Seller: Global Delight Technologies

Platform: Mac OS X 10.8+

Size: 15 MB

Price: $30

Voila is one of the cheaper screen recording tools in the Mac App Store. It's got fairly good ratings so I decided to try it out when it went on sale.

I've been using it for a couple of months, mostly recording streaming web video and video conference calls. It also does screen captures.

You can record the whole screen or a selection. Then you get a few options like sound source and show cursor (including a highlight click points option). You get a countdown (where you can't do anything on your Mac so not that useful) and then recording starts.

I've used Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X which is rather processor intensive. Voila uses very little CPU. Once you're done the recording is saved in the Voila library and then you can export it in one of several preset formats (raw, 1080p, 720p, Mac, iPad, iPhone, web). Not much control there but enough for beginners.

You can also edit the video. Apply one of a few filters or cut out stuff (though the UI is not easy to use).

Some annoyances I've found (many of these are annoyances compared to Snapz Pro):

1. *After you make a recording sound output doesn't automatically follow new input devices (e.g. plugging in a headphone) so I have to go to Sound Control panel and change it.
   

2. *There are few recording options. One I miss is setting frames per second which is useful for screencast recording. Voila does have a setting to automatically discard duplicate frames which compensates a little.
   

3. *The zoom to show your selection pointer doesn't work. Makes it hard to get pixel perfect selection rectangle.
   

4. *It doesn't remember the last selection area. I find it useful after I start a recording, realize I missed something, and need to reset and start over.
   

Still, overall it does what I want it to do and it's sold on the Mac App Store. I also don't expect it to break after every major Mac OS X update like Snapz Pro X.