Anyone with FCP + SnapzProX experience?

Question

I've recently purchased SnapzProX, a software that allows
you to capture quicktime movies of your actions on
a MAC desktop. It works pretty well.
However, I'm using it primarily for tutorial purposes,
to show students how to perform certain actions in
FCP and other MAC software.
The major issue I've run into is that the quicktime
movie that SnapzProX generates for you looks great,
lots of detail and such, but the software doesn't give you
the ability to add any text or arrows or such to the screen.
You can add Voice-overs, but no text, which is a bit
limiting for tutorials.
When I import the quicktime movie it generates into FCP,
and add text through the text generator, not only is
this EXTREMELY time consuming, but the resulting quicktime
movie I export is also VERY compromised, fuzzy, and nearly
unuseable. I know this has to do with compression settings
and such.
I'm just wondering if anybody has used SnapzProX before
in the manner in which I described, or a similar program,
and has found a way to add text or other elements to
the quicktime file IN FCP, while maintaining quality and
without it becoming an incredibly time consuming process.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello brvideo,
I have been working with Snapz and FCP 5 for some time and have found that they work very well together, even to the point of making very small but very high quality files.
As has been mentioned in this thread, the first thing to know is your Snapz settings. For example, I am working on a project were I capture at 800x600, 30 fps, in the Animation codec, automatic keyframes, millions of colors. I'm not capturing any audio with the screen.
Then the FCP 5 sequence must be setup to EXACTLY match these. I set the sequence settings at
Frame Size: 800 x 600
Aspect Ratio: custom (4:3)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
(Anamorphic is not set)
Field Dominance: None
Editing Timebase is 30
QuickTime video settings are:
Animation, quality 100%
Advanced... is Animation
Frames per second: 30
Key frame every 30 frames
Depth: Millions
Quality is Best.
This matches the Snapz capture settings but, as you can see, FCP is a little bit more detailed.
At this point I have an FCP sequence preset that is ready to accept and edit my captures with full quality. (If these setings in FCP did not match Snapz, if you were using something like a DV NTSC setting your captures would be completely degraded. FCP and Snapz have to match as you have seen.)
Then I edit, adding text, dissolves etc., etc., etc and I keep full quality. I find FCP really really efficient for doing any kind of editing but I did read the book LOL!
I export, using QuickTime Conversion, not QuickTime Movie. I export to, you guessed it, Animation compressor, 30 fps, keyframe every 30 frames or automatic, millions of colors and quality best. No point to try to limit a data rate on an export like this LOL!
Then I use QT Pro to do the real compression. (File > Export in QT player)
I have been using H264
Frame Rate of 15 fps, sometimes even 12 fps looks good
Key Frames: automatic
frame Reordering checked
Compressor Quality at Best
Encoding: Best Quality
Data Rate Automatic
It takes awhile to compress but the results are beautiful. Even the dissolves are very very attractive. I can even resize the movies down from 800x600 to 600x450 or even 400x300 and they look great. None of the other codecs even come close.
Your end user has to have QT 7/6.5. And this is only going to play on a computer, not a TV. (I've never been able to get a screen capture look acceptable on a tv, and for me it's a non issue.)
That's pretty much my workflow.
Now can I ask you something?
Have you noticed in the FCP Browser that when you import a Snapz capture the frames per second are always set to 10 fps no matter what you capture at in Snapz Can you take a look and tell me if you see this in your Browser? I'd really like to know. Every Snapz capture comes in at 10 fps and has to be dealt with in order to edit critically...