macZOT!

Screen Mimic
Screen capture with native Flash (and QuickTime) export

Normally: $65.00

ZOT Price: $29.00

Happy Groundhog Day!

Legend has it that, on February 2nd, if the indie Mac software developer emerges from the dark hole in which he codes and sees a lot of orders, it means that winter will end soon. Do your part to bring the warm weather back!

What is Screen Mimic?

Screen Mimic allows you to create screencasts (recordings of your Mac OS X desktop) that can be saved as Adobe Flash (SWF), Flash Video (FLV), or Quicktime (MOV) files. Screencasts are great for educational, training, or sales purposes, and unlike most other Mac screencast products, Screen Mimic exports the formats needed to reach the widest number of viewers, regardless of platform and installed video software.

Requires Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” or later. Universal binary for Intel and PowerPC.

Features

• Records your full desktop, or a window or other restricted area
• Can show mouse movement and visually display clicks (or hide it altogether)
• Pause recording and resume later, optionally showing a transition in between
• Record a voiceover using your system’s microphone, or use an audio file as a background track
• Easy to use interface: no mucking around with half-baked video editors as part of just trying to record your screen; can export the raw uncompressed video for those of you who want to use a real video editor
• Generates basic webpages to show the videos, so it’s easy to get the video onto your website even if you don’t know HTML
• Exports in Adobe Flash (SWF), Flash Video (FLV), and Quicktime (MOV) formats

The Flash Question

This has been getting a lot of attention recently with the iPhone and the iPad not supporting Flash.

H.264 video is the current state-of-the-art, and most Mac screen recorders (including Screen Mimic) export it. It’s a great choice for modern Macs, iPhones, and iPads, and cases where you’re sure that everybody you want to reach with your video is running the latest and greatest software.

Unfortunately, we’re not in an ideal world. There are many, many people out there who are running older operating systems and software, which, particularly on Windows, often don’t support H.264 video. Whether you love it or hate it, Flash is currently the most compatible standard for video on the web. Flash is the way YouTube, Vimeo, and other huge video providers show their video for exactly this reason.

We’re asked often why no other Mac screen capture apps have Flash support (besides the occasional support for F4V, which is actually H.264 in a little wrapper and has the same caveats). The answer is that, first, you have to write your own exporter, from the multi-hundred-page Flash specification, rather than just using the built-in QuickTime exporters everybody else uses. Second, there are some licensing issues with most video formats; Apple pays the licensing fees for H.264 in QuickTime, but we’re responsible for the fees needed to support Flash. Most companies don’t want to get into that, and understandably so, but they’re losing out on broad compatibility in the process.

Someday, everybody will have H.264 support, and we’ll be right there in line to kiss Flash goodbye. Until then, Screen Mimic, with its ability to export Flash, H.264, and even more formats, is the best tool to help you reach the widest audience for your screen recordings.

Who are we?

Decimus Software is an indie Mac development company, formed in 2003 specifically to adopt Synk, the backup and synchronization software which remains our flagship line of products today. We’ve since expanded a bit, and now also sell Screen Mimic, a screen capture application with native Flash export. We also offer DTerm for free, a popup context-sensitive command line that has revolutionized our workflows, and which all Terminal users simply must try.

We feel that the “personal touch” has been tragically missing from the industry lately, and are doing our best to bring it back through staying personally visible where possible and through prompt and personal responses to emails. We remain obsessively dedicated to the design and business philosophies that have earned us the affections of our users, and hope to continue to delight all of you for years to come. Do feel free to get in touch anytime you like—we’re just these ordinary guys, trying to make ends meet doing something we love.

Want more info?

Visit our Screen Mimic page for more information about Screen Mimic, or the Decimus website for more information about us and our products.