They say a picture paints a thousand words. Screencasts, which are videos of your computer screen and often used in tutorials, are a useful way to illustrate a point or program. ScreenFlow is a very polished screencasting application, which records just about anything and gives you a huge amount of editing options afterwards.

ScreenFlow will record everything from your iSight camera to microphone audio or speaker audio enabling you to add crystal clear commentaries to your screencasts. ScreenFlow even monitors keystrokes and mouse movements, which is pretty clever. The app also has an excellent zoom function which allows you to add a touch of class and professionalism to your screencasts.

Recording quality is excellent, and thanks to a high frame-rate (which you can set), your videos look as if everything was actually happening on your screen. What's also surprising is that ScreenFlow is very lightweight for what is effectively a video editor, consuming relatively few CPU and RAM resources. Exporting is possible in all major formats and YouTube fans can now share their productions instantly.

The program has one glaring drawback however and that's that you can't add text, subtitles or simple text annotations to your beautifully produced screencasts. It's also a bit on the pricey side but if you're looking to produce professional looking screencasts, it's probably worth it.

ScreenFlow is an excellent screencasting application that just lacks text insertion support to make it a truly excellent application.

Please Note: Version 4 is a $29 paid upgrade from previous versions of ScreenFlow and will require a new serial number. If you install version 4 without purchasing a new serial number, your videos exported from ScreenFlow 4 will contain a watermark. Stay more organized Nested Clips Merge multiple elements into a single (nested) clip on the timeline Access and edit nested content on a separate tabbed timeline Apply filters and video actions to nested clips as a way to join content Media library organization tools Easily find and organize all the clips in your library Search for a specific clips Arrange clips by name, duration, or type View your media in list view Select a clip and see where it's used in your timeline Reach new audiences: Closed Caption support Add, edit and publish ADA compliant soft subtitles as caption tracks to your MPEG-4 movies and YouTube videos Create captions in multiple languages Export captions as an SRT file MPEG-4 export Export faster, higher quality MPEG-4 files using the x264 codec Razzle-dazzle 'em: Chroma key Replace your green (or any color) background with your own video or still image background Core image video and audio filters Add effects to videos, images and audio Video effects include advanced color adjustments, distortion effects, blurring, alpha mask, color effects, and more Audio effects include EQ, multiband compression, peak limiting, delay and more Freehand callout support for all media Formatting for display of Show Keystrokes Cursor effect improvements User-definable canvas size for new documents Display of transition angles in degrees Publish to Vimeo in 1080p option Publish to YouTube as unlisted option ProRes Alpha Channel Support in export on OS X 10.7+ Streamline your workflow and save time: Dynamic Update of Media Update and reload modified imported assets directly from within ScreenFlow into the library, timeline and canvas (This feature is not available in the Mac App Store version of ScreenFlow) Recording timer Set a duration of time you want ScreenFlow to record Paste a clip into an existing gap in the timeline "JKL" keystrokes for fast forward and rewind Zoom gestures for quick navigation One-click starting and ending transitions Visible timecode display Scrollbar navigation for preview area Default duration preference for actions and transitions Numerical crop option for cropping media Shortcut button for scaling timeline Display of stereo audio waveforms in timeline Single video frame export to a PNG file Increased increment of timeline zoom Improved access to gear menu Improved document load performance and memory usage with QuickTime editing scalability improvements Improved playhead positioning after pasting 4.0.5: Fixed issue that caused engine failure message in certain situations when trying to activate ScreenFlow license