No longer just a screen saver, Flurry gets to star in his own QuickTime movie.

 

Now if you're siting there thinking, "Why would I want Flurry as a QuickTime movie?", we were, too. Then we fired up Flurry, Abstract, Cosmos, and other screen savers that come with Mac OS X, watched them for a moment, and thought, hey, this be cool to use in a video mix, or in a wacky home movie about our trip to Laserium.

 

As far as we know, there's no way to take Mac OS X's screen savers and directly convert them into QuickTime movies. But you can record them as they appear on the screen, and that's just as good as converting them. You need Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro ($69). If that seems like a steep price, consider that Snapz Pro has a ton of screen-capturing features - it's decidedly not a one-trick pony.

 

You're going to use Snapz Pro's ability to perform a timed recording to capture your screen shot once you've installed the software. Here's how it's done.

 

1. Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver. Click on the Screen Saver tab.

 

2. Select the screen saver you want to record. If you want, you can adjust the display options by clicking on the Options button, and you can preview the screen savers by clicking on Test.

 

3. Click Hot Corners. Pick a corner. Moving your cursor to this corner will automatically start your screen saver. Click OK and close the Desktop & Screen Saver window.

 

4. Launch Snapz Pro (Applications > Snapz Pro). Click on the Movie button.

 

5. In the Movie Settings window that appears, you need to enter a few settings. Under Selection style, pick Fixed size, and then enter your current screen resolution in the Width and Height boxes (If you don't know what it is, you can check in System Preferences > Displays). You can adjust the Framerate setting if you want - the higher the setting, the smoother the movie, but the bigger the file. Under Camera mode, select Fixed camera. You can leave all the other settings alone.

 

6. When you're ready to record, press the Return key on your keyboard. This will start the recording.

 

7. Move your cursor to the Hot Corner that activates your screen saver.

 

8. When you're done recording, press any key to get out of the screen saver. Then press Command-Option-3 to stop the recording.

 

9. Snapz Pro will display a Movie-saving settings window. Click on the Settings button in the Include video track section.

 

10. Under Compression type, selected MPEG-4. You can also adjust the other settings, if you want, or leave 'em. Click OK.

 

11. Click Save in the Movie saving settings window. Snapz Pro will create your movie.

 

12. You'll notice in your movie that the beginning and the end has non-screen saver footage. You can edit that out in iMovie. Just start a new project in iMovie, import the Snapz Pro recording, and cut out the footage you don't want.

 

13. Export the movie in iMovie, and you're done.