Highly popular screen capture tool
When a screen capture tool makes it into the top ten Apple downloads, you know it must be pretty special. When you've used CaptureIt!, you can see why.
CaptureIt! is particularly good at taking video screen shots and makes an excellent accessory for anyone trying to build tutorials. CaptureIt! excels in this area because it even allows you to export tutorials to iPhone and YouTube enabling you to share software operating instructions extremely quickly.
From the minute you execute CaptureIt!, it springs into action allowing you to select windows on your screen or drag the selection screen to the area that you'd like to capture. It gives you a selection of other options in a small box that you can drag around your screen including "Timed Capture" for something in between a screenshot and a video "Video" and "Screenshot".
There's also an option to adjust the preferences of the application and exit it. In the preferences, you can select a default image to save your images which is useful if you always use the same format. Exiting the program should be easier - why can't you just press the Escape key? You can however configure hotkeys for a few other operations such as quick screenshots or to start the video shots.
CaptureIt! is a hugely popular application because it makes taking screenshots easy, fast and is especially suitable for videocasts.
Old Mac OS versions and Mac architectures (PPC) are now not supported. System requirements are: Mac OS X 10.6 and Later, Intel MacCaptureIt! is now Lion compatibleCaptureIt! is now Final Cut Pro X compatibleNow it is possible to select which of two audio tracks will be included into the resulting movie: system sound, audio from external devices or bothUpdated and fixed a set of bugs in CaptureIt! Tools interfaceRecent open files menu is now shown via right click on the Dock iconFew improvements in CaptureIt! Tools main menuUpdated window tracking module: less buggy, more accurateAdded QuickLook preview for encoding tasksLayers editor now supporst Lion's fullscreen mode and has a zoom slider at the bottom of the windowFixed bug when CaptureIt! was fading the screen and not starting its work for too longFixed bug when certain records could not be encoded with H.264 codec resulting a blank video trackFixed bug when captured screenshots were assigned a wrong color profileFixed bug when preset changes in preferences forced current encoding tasks to change their preset to CustomFixed bug when removing a preset form list in preferences caused an application errorFixed bug when record control toolbar was resizing spontaneously
Changes
Old Mac OS versions and Mac architectures (PPC) are now not supported. System requirements are: Mac OS X 10.6 and Later, Intel MacCaptureIt! is now Lion compatibleCaptureIt! is now Final Cut Pro X compatibleNow it is possible to select which of two audio tracks will be included into the resulting movie: system sound, audio from external devices or bothUpdated and fixed a set of bugs in CaptureIt! Tools interfaceRecent open files menu is now shown via right click on the Dock iconFew improvements in CaptureIt! Tools main menuUpdated window tracking module: less buggy, more accurateAdded QuickLook preview for encoding tasksLayers editor now supporst Lion's fullscreen mode and has a zoom slider at the bottom of the windowFixed bug when CaptureIt! was fading the screen and not starting its work for too longFixed bug when certain records could not be encoded with H.264 codec resulting a blank video trackFixed bug when captured screenshots were assigned a wrong color profileFixed bug when preset changes in preferences forced current encoding tasks to change their preset to CustomFixed bug when removing a preset form list in preferences caused an application errorFixed bug when record control toolbar was resizing spontaneously
User reviews about CaptureIt!
by Anonymous
Biggest waste of $30 ever (not to mention my time).
Positive reviews are from professional reviewers that tried the software, not real users.Out of ~10 demos I have tried to record only one has been successful and it was a very short one (about 5 minutes long). All the others have been failures. CaptureIt! seems to be fine when recording the screen (although the UI is awful). When you are done and go to encode your screencast to video everything goes wrong. The encoding crashes or is successful but has major issues (frozen video, dropped audio half way through etc). I tried many settings (standard presets and various codecs) but no luck.I burned a ton of time trying to make the encodes work. Their proprietary (cividx) format prevents rescuing the captures with other programs.I updated the program, talked to support, updated my OS. Nothing changed the fact that this software is buggy and unreliable. Running late 2010 Macbook Pro Core i7 2.66GHz with 8GB ram.
Pros:
Advertises a valuable functionality.
Cons:
Doesn't work as advertised.
Buggy.
Can't rely on it to actually successfully capture/encode a screencast => valuable meetings/demos lost.
Waste of time and money.
Poor usability, ugly. More
by Anonymous
Great tool, but has a few flaws..
My main problem is the key press recording. It's mainly bothering me because the recorded presses really get in the way when I'm just trying to record video, and I haven't found a stable way to turn them off. I went into preferences and there was no yes/no button to recording key presses, so I turned of assistive devices. I then tried recording a video, and it still recorded them, so I checked that they were off (which they were), and tried again. That time it didn't record any key presses, except for shift and return. I also noticed that even if assistive devices were off, it still recorded the mouse clicks which really got in the way, and ruined my hour long recording.
Pros:
Great for screen capture/recording video, easy to use, and good quality video.
Cons:
Sometimes crashes while encoding multiple videos, the preferences are unclear and difficult, sometimes doesn't start encoding videos automatically, and most of all, there's no way to stop it from recording key presses. More