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.
> 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.
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.
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.
It used to not be a subscription, and like that it would've definitely have been worth the money
+1 this, I bought it when it was a flat fee for a year of updates. That year's up now and I'd happily pay for another, but not as a subscription...
> 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.
Uhm, but ScreenStufio is not available for Linux (or Windows for that matter)?
OpenStudio apparently is and I'm hyped.
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)?
I'd rather have the metadata from click and typing events and use that to create a davinci project...
Looks awesome! Super excited to try it. What are pros / cons over Cap? https://cap.so/ - also open source https://github.com/CapSoftware/cap
This one is free even for commercial usage.
Does this have any advantages over OBS Studio?
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.
can it utilize my accelerator or GPU for best performance. and is it support kind of encode like av qucksync?
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.
OBS is more focused on live-streaming, even if it can be general purpose.
OpenScreen is more about screen recording, once recorded it turns into a simple-ish NLE that is focused on editing screen-casts.
Nice project. I thought of building exactly this.
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#.
Curious how this compares to Recordly (https://recordly.dev)
Thank you so much for making this. Screen studio was unbelievably expensive for what it was
Great project - but screen studio is actually pretty awesome!
Genuinely impressed with this! Thank you!
Nifty app!
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 :)
> OBS (what I used) seems to have stopped receiving updates :)
No it hasn't: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/commits/master/
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.
:)
Now we need an open source self hostable Loom.
Haven’t tried it, but here is one: https://github.com/MarconLP/snapify
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.
Thanks for building this.
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.
Thanks for sharing! I'll give it a go and send back my feedback.