Mac software for developing a product video

Question

I'm looking to develop a video for a software application that I make. I'm willing to spend a lot of time learning the software, so features are more important than simplicity.

I've got access to the full Adobe CS5 Suite, however I don't think anything in there suites my needs: Premiere Pro and After Effects seem more orientated to video shot with a camera than screenshots, adding text, etc. But I may be wrong.

What I want is a professional video with good voiceovers, slick movement, screenshots and some demonstrations of the product. Some effects will be required - It should look professional, not like something done in Movie Maker.

Any ideas? Multiple pieces of software used together is fine (I'm sure CS5 will come in useful in some regards).

Answer 1

There are two basic scenarios when creating product videos. There is continuous video and discrete video.

Discrete video is like a Powerpoint display with audio. This type of video is best created with Adobe Captivate. Captivate is very easy to use and one can produce high quality videos without making the video files too large.

Camtasia is great for producing continuous video. I've found it easy to use. File sizes are larger than for Captivate but continuous video requires more frames.

Answer 2

For the product demo I'm a fan of Shiny White Box's IShowU HD Pro. It's a good price, super easy to use and has presets for the major video sites such as youtube and vimeo. All the stuff you expect.

That + iMovie would make it easy to develop a professional looking video relatively easily and cheaply.

Answer 3

You want ScreenFlow. The website isn't all that well designed, but ScreenFlow itself is a very nice and nice-looking Mac app.

Depending on how fancy you want to get with transitions and effects, you might find it useful to export clips from ScreenFlow and composite them in something else. But there are plenty of product demo videos for popular Mac apps that were done completely in ScreenFlow (examples elude me; help, commenters?).