Audacity

Audacity is a free open-source audio recorder and editor, available for both Mac and PC users. It is a handy and useful application and so far it has worked seamlessly.

You can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings/CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, cut, copy, splice or mix sound files, change the speed or pitch of a recording etc.

Screenshots can be found at this link – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/screenshots

Website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Cost: Free
Requires: You can use a Mac, PC or GNU/Linux system, they have different versions available for different operating system versions.

iShowU is a very cool capturing application (realtime screencasting), that captures online/offline media that can be imported directly into Pro Apps such as Final Cut (you can even choose pro level settings). The image quality of the captures is quite amazing. Ironically, the demos on their website are not that impressive which is a pity, but the software can produce very high quality captures. The price is also very reasonable compared to other, less feature-filled apps, at just under $60 US. You can use this product to enhance video projects, you can use it for software demos, you can create support videos to E-mail to customers addressing their technical problems..etc. When I first installed it, it didn’t work properly but once I closed it, restarted it and put in my registration number a second time, it worked perfectly.

Some other features include:
- Recording from iSight and DV cameras
- Upload to YouTube/Blip.TV
- Realtime scaling for captures
- Key recording and Mouse actions
- Real time preview
- Watermark editing
- Low CPU usage

Website: http://www.shinywhitebox.com/ishowuhd/main.html
Cost: $59.95USD
Requires: Leopard 10.5