Software for Macs

By Filburt Shellbach

Mac Time!

I use OS X to do all of my VLPs. It turns out that programs do exist to do nearly anything you'd want to do with an LP video. I'll be writing in depth guides for some of these things as I find the time, or if people need help (all three of you also doing VLPs on OS X).

Recording

iShowU ($30, free demo) - works great, does everything. There's a demo version available, but that wouldn't be useful for actually LPing (the watermark is much more blatant than hypercam's), but you can see if your system can handle capturing without having to throw the thirty bucks down. There's an HD version for $60 but I don't have it.

Others: Snapz Pro X ($30, $70), Screenflick (Holiday $20 special), Screenrecord ($16, free demo)

Streaming

CamTwist (free!) - wonderful. It lets you select a region of your screen to pretend to be a webcam. It has numerous effects to delight your simple-minded audience.

Works fine with ustream and any other site I've tried.

Editing

iMovie (I got it free with Tiger) - works fine. Make sure you have iMovie 6 HD - versions after that are a complete rewrite and it really shows. iMovie's builtin effects are simple, but should work well enough. There are plugins for it, but many cost money. The free ones I use most often are:

cf/x eliminate borders
cf/x turn clip - rotates the clip 90, 180, or 270 degrees
All the Stupendous Software packs - They want you to pay to use all the plugins in each pack, but you can use the free ones (blue screen, crop, picture in picture, zoom, etc) just fine.

Final Cut Studio ($1300) - I'm sure it works miracles but you guys are not fucking worth it. If I catch any of you spending thousands of dollars on Let's Play..

JES Deinterlacer (free!) - Works great. It also does the final encode for your movie. I use it for my Mario Galaxy videos. It offers a shitload of options I don't understand.

Audio

Soundflower (free!) - The Virtual Audio Cables for OS X. Soundflower creates virtual audio devices so that you can route audio in arbitrary configurations. If you need more devices you can follow these unixy instructions. I find that just having two is not enough; I have five. Be sure not to rename Soundflower (2ch) because that is what iShowU uses for capturing system audio. I just copied the 2ch data a few times and named the new devices Soundflower 1, Soundflower 2, and Soundflower 3. If I were really smart I'd name them with how I use them, for consistency. But I am not.

LineIn (free!) - The Audio Repeater for OS X. Because OS X is a dummy and likes having only one instance of each program running, you'll need to use a trick to have many instances of LineIn. You have to execute the application from a shell. I have a shell alias that makes it easy (alias linein='nohup /Applications/LineIn.app/Contents/MacOS/LineIn &') but explaining it is too much for this little blurb. But LineIn is incredibly fucking useful. I have tons of them open when I'm recording, streaming, and using Skype.

SoundSource (free!) - Lets you easily select your audio input and output. Handy especially with iShowU which likes to set the system output to Soundflower (2ch).

See also my Mac audio post.

Capture Card

EyeTV Hybrid ($150) - Works quite well. Price went up since I bought it.

Image Editing

Seashore (free!) - The Gimp but with a nicer native interface. It's missing a lot of features, but fuck running The Gimp in an X11 window.