reason I went to a doctor with my problem was that I was always very twitchy. Twitchy in a self-harming way. I was so nervous that I would scratch my fingers until they bled. Another thing that showed my twitchiness physically, were my legs. I would bob with my knees up and down all the time.
So the reason I started meditating, and what made it stick, was purely health related. I didn't want to harm myself anymore. The doctor said: "Look you've got two choices. Drugs or a natural solution. What's your pick?" It's obvious what I chose, but with my choice came a high amount of blind believe, and trust, too. I had to believe that even if I, at the moment, weren't able to see any reason, or any immediate result, that, after about three months, I would stop scratching my fingers. And I did.
So one of the reasons I meditate is not "to meditate" but rather "to make the twitching not come back". For a similar reason I workout regularly. It's not "to build muscle", it's "because it helps me to balance myself."
I hope this short introduction helps you find your own personal higher goal.
How to actually start
This is answered really easily: just do it. Just do it one time for a couple of minutes and then see where it takes you.
If you came this far, and now read this post, I am assuming you read some stuff here and there already. This means you are into the topic. You don't need to read more, you just need to transfer theoretical knowledge into practical experience.
I can assure you, after you do it once, you'll know more.
How to actually meditate
If that still doesn't help. Here's an actual "get started" guide.
I would recommend to find a quiet place.
You don't need fancy equipment.
You don't need one of those fancy pillows. A normal chair is good enough.
You don't need a clock, or a gong.
You don't need music either.
Look, when you just start with meditation, you are the most startupiest meditator of all. An alarm is nice, and those gongs too, but they are even nicer when you have a use for them. When you buy a meditation CD to start to meditate, then whenever you see the CD, it reminds you that you were going to start to meditate, it defeats the purpose.
My doctor recommended "try to be dependent on as few equipment as possible. This way, you don't need to have the equipment with you, to do a meditation session." Makes sense?
In regards to the actual meditation itself, I would recommend to play with it. Do your very first session without a clock. Just sit down, and try to calm down. Breath in and out. Maybe you want to concentrate on your breathing. Just sit and relax. Sit for how long as you can bare it. I swear, the first time, you will highly over-estimate how long you've been sitting. Just let it come naturally. If, after a minute, you can't sit still anymore, end your first session. Try to guess how long you've been sitting. That's the game you can play. How long am I able to sit?
From the first 2 minutes, you can stretch it out over the next three or four sessions. Then continue the game until you can sit still for 15 minutes. With meditation there's nothing you can do wrong. You either sit, or you don't. There's no one who can judge you, there's only you.
What made me believe in meditation was the fact that it's me-time. Our whole world is so noisy, and stressful, all the time. We hustle, we make, we build, we think. We put our faces down into our phones and not in the eyes of the people that are dear to our heart. One person we also neglect is ourselves. You meditate to you spend time with yourself. With meditation you get to know yourself.
However, and when, you decide to do your first session. The best recommendation I can give is: start small.
Pond5 has put out a public domain video footage library. This is great if you are doing some low-cost video productions and podcasts.
Audio Hijack 3 Tutorial I posted my Audio Hijack 3 workflow and tips yesterday, but I also recorded my first personal, just for my private amusement, screencast in about 2 years. Of course I've been posting screencasts here and there all the time, but since I decided to make videos my main business, screencasting was never the same for me. You cannot imagine what a **huge** step this is for me. Let me explain. See, my clients expect high quality videos from me. That is absolutely understandable, and I made quality one of [zCasting's core values](http://zcasting3000.com/the-zcasting-3000-vision/ "The zCasting 3000 Vision | zCasting 3000") to aim for. The problem is: I just love to share my knowledge with other people. I love screencasting so much that I would love to record and put out more of them, but since videos are my business, I have high standards for them. Not only do I have high standards for my business, but I also think that every video that I put out there, has to be of an equally high standard. What that means is that I don't post videos. Every little video would become a dreadful week-long project. I need to design neat lower-thirds, a cool intro, find some nice music, … **Of course I know, to attract a lot of subscribers, you need all of that. But it also hinders my *ability and desire to share knowledge*.