Just a follow up to my previous posting, as I’m a firm believer in fairness and giving credit where it is due.

My previous posting was forwarded on to Telestream the producers of ScreenFlow, and as a result I got a very nice and highly apologetic email reply from them admitting that they handled my issue poorly and that they would be addressing this with the departments concerned.

Whilst it should not have come to this, I do want to acknowledge that they have made a concerted effort to make amends for their error and held their hands up to it, and good on them.

They also made a kind gesture of good will, which I have also accepted, and I now consider the matter as having reached an amicable conclusion.

I thought it only fair to let everyone know that my previous experience may have simply been a rare lapse on their part, caused by new members of staff within their organisation not knowing what the correct procedures were, and they have assured me this will be corrected.

As a result my faith in good customer service from Telestream with regard to the ScreenFlow product has been restored, although I will be continuing to use Camtasia for the time being, as I’m very happy with that particular product.

All the best
Craig

Regarding Camtasia for Mac, I’m glad you’re having success with the tool. It is a fine product, especially for TechSmith’s first real foray into the Mac software world, but I must admit I’m disappointed with their continued development. It’s been 5 months since the release of the product and we’re still sitting at version 1.0.1. I had hoped to see a more aggressive approach to updates from Camtasia (again, since this is their first major Mac release). They still haven’t fixed the text aliasing problem I mentioned in my review, which in my opinion is something that should have been fixed immediately after release. The lack of any major updates for a v.1 product in such a long period of time is disconcerting.

Just wanted to let you know about my own experience of ScreenFlow 2.0 and Camtasia, I think you may read this with interest, particularly when dealing with Telestream, the company behind ScreenFlow.

I was recently given the task of selecting some screen casting software for my company, we have over 129 goegraphical sites throughout the United Kingdom and are the largest company in our field. We wanted to allow the managers to produce their own training videos for the many staff we have and reduce the time on the road for our trainers and managers visiting the various sites.

I realised this could be done by producing a centralised resource of training videos, and so initially I both trialled and then purchased ScreenFlow V2 (SF), having being very happy with the performance and functions available in SF during the trial.

On the day I purchased SF, on their website they had a banner running which said that when you bought SF, you got a studio version of Flip4Mac as well for free, so price for price this swayed me that SF was a better deal than Camtasia.

Upon downloading the software I noticed that there wasn’t a link to download Flip4Mac which should have been a free download. I queried this with the publishers and was then told that the free deal finished in December 2009, even though I had seen the banner that morning (Feb 2010) and asked them to honour the deal as this had influenced my purchase.

Firstly I was made to feel like I was lying about seeing the banner, being asked to provide a screen shot, which I did, then after several e-mails backwards and forwards it became obvious that ‘Telestream’ the suppliers of screenflow were not going to honour their offer, even though it was their mistake by leaving an old banner on the website.

Anyway to cut a long story short Telestream, promptly refunded the money rather than admit an error and just supply the free software which would have cost them a few cents.

Instead they decided to lose a previously happy customer who had not only already bought non-studio versions of Flip4Mac at home, but who was also looking to recommend and purchase more of their software for his company.

We all know the customer isn’t always right, despite the old saying, but in this case I feel justified in saying that the advertising error was on their part and with a smallgesture of good will they could have kept me as a happy customer.

For really poor after sales service alone, I wouldn’t purchase from Telestream ever again. Perhaps Telestream will learn a lesson from this, notably that you need much more than a good product, you need great customer service, and “Usually the customer is right!”.

I don’t know what laws apply in this instance, but certainly in the UK where I’m from, if you advertise something incorrectly then you normally have to sell at that wrongly marked price, or incorrectly worded offer.

The plus side ….

I did lots of homework and after trialling it decided to specify Camtasia for our large company, and whilst I know it doesn’t do everything ScreenFlow does at this moment in time, it does do things that ScreenFlow can’t, as the old english saying goes “It’s swings and roundabouts”.

One thing I would say is that I find the workflow using Camtasia for Mac brilliant, our company is loving the stuff being created, and with truly professional looking results.

The facility to publish your edits as Flash Video, where the software creates all of the html and supporting files for you automatically is also genius, it takes me seconds to export the data and upload it on to our web servers, what a great and useful option!

As a company I can say without reservation that we are looking forward to future releases of Camtasia for Mac, and our training productivity is at an all time high!

Robert K.

And you’re absolutely correct: the winner in this battle of software apps is us, the users.

Great review. You have an eye for detail that’s for sure. I didn’t catch the Record button or font issues. You must have younger eyes than mine

TechSmith has done a great job with Camtasia for the Mac. It puts it’s ugly duckling sibling on the Windows side to shame. Having been a Camtasia/PC users since version 3, I’ve always thought it was a cobbled together Windows Movie Maker app. It’s a mess that they thankfully fixed for us Mac users.

I’ll be looking forward to your ScreenFlow comparison. As a registered owner of both applications, I think there is a time & place to use both. While I do have my own personal preference, in my review at http://www.skillcasting.com/comparison-camtasia-mac-vs-screenflow/ I ultimately think THE CUSTOMERS win this one. It’s great to have a choice and healthy competition in the market among two great products. WE win this battle because both companies have produced great apps at a fair price.

[I hope Adobe is listening to that last comment about a great product at a FAIR price for their upcoming Mac Captivate product]

I look forward to both our reviews when the new ScreenFlow launches. In the meantime, happy screencasting.

Scott