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LONGTIME MAC USERS always field requests for instruction from friends, relatives and associates. These innocent pleas for advice often lead to long phone conversations or even longer emails as the well-meaning instructor tries to explain something that would be better shown, not told. Mac gurus could save loads of time and pass on their wisdom much more effectively by creating video tutorials of their actions on the desktop using MacCapture.
This software lets you select all or part of your desktop area and then record all of the activity from that area as a video clip with audio from an internal or external mic. The obvious use for MacCapture is to create software or OS X tutorials onscreen by performing a task and talking it out as you work, but you could also record iChat conversations, slideshows or whatever you like. While this concept is not new, MacCapture is a worthy, low-cost competitor to Ambrosia's similar program, Snapz Pro X 2 ($69; www.ambrosiasw.com).
To record clips, you set up your desktop to how you want it for recording, open MacCapture and choose from a variety of recording settings, including resolution of the video (640x480, 800x600, etc.), number of frames per second and camera options for either a fixed frame or a frame that follows the cursor as it moves (you can assign these modes to the F-keys in order to switch between them while recording). You also set up your audio input source, levels and audio compression if you desire. Click record, and a resizable box opens for you to select the area of the desktop to record. Shape this box into the size of your recording frame and press return to start recording. MacCapture disappears from the screen while you record. When finished, you can use a keyboard shortcut to stop recording or return to MacCapture from the Dock and stop recording from the software. Either way, with recording finished, MacCapture shows your clip in the Organizer window, which also displays the duration of the clip. You can watch the clip in the main window or at any time, start another recording with the previous screen recording area already selected. Following along with the printed manual, it doesn't take long to acclimate to the process of repeatedly capturing clips from a specified desktop area.
When you've recorded all of your clips, MacCapture includes full video-editing features, including titling, transitions, effects, audio overdubbing, audio importing, photo importing and more. However, MacCapture's editing system is very unconventional. For one thing, it is heavily dependent on opening separate windows for every operation you wish to perform, and these windows often require cumbersome numberentry into fields for determining the characteristic of the effect, transition, etc. For another thing, you often have to select the region of a clip to edit from a window that shows the clip as thumbnails for every individual frame, rather than simply dragging over a region in a timeline. We preferred to export our videos to edit them later in iMovie or another program. MacCapture offers plenty of export formats, such as QuickTime, MPEG-4, AVI, DV and others.
MacCapture can be as expansive as you want it to be. It not only records videos from your Mac's desktop, but it can also import video from a DV camcorder or import and edit music, pictures and videos from your hard disk. If in the end you decide—like we did—that its editing system is too cumbersome to use and instead simply export your desktop videos to iMovie, MacCapture is still well worth the price for creating software instructional videos.
–MARKKUS ROVITO
MacCapture: 
MacXware | www.macxware.com | $30
Pros: Easy process for recording your desktop as a movie with sound, huge variety of capture and export options, full editing capability.
Cons: Unconvential editing method can be cumbersome and confusing.
Requires: OS 10.2.6 or higher, 128MB RAM
macHOME recommends: G4 1.25GHz or faster, 512MB RAM, editing your clips in iMovie or other Apple program
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