As a developer, there have been times when one is faced with the dilemma of what is the best way to show the software they have been working on. The software needs to be demonstrated to clients, stake holders, bosses, etc. Easy, hook up a projector, get the key stake holders into a conference room and hit them hard with the demonstration. This is fine, but what do you do if the key stake holders are at large and might want to see it asynchronously, or repeatedly.
The easiest way was and is holding a handycam/webcam to the screen and recording the demonstration, but when faced with the challenges like scalability, resolution, etc they soon become unusable. So some really intelligent people made demonstrations from screen captures, interweaving them into a movie format.
From ShinyWhiteBox comes an offering in the form of iShowU, an app that runs on the Mac OSX. On start-up, app opens up three windows, the Performance Monitor and the main Capture window. It took me a few attempts to get it right, I was confused on how to set the size of the capture area or window. That was entirely due to the fact that I was used to an alternative product.
The area defined can then capture the screen based on the parameters. These are all changable, where the size, the format and the frame rate can be set/changed. While recording the screen, there are some really cool things that iShowU does, it allows for capture of sound through the Microphone (voice overs), Computer Applications sound (from the apps), Keystrokes from the keyboard and camera. These can be set on or off individually.
Recording is very easy, just press the red button that says record, iShowU does a good job in capturing the screen, the sound, keystrokes, etc. The camera can be used to capture the speaker / video source. Mouse clicks are made visual with the addition of sound and pulsating concentric circle animation.After capturing, the captured footage is converted into the format specified. If you are happy with your video, you can also upload it to popular social networking sites like YouTube. ShinyWhiteBox also offers their customers the option of using One-Click Publishing (hope to review this soon), in short this is a service that offers storage space. Pricing is based on the storage and the Bandwidth used. It does not necessarily replace YouTube or others, but allows a better handle on shared video.
While recording, you can also set if you want to see the icons on the desktop or not. Generally, my desktop is full of all files that I use and intent to use or shall never use. I do not feel that this is something that I want to share with the world when I do a demo of a particular app.
Another feature that can be very useful, if you drop an image on the preview clip (HD Pro only), that image is used as a watermark image. This image after being dropped can be moved around the screen or scaled as desired (Think logo's on television programs)
iShowU is quite an easy to use program and once you have set it all up, it just works.
Available from the ShinyWhiteBox website iShowU HD is available in two versions, the normal iShowU and the iShowU Pro, priced at $29.95 and $59.95 respectively.
If you have to show videos or screencasts of your app to an audience, iShowU makes it easy and does a good job at that.
Not only that, if you are trying to create videos of how to solve a particular level on some game, you can capture the screen to demonstrate the same. It is up to you on how creatively you can add more input sources and take advantage of the power that iShowU has in screen capturing.
Summary
Software : iShowU HD
Version : 2.1.5
Publisher : ShinyWhiteBox
Website : http://www.shinywhitebox.com/
Platform : Mac OS X (10.5.x or higher)
Demo : 30 days
Price : $29.99 / $ 59.99 (Pro)
And to get one of you, our lucky readers started, ShinyWhiteBox have one license of iShowU HD PRo on offer, all you need to do is
1. Follow @whatsin4me
2. Retweet "Win a free copy of #iShowUHDPro, follow @whatsin4me and RT this msg."
or
head over to our Facebook page and like our page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/ReviewMe/137640632964588?v=wall and post a comment under the review that you want to win a copy of this software.
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