Macromedia made Captivate for Windows but they decided against developing a Mac version. Maybe they thought the screen capture marketplace on the Mac was too competitive?
Eh, well it ain’t.
I would have hoped that Apple would include a decent application which allows you to record your screen’s activity but alas they didn’t. I’m not sure why either. Especially when a lot of developers like to create video casts featuring themselves demonstrating their sites, etc…
The ideal features of the screen recording applicaiton should include;
- freeware or open source
- be able to record mouse movements and clicks
- be able to record voice
- export to avi, mov, fla, swf,
- be able to illustrate on the screen (ie. draw arrows on the screen)
Mmmm, is that a lot to ask for? If you don’t think so then you’ll probably love my last requirement. I would love if the application could swap between recording the desktop and recording through iSight at the actual user via a touch on the Mac remote control. Now that would be sweet. 
Listed below are three applications which I’m going to test out in the coming days. It’s time to see if these guys are capable of satisfying my screen recording requirements….
Cam Studio 2 - Open Source
CamStudio is an open source screencast application cabable of capturing both audio and video directly of your PC screen - and store it for later playback. This is great for demonstrating how different applications, websites, etc. work and how to use their features. CamStudio outputs AVI files but is able to convert these to macromedia flash files (swf), so that the screencasts can easily be used on any website. Advanced features include adding of captions, video-in-video e.g. for narrator and CamStudio’s own loss-less codec, which provide sharp images while keeping the filesize to a minimum.
iShowU - 30 day demo - $20
ShowU allows you to capture and record anything you can see on your screen, along with audio from a compatible source (like a microphone) as well as any audio from the mac itself.
Snapz Pro X - Demo - $69
Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want. Snapz Pro X 2.x costs $69.
Here are some further selections available from Pure Mac. If you can recommend a better screen recording application, then please do so. Like I said earlier, I haven’t actually tried any of these applications myself but once I do, I will post my recommendations.
Whatever screen recording application you decide to run with, be sure to check out the following three helpful applications. Backdrop fills your desktop with a blank background screen so that your cluttered desktop won’t obscure your screen captures . FlySketch allows you to draw on the screen in a similar why to which a blackboard would work and finally, Boinx allows you to highlight your mouse movements on the screen so that the viewers can follow what’s going on a bit easier.