Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software, Inc. is the industry-standard screen-capture software title under Mac OS. The performance of personal computers has improved such that anyone can edit self-filmed videos. And there is a great deal of demand for video tutorials. So there is a lot of demand for screen-capture software. The screen capture business is lucrative. There are now a dozen screen-capture shareware titles just for Mac OS. But no Mac shareware title is even close to outselling Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X.

Two months ago, Ambrosia updated Snapz Pro to 2.1.0. It’s now Intel-Mac ready. Furthermore, the company released another update a few days ago to make small improvements to its screen-capture software.

Apart from Snapz Pro X being Inte-Mac ready, let’s see other improvements that Ambrosia has made or has not made. If you launch Snapz Pro X (2.1.0) and then press Command + Shift + #3, you will have Movie Settings. You will then probably change the capture position and size. The last version does not save the capture location once you quit Snapz Pro X. Unfortunately, version 2.1.0 hasn’t improved in this respect, either. So you have to set the right position every time you launch Snapz Pro X.

One major departure from the last version is the adoption of “Encoding Mode.” Version 2.1.0 now gives you an option of encoding video in single-pass or multi-pass. The last version only lets you encode video in one pass. Furthermore, there is a bug in the last version such that video is not correctly encoded if you specify a keyframe. This bug seems to be fixed under 2.1.0.

The most concerned issue for Final Cut Pro users is whether Final Cut Pro can correctly recognize the frame rate of the screen-capture video with Snapz Pro X. We don’t know for Final Cut Pro 6, but this problem persists even with Snapz Pro X 2.1.0 under Final Cut Pro 5. It’s an old issue. Ambrosia has a forum for Snapz Pro X. And I remember having read a comment by a Snapz Pro X developer that they had contacted Apple and then got useful tips to fix the problem. That was perhaps 2 years ago or longer.

MacHouse recommendation: Snapz Pro X is the industry-standard screen-capture software title. Compared with other screen-capture shareware titles, Snapz Pro X’s performance is relatively stable. The latest version is Intel-Mac ready. Since it took Ambrosia so long to make Snapz Pro X available in Universal Binary, there was a reason for not choosing it before. Now, it’s optimized for Intel Mac computers. So we don’t see why you don’t choose Snapz Pro X for recording screen movements. Hopefully, other software developers will give pressure to Ambrosia so that they will work on the frame rate issue more seriously. Till then, Snapz Pro X gets MacHouse’s ‘Buy-It!’ recommendation. Of course, you won’t need Snapz Pro X if you are not a tutorial or video producer.






Snapz Pro X is a product of Ambrosia Software, Inc.

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