** Yesterday when I sat down to think about content marketing ideas for zCasting 3000. I realized this was the issue that keeps me from putting out more videos. **So I threw all of my ego away.** I decided to go back to the roots. I put a "least amount of editing" rule on myself. "Good enough", I told myself, "I just needs to be good enough, it doesn't need to be great." No script, no storyboard, no nothing. Normally I take a lot of care that you don't see any mouse jumps in my screencasts. Good enough, I said, and made the cut. The mouse jumps sometimes now. The overlays are not beautiful. I don't think the content is good even. But it's finished and it's uploaded and it's published. I published today in the morning, an kept it online the entire day. It's about midnight now, and it's still online.[^*] I'm not sure if that means I'll put out more screencasts now, just like I did in the past, but it's a start. I'd like to go a similar route with zCasting's content marketing strategy. Think: "Let's Play"-style tutorials. If you read this far, I'd greatly appreciate a comment. [^*]: I realized that, now that I know "the bigger picture", I can play with other things, that I used to play with. Not is the storyboard really the most important thing, nor are any animations. I know stuff like "YouTube takes ProRes" files, and I know that "YouTube takes any size of video". Really? So, when I upload an 8-minute, 12GB ProRes 422 HQ screencasts, does that count? That's so much more fun. :D
My Stretching Routine: Get Mobile I've been meaning to share my stretching routine, but only until recently was able to, because I technically couldn't capture and/or illustrate the workout. My routine is based on a little bit of Yoga, a little bit of stretching, and a little bit on feedback from physiotherapists. Your own workout will probably be slightly different. We all have certain areas where we are more "tight", than in others. Generally a lot of folks are tight around the hip area. People who sit a lot tend to have this problem. I mentioned the problem in a [previous post](http://mosx.tumblr.com/post/61036224481/good-posture-i-mentioned-that-i-want-to-delight "MOSX Tumblelog"). My stretching routine is heavily influenced by the [Bio Energizer Routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD-3j2g9w9U "Daily Bio-Energizer Warm Up Routine - YouTube"), from Elliot Hulse, and his [Intuitive Stretching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGXncgpAwv4 "Intuitive Stretching For Weightlifters & Athletes - YouTube"). At the end you can see me do weird things with my legs. That was the part where I, in this case, listened to what my body told me in which way it wanted to be moved. I'm experimenting with this stuff, especially since I realized that meditation has so many forms. Rooting myself takes [many faces](http://mosx.tumblr.com/post/97827001474/the-many-faces-of-meditation) [But It Doesn’t Have Heart](http://mosx.tumblr.com/post/93138254689/but-it-doesnt-have-heart) now. Does that have [monk-level](http://mosx.tumblr.com/post/90568771536/the-warrior-the-monk-and-the-lover "MOSX Tumblelog - The Warrior, The Monk, and The Lover") for you? Please tell me in the comments!
Audio Hijack 3: Controlling the Loudness of Too Loud Movies
Audio Hijack is out and the new version is worth every penny. The addition of Sessions is a dream come true. This feature opens so many use cases, and Rogue Amoeba has done a great job in this regard. Not only did I just setup a new podcasting session, that now finally allows to start recording of multiple inputs simultaneously, but also did I revise my Controlling the Loudness of Too Loud Movies setup.
To make you familiar with the original problem, in case you haven't checked the old post out:
One problem we have when watching movies, is that some parts are very quiet, where other parts seem overly loud. The idea I had is to lower the volume of the too loud parts, so that they are closer to the quiet parts. This is called compression in audio engineering. And it works a treat.
Create a new Session in Audio Hijack and remove the recorder. Then add a AUDynamicProcessor as effect.
Lower the threshold to about -20 to -15 dB. Make sure that the compression level is relatively harsh. It says "Headroom" when you click the rightmost circle. The lower, the harder the effect compresses.
Under Details on the bottom, I would recommend to set a slightly higher attack and release time. 0.1 seconds should be good enough, though.
Additionally you can up the overall volume again, to make up for the lost peak volume, but be reminded that this will also increase any noise artifacts.
ScreenFlow 5: My Review
This is my review of ScreenFlow 5. I have been writing this for about two months now. If you look at my Instagram profile, you see a ton of new videos there, especially screencasts. Pretty much all screencasts are made with ScreenFlow. The two about Final Cut, with the custom shortcut bubbles, as well as most of #uianimation posts, were made in ScreenFlow.
Final Cut
Replace With Gap
Lift from Storyline
#uianimaiton:
Swarm
Where To?
Made with Motion/Final Cut are: Twitter, Instapaper vs. Reeder, UI animations shouldn't block an app, iOS spring animations
Those should give you an overview what you can do with ScreenFlow.
