Am I in the minority for thinking ScreenStudio is actually worth the money?
The recent video I did for Cling for example (https://lowtechguys.com/cling) I’ve had many people ask about how I did it because it has just the right amount of motion and highlighting. I did it in a few minutes of editing in the ScreenStudio UI.
I’m not saying it’s a great video, but people say it conveys the info well enough and that’s what matters. It would have taken me days to do the same with DaVinci Resolve because of my inexperience with complex editors.
A $30/month subscription is indeed too much, but I see it as a one time payment for that month when I release something, then I pause the subscription. I need it rarely, very few videos need zooming and motion.
Anyway I love to see alternatives like OpenScreen! What I would miss the most would be presets, not sure if it’s already there, but it’s a nice quality of life feature to have a consistent look to the motion effects between videos.
I think it's mostly just that a subscription seems weird for a tool like this. Most users would probably only need it occasionally, and with a subscription you can't just add it to your toolbox to grab when that time comes.
IMO a big disservice to the universe has been done with the recurring revenue drive. Many services could/should offer a one-shot option, with the highest margin. Somehow the world got stuck on SaaS model so hard that one off is completely ignored.
I know why the capital class loves MRR I'm just mad that OTC is ignored.
For me it would make more sense to have something like “unlock for a week” if the dev wants to keep the ongoing revenue model. Of course a lifetime purchase is even better, not sure why that’s not an option.
I would be happy to pay $100 for unlimited access and be locked into the current version of the app, maybe only have minor version updates free so you don’t get locked into a buggy version.
But that’s a more complicated licensing model to implement I guess.
I must be in the minority but I find that constant panning/zooming to be very distracting and almost dizzying. The sharp start of the easing curves is pretty awful too. I'm surprised people like it.
I'd probably do it with arrows or fading out parts of the screen instead.
A lot of the time it is, I agree. I would love the ability to do more highlighting and less panning. But in a small 700px wide video, zooming is kind of necessary to make it clear where the action is coming from. Because the app window is so large and packed.
And these recording editors don’t have arrows and callouts, not even a freeze frame. I have to plan the recording to the letter and after 10 frustrating takes I just say fk it and try to polish the least confusing take
Maybe I should start contributing to openscreen to get the ideal recording editor people are looking for instead of paying and complaining.
> A $30/month subscription is indeed too much, but I see it as a one time payment for that month when I release something, then I pause the subscription. I need it rarely, very few videos need zooming and motion.
If I think something is worth the money, I typically don't need to actively decide to pause the subscription each time I use it.
Right, it’s not worth $30/month all year for me because I don’t use it past demo videos for when I publish a new app or large update. Which happens rarely.
But if I was that kind of user who did demos monthly, the time saved on one or two videos that month is worth $30.
Smart choice using PixiJS for the rendering pipeline — WebGL gives you hardware-accelerated compositing for the zoom/pan effects without needing to shell out to ffmpeg for every preview frame. The auto-zoom feature alone makes this worth it for anyone doing quick product demos where you'd otherwise spend 20 minutes keyframing in a full NLE. Would love to see cursor click highlighting land at some point, that's the one Screen Studio feature I actually miss.
I've been using this for the past month or so and have had nothing but positive experience. It's easy to use and works well. I wish the zoom was a slider instead of preset options, that way I could get finer control. Easily one of the best apps I found recently along with Handy.computer.
I see that this is for MacOS. Isn't there a stock feature for screen recording, like on the iPhone, or on Windows (snipping tool can do screen recordings since Windows 10 or 11)?
Speaking as someone who has used both: yes. OBS is a general-purpose recording/streaming system. It gives you a lot of flexibility, but it can take some work to make things look "nice."
Screen Studio (and so OpenScreen as well) are "opinionated" and are designed to create aesthetic videos with minimal configuration. They can't do a lot of the things that OBS can do, but if all you want is to record your desktop with a webcam overlay, it's a lot easier.
Yes. For me personally, I am only interested in creating short demo videos in as little time as possible. OBS is an advanced software that requires me to learn to use it.
I just downloaded this and had a zoom effect video from the first attempt. The learning curve is roughly zero.
Just tried the AppImage version on Linux, simple to use, and works Ok on my end.
Suggest you add preferences dropdown to floating bar, and ability to highlight parts of an area for record, ability to set the default save location or change it at will. Also noted that though I closed the app via the customary way, and removed the AppImage, the apps ICON remained present in GNOME's notification area.
