I have been looking hard for a workflow that would allow video tutorials that maintain a pretty pristine Snapz look, but with the ability to edit, animate, voice-over, etc. in Final Cut Pro. I was trying to stay within the Animation codec, but was getting horrible screen smearing. So now I'm doing this:
- Shoot Snapz full screen (1920x1200 here) at 30 fps
- Choose ProRes 422 as video codec, floating 32 bit for audio
- Set up a Sequence in FCP that is 840x525 (see PDF for details)
- Edit the Snapz file onto Timeline
- Rather than rendering all of the time, just use Option-P for close to real time playback
- Use Basic Motion (Scale and Center, mostly) to zoom into areas of the screen
- Record voiceovers in FCP or Soundtrack Pro and add to Timeline (none here)
- When complete, the easiest way to compress is Export > Quicktime Conversion > Quicktime Movie > Broadband Medium
- Before leaving this dialogue box, I choose Options > Size > Current (840x525 here)
- In this example, original was 730 MB; this is 1.2 MB (so about 2.5 MB/minute)
- Sometimes I use Compressor (800 kbps H.264)
- Control-click to download the movie to see it at full size (840x525)
- Not sure why the green stripe is there; haven't figured out how to get rid of it yet
- This is just random screen action; no point to it