I am aware that my followership is interested to hear my opinion about this release of a major screencasting app. To be honest, the reason I put this out so late is: I feel like I'm complaining more than I should. I don't like to write negative reviews, and you probably don't like to read them. The truth is, ScreenFlow 5 is way behind its previous standards. This is published so late because I wanted to give ScreenFlow a really really good whirl to see if my first impression was not true. I don't want to hide the facts, nor do I want to hide the faults. The main reason of this first introduction paragraph is to give you a perspective. I don't want to say bad things about ScreenFlow because I've been using it for 8 years now. I'm also using Camtasia. Because you hopefully been following me for a while you know all of that. You know that I think that TechSmith is doing a good job in everything related to screencasting. You know that I think they got a heart for screencasting, and that I think Telestream doesn't. In the past I've been recommending ScreenFlow without hesitation. Recommending ScreenFlow 5 with the same kind of confidence is not so easy anymore. Please read this review and make your own judgment.
ScreenFlow 5 has been released on October 21, 2014. After some initial skepticism on my part, I went ahead and bought the app. To say that after my first look I was not happy with the app would be an understatement. ScreenFlow was the best screencasting app we had on OS X, but it has fallen behind. You can feel it in the pores. Where Telestream (and Vara Software before) showed us Mac users the future of screencasting, they now fail to deliver a product, that differentiates itself far enough to have more value than competing apps, or even the free alternative, QuickTime.
Marketing and Support
I want to begin my review not with the app itself, but with their changed approach to marketing. Every tweet I write is piggybacked by Telestream. They jump into every conversation, without adding any value to the discussion. When I originally asked:
Zettt Not sold on ScreenFlow 5. Is the update worth it? Haven't been using the app for about a year or two at least. 05.11.14 22:37
It took them only a couple of minutes to answer that the app has been received well, and its iOS recording is great. Reading this kind of stuff from the manufacturer who makes something, is not trustworthy, nor unbiased. I wanted to see the good, and maybe thought they would eventually want to contribute to the discussion, without making me want to buy their product, so I asked what ScreenFlow 5 adds to iOS screencasting that Final Cut, Motion, and QuickTime can't do.
ScreenFlow @Zettt A single, streamlined workflow! 05.11.14 22:47
From what I can tell from using the app, that is true. But is single and streamlined better? I've been editing screencasts with it, and if I had to say that single is a reason to buy it, it's not. Using Final Cut and Motion adds so many possibilities that it outweighs the single-appness of ScreenFlow. For new users? Maybe.
For a couple of years now, Telestream's support also lacks horribly. I don't know what they are doing. Many colleagues, have been in touch with them. They all share the same story: the Telestream support staff were either not able to help them, or sent general text snippets, not even referring to the original problem.
My recommendation: you're better off to find an answer on a forum, Twitter, or Facebook. If anyone at Telestream reads this: please improve your support. I'd like to see this get better. The forums: please shut it down.
Obviously, I bought ScreenFlow 5, eventually. Let's speak features.
Touch Visualizations
Adding touch visualizations is a great feature. Plus points. I personally don't like that the touches themselves don't allow for a blur, or a drop shadow so that it's visually easier to see where the touches end, and where the content begins.
The configuration is a bit confusing at first sight. Especially when the touch count is increased. Sometimes you need to rotate the touches a little bit to make room on the screen, or to better indicate that there's not enough room and the device is used more naturally with the hand rotated.
With the new Touch Callout feature, pinch gestures, and even three-finger spread gestures, are possible.
All that said, my main gripe with these types of touch callouts is that the app doesn't reflect how an iOS app is really used. As a viewer it is immediately evident that an animation runs, and not a human actually uses the device.
Of course the move animation can be set from linear to eased, but that just doesn't cut it sometimes. Sometimes we need to "curve" from one state to the next, and that's something the Touch Callout doesn't allow for. So we're pretty much left with doing touches frame-by-frame. Nothing new in this regard.
When a Touch Callout ends, it just "disappears". No fade out, no blur out. Region ends, and poof the touch gone. Visually not very appealing. Touch Callouts add themselves to a clip, rather than a separate track, like regular Callouts. Regular Callouts allow to add rectangles, lines, and other drawn objects. Because these Callouts are separate clips the user can add a regular transition at the beginning or end. Touch Callouts don't have this ability. Why are they contained within a clips, rather than separate clips? Who knows. This is just one of the UI misconceptions, that I will write later about.