Will keep an eye on its progress since OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates :)
Hmm, for the longest time, the Flatpak version of the app in my Linux OS was warning me that a particular older org.freedesktop.Platform runtime was end of life, and that OBS project should update their compatibility hence OBS was being classified as a security risk during the update process.
Having said that, and reading your reply, I stand corrected and I take it back as I did an update and the error is nowhere to be found. Not sure how the runtime was updated to the latest, 25.08, but assume it was the obs project.
1. It says it is $8/month, which is not mentioned on the github page, so I had been thinking it was free in addition to being AGPL-3.0; it links to https://snapify.it/ which is where I see the fee.
2. It says "for everyone" but looks like it might be Linux-specific, and it doesn't say anything about which OSes are supported.
IIUC, the fee is just to use their instance, and hosting your own instance is actually free. Also, it looks like the client side of it runs in a browser, so it will support pretty much any OS.
Thanks to open source and AI, we don't need every software to be a subscription or an enshittified SaaS.
Screen Studio at $29/mo is unusually and extremely expensive for a video recorder app, and not counting the fact that it is proprietary, which means they can change pricing at any time.
Yep. I've had ChatGPT build many simple python scripts or browser extensions that I can use for free instead of paying for subscriptions that shouldn't be subscriptions in the first place.
The recent video I did for Cling for example (https://lowtechguys.com/cling) I’ve had many people ask about how I did it because it has just the right amount of motion and highlighting. I did it in a few minutes of editing in the ScreenStudio UI.
I’m not saying it’s a great video, but people say it conveys the info well enough and that’s what matters. It would have taken me days to do the same with DaVinci Resolve because of my inexperience with complex editors.
A $30/month subscription is indeed too much, but I see it as a one time payment for that month when I release something, then I pause the subscription. I need it rarely, very few videos need zooming and motion.
Anyway I love to see alternatives like OpenScreen! What I would miss the most would be presets, not sure if it’s already there, but it’s a nice quality of life feature to have a consistent look to the motion effects between videos.
I know why the capital class loves MRR I'm just mad that OTC is ignored.
I would be happy to pay $100 for unlimited access and be locked into the current version of the app, maybe only have minor version updates free so you don’t get locked into a buggy version.
But that’s a more complicated licensing model to implement I guess.
I'd probably do it with arrows or fading out parts of the screen instead.
And these recording editors don’t have arrows and callouts, not even a freeze frame. I have to plan the recording to the letter and after 10 frustrating takes I just say fk it and try to polish the least confusing take
Maybe I should start contributing to openscreen to get the ideal recording editor people are looking for instead of paying and complaining.
OpenStudio apparently is and I'm hyped.
If I think something is worth the money, I typically don't need to actively decide to pause the subscription each time I use it.
But if I was that kind of user who did demos monthly, the time saved on one or two videos that month is worth $30.
I just tried Open Screen but it didn't work on my machine (Cachy OS) - it didn't detect the screen or my microphone. Hopefully it gets better
Btw, it seems that "How trimming works" screen has some missing translations.
Now, I see the last build is from 2022.
Screen Studio (and so OpenScreen as well) are "opinionated" and are designed to create aesthetic videos with minimal configuration. They can't do a lot of the things that OBS can do, but if all you want is to record your desktop with a webcam overlay, it's a lot easier.
OpenScreen is more about screen recording, once recorded it turns into a simple-ish NLE that is focused on editing screen-casts.
I just downloaded this and had a zoom effect video from the first attempt. The learning curve is roughly zero.
Since it's much easier to port source code to other languages now, I'd love to see more projects like written in Swift, or C#.
Just tried the AppImage version on Linux, simple to use, and works Ok on my end.
Suggest you add preferences dropdown to floating bar, and ability to highlight parts of an area for record, ability to set the default save location or change it at will. Also noted that though I closed the app via the customary way, and removed the AppImage, the apps ICON remained present in GNOME's notification area.
Will keep an eye on its progress since OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates :)
No it hasn't: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/commits/master/
Having said that, and reading your reply, I stand corrected and I take it back as I did an update and the error is nowhere to be found. Not sure how the runtime was updated to the latest, 25.08, but assume it was the obs project.
:)
2. It says "for everyone" but looks like it might be Linux-specific, and it doesn't say anything about which OSes are supported.
Screen Studio at $29/mo is unusually and extremely expensive for a video recorder app, and not counting the fact that it is proprietary, which means they can change pricing at any time.
Thanks for building this.