The defaults for a touch callout are also not very appealing. The color Telestream chose is a very dark grey, with no outline. I did some adjustments and got it looking relatively good. Here you can see a comparison between the two:
This also brings me to my next complaint: defaults. The defaults are suboptimal in many cases. I know that one of the main new features in ScreenFlow 5 is the ability to add Templates, but it's a considerable effort one has to a) realize there's something they can customize, and b) actually go through all the hassle to customize all the things. Probably not too much to ask for a professional, but the audience ScreenFlow has catered to in the past, probably won't do that. Are the chosen defaults fine? I'd say "probably yes, but maybe not". The reason I express this complaint at all is that many users who screencast use the defaults. Because the chosen defaults look ok-ish, but not great, we get, as a result, ok-ish looking screencasts. Admittedly, Camtasia is not a single dime better.
Templates
Speaking of templates, I think this is one of the nicest additions to ScreenFlow 5. It allows pro screencasters to customize the visual appearance of their videos, to a point where we have enough distinction, between two videos, to be recognized as two separate works.
As I mentioned, I'm not sold on the touch visualizations. I've used every app and thing on this planet, that I could get my fingers on. Every app that promised it would improve click or touch animations. But I haven't found anything that I would actually use. There's PinPoint and PinPoint Pro that I would like to point out. PinPoint Pro especially is an excellent app to customize the whole visual appearance of clicking, on a desktop. If you are doing live presentations this is one of my recommendations.
It is no wonder that I wanted to build my own touch animations then, right? I opened Sketch and exported a PDF. PDF's can contain vectors. This means that they can be scaled to any size without loosing crispness. This works in Keynote, for example, and other apps too. A workflow that I use regularly for clients to build their own production line. Exporting a circle, with a little bit of drop shadow, and otherwise transparent background, produces this on import in ScreenFlow 5:
To be fair: importing a transparent PNG works. Considering a full-retina production workflow, though, a working vector solution would be much more preferable, especially considering that, to indicate clicks or taps, I would scale the image up.
The Bugs
At the moment ScreenFlow 5 has lots of bugs. I hope that Telestream will fix most of them in dot updates, but at the moment it makes the app highly unreliable.
An example. I downloaded a video off YouTube using youtube-dl. The video was downloaded as an H.264, that I imported into ScreenFlow. I started my editing process and every edit caused the app to "hang". It didn't render new frames from new regions, only when the playhead reached a new keyframe came, the app would catch up. Editing this way is unacceptable, since the user can't determine the quality and correctness of an edit. That wouldn't be so bad, but when I exported the video, some regions would be exported, some would not. The result was a video consisting of black screens and the edit. The problem here is not that we have such an issue, the problem is that this issue shows up so inconsistently that I couldn't figure out a way to work around it. Bugs are always there, but if they hinder the production, and can't be worked around, then that's bad.
I was told by colleagues that they had similar experiences, which is sad, because some versions ago, ScreenFlow added the ability to create "empty documents". This was perfect, because this made ScreenFlow the more advanced version of iMovie. The editor was capable enough to edit vacation movies. It had various other advantages too, like being able to choose the frame size freely. At the moment I cannot recommend ScreenFlow 5 for this purpose anymore. As mentioned, editing has issues, and the export is unreliable. I hope they'll fix it in the future.
The bugs continue, sadly, some colleagues report that the app is prone to crashes at the moment. They say that the app is so unstable that it's barely workable. I can't second this, but the question is: what is causing ScreenFlow to be so unstable? I'd assume that it has a lot to do with last-minute changes to the app itself. From the fantastic movie player Movist, I first read that Apple is now requiring App Store apps to use AVFoundation; the old QuickTime frameworks are deprecated. Considering ScreenFlow is still in the App Store, it uses AVFoundation. I checked with otool and couldn't find the QuickTime frameworks either. This kind of observation flows (no pun intended) through the whole app. ScreenFlow 5 feels incomplete und unbaked at the moment. It has many rough edges, and lacks polish.
iOS Screencasting
One of the main new features is iOS recording. One of the downsides every app at the moment has, is that it's unable to record the touch events as well. In the case of ScreenFlow I was hoping that they would invest some more effort in this regard, and if they'd implement iOS recording, there would also be a solution there. But there isn't.
That aside, the iOS recording function has worked solidly in my tests, though I have heard negative feedback from fellow screencasters. They say the recording would drop frames. I can't second that experience, but from what I wrote about the editing, maybe it feels like ScreenFlow is dropping frames. I also can't undermine that with tests either. Maybe those folks also didn't pay attention to the new setting where they can set the framerate for new recordings? There is a new setting for the Desktop Framerate, which means it can record at 1, 15, 30, and Automatic fps. Whatever number Automatic is, but I suppose it's somewhere between 30 and 60 fps. Maybe Telestream means Automatic is 60? It's not clear from the dialog. There's no separate setting for the iOS framerate. And sadly, the documentation doesn't give this information away. There is this old forum post, that I found, that didn't answer the problem either. I don't know. Maybe ScreenFlow can't record at 60fps, maybe it can. Having high-framerate recording in ScreenFlow would have been great though.
I have to jump in here for ScreenFlow and admit that QuickTime is not any better in this case. Apple's own solution does not have a framerate setting at all, and the recorded framerate is also not stable. QuickTime does drop frames, too. It is dependent on the device and the available resources on that device. Everything that the device has to do in the background causes potential framerate issues. I know that Apple propagates that users shouldn't worry about background processes, but let's admit it, that's their marketing. In reality there's stuff going on in the background, and as long as there is stuff to do, someone has got to do that stuff, and therefore it will cause some sort of performance issue. Close the background apps! From my own experience, I can say that this results in better recordings.
Snapback
Snapback didn't get much attention in the release notes. It's actually a pretty cool feature. Basically Snapback would take any previous action, for example a zoom in, and just "snap it back" to the original settings.
I'm using the app now since October. This feature hasn't worked a single time. See, I do edit my videos. The way I do my edit, I watch the screencast and when I encounter a position that I would like to zoom in to, then I just add a Video Action and zoom in. Then I may mispronounce something, or some other issue occurs, like the mouse doesn't move where it's supposed to be moving to. So I correct that issue, and do some cuts. The problem then is that Snapback can't snap back anymore. It says there's nothing to snap back to. So the thing that could save lots of stupid clicking, didn't work in two months of testing.
Old Features
One more point that I'd like to address is that old features haven't received attention. The old things are just as they are. While new features have been added, the app itself hasn't received much love. There's little to no new design in ScreenFlow 5. One of the few things that has received an update is the app icon, but that's normal in the Apple world. The rest of the interface is just as it used to be. Apparently Telestream didn't see a reason to improve the speed at which screencasts can be edit with the app, nor workflows, nor UX.
My Recommendation
This is the tough part, because I wrote a Camtasia/ScreenFlow shoot out in the past, and whenever the two apps come out with a major update, I feel like I need to revise that article.
Right now this is even tougher, because in the past it was clear that Camtasia was way behind ScreenFlow. Between then and now a lot has happened. Let me sum it up for you.
I've been talking with the TechSmith folks occasionally. I wrote a couple of times that they are passionate about education, and screencasting. That is still true. We had chats where I complained about the design of their apps, that they don't approach the Apple market fully. They released several updates to their apps, and, additionally, their websites and their whole lineup of apps has received design updates all over the place. Camtasia is not 3.0 yet, but it's 2.9.1. They have implemented iOS recording in a dot update, rather than a major update. Other than that, the iOS recording has the same issues ScreenFlow 5 and QuickTime have. Marketing wise, what am I supposed to say. They piggyback, too, but they are not trying to fool their customers. The app itself has loads of bugs too. Is it good enough? Yeah, kind of. Are they unbearable? No, they're not.
On the other hand Telestream lost most of its momentum. Where there was passionate energy in the past, the rigidness and calmness of "the big one" has settled in. They have been bought by a company. Sleazy marketing has replaced valuable contributions. Heck, I have even been emailed by one of their folks if I want to take part in their affiliate network. I've been asked if I want to participate with a site that's nearly dead.
It's really hard to write this, I would love to write that ScreenFlow 5 is a great release. But it's jut not. While the features they've added are great and necessary for modern screencasters in the mobile world, the app itself lacks love and polish. Picture this: you've edited a video for an hour, maybe even two, or an entire day, now you export and all you get is a black screen. This problem is so severe that you have to question yourself, how that got through beta testing? Did they not test their own app? They must have! What made them decide that what they've got is good enough to be released? I can see how one has to say that what they have is good enough at one point, but some of the areas that need fixing are so intrinsically important to the video production process that they should've fixed it before the release. Maybe they were under a lot of pressure?! Who knows.
My recommendation: buy either. Camtasia is as good as ScreenFlow now.
Vim has a `colorcolumn` setting. This allows to highlight a specific column, or a series of columns, with a particular color. For instance you can highlight the 140th column with a red color to indicate where a tweet would be too long. You can choose from a [range of colors](http://choorucode.com/2011/07/29/vim-chart-of-color-names/ "Vim: Chart of Color Names | chooru.code"). The good thing about `color column` is that the highlight will only appear when the actual length of a line comes close to the set column. Here's the line from my `vimrc`: highlight ColorColumn ctermbg=Magenta guibg=DeepPink4