I have recently started using a new desktop screen and video capture program called Jing. Overall I have been impressed with this utility and it shows a promising future as a utility for web publishing, teaching, tech support and other uses involving screen image and video desktop captures.
Just this week I used Jing to capture screen shots of images from my desktop and generated a report for work in a fraction of the time it takes to printscreen images and crop them in preparation for insertion into the highly visual report. This time saving was significant with real value added functionality to my workflow.
Here’s the brief rundown of features and items to keep in mind
- Jing was easy to install. Download Jing at JingProject.com. It is compatible for both Windows and Mac. Windows requires .Net 3.0 framework which you can download here.
- There has been some reported instability reports with Jing, so definitely be aware of possible issues depending on your machine setup.
- In preferences you can set Jing to start-up on boot or launch it as needed.
- The launch program is a cutesy icon that rides on one side of the screen either top, bottom, left or right depending on your preference.
- Screen captures or desktop video can be saved to your machine to be uploaded to your website, placed in documents or emailed.
- The other option for file distribution is to share the image or video by which the file is uploaded to screencast.com and a link is created in your clipboard that you can paste into an email. There is currently an issue with placing the link into Instant Messaging, but the workaround I would use would be to create a short URL at www.urltea.com which will give you an abbreviated version to send via IM or social media/microblogging sites like Pownce or Twitter.
- Jing does not feature a resize for images. If you capture an image, you will either want to resize it in a blog editor or other publishing application. A better method is to edit it in an image editor before uploading or embedding in a document. This will make the file much smaller, especially if the size reduction is significant.
- The video is created as a .swf file, a flash file with no automated way of embedding into a website. Definitely not an intuitive process, but it can be done fairly easy by using the Embedded Media HTML Generator created by UCSF’s Center for Instructional Technology.
- The image size captured for the video is the size it will appear in the browser, so plan your desktop video imaging accordingly. There is a five minute Limit for a single segment of video.
- You can choose to turn your microphone off or on. Keep it off if you don’t want to use voice recording for a smaller file and cleaner presentation. The video recorded below was done with a cheap microphone. I will invest in a higher-quality one for better sound if I get serious with this feature.
Two examples of Jing
Screen Capture
Video Tutorial
Jing is not necessarily the cats meow, but so far, it has provided the quick functionality I needed for rapid printscreen with immediate cropping upon capture.
Considering a Series of Tutorials on Thoughtsparks.net
I’ve given thought to developing a series of short tutorial videos for reader consumption for HTML, CSS, and graphics training. Is that something that strikes your interest? Do you like this form of communication? Why or why not?
6 Comments
Thanks for the review! When I was reading the Jing site, and when I heard others talking about it, they never mentioned that you could save the video to your local machine for your own website. That is pretty sharp.
I would be interested in those tutorials! Especially CSS.
Mike, yeah I’ve picked-up that up too. Quite often people jump to conclusions without checking out software more extensively, which is something I enjoy doing.
Good to note on the tutorials. I’m thinking those may be a good thing to offer as it may save folks volumes of time from wading through all the tech mumbo jumbo, the “let me show you how much I know” sites. I’ve been thinking more and more about writing or creating content that really helps walk folks through the essentials of web design in terms of CSS, html and some basic graphics. I think often the basics are overlooked and in actuality, if you get those down, much of it makes way more sense.
I know there are just some really basic things that not only do I use every day, but that I take for granted. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used a “a href” tag, and then had someone ask me how I made the link. Or even just bold or italic tags. There are gobs of forums or other community sites out there, and most of them support basic HTML tags.
Then on the flip side, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to make those boxes that I have seen when people paste in code on their site, and I didn’t figure out until recently that those are created in the style sheet, at least that’s where I think they are.
Being in a tech field for as long as I have been, you pick up a lot of things that give you a good understanding, or at least a starting point, to grasp other systems quickly.
Mike, Yes I work with folks everyday who wrestle or muddle through their work struggling over concepts that are not hard if explained right. I think we all muddle through on some level, just the more technical you become the more advanced your muddling I suppose. Many of what are considered “basics” are often not explained well as there is an assumption that folks already know that stuff. One thing about video tutorials is that it gives folks a different way of picking-up the information and assimilate it than wading through mountains of material. It’s an interesting concept I will most likely explore. Your encouragement is significant as it’s easy for me to peg two crowds, those way advanced and those complete newbies to code. Gathering that you are more a systems guy, it makes sense for you to be somewhere in between, more on the advanced side, but still new to the finer points of css. But if you sense benefit from tutorials, then perhaps it would speak to a fairly wide audience. Obviously, some of the tuts would not necessarily be helpful to you, but CSS tuts in particular seem very applicable. Good stuff.
What a coincidence. The last post I did , I wanted to post a picture but I didn’t know how to grab the screen. So I took a picture with a camera. Then I discovered that on a mac you press command apple, shift and 4 and it forms a bull’s eye you select the area and it saves it automatically. Of course the resolution isn’t all that great. So thank you I was really looking fro a screen capture program!
The tutorials would be awesome
Random, How splendid that it was so useful for you. When I find solutions that I really use, I enjoy passing those along. This one is nice as it works on both Windows and Mac. Let me know how it works-out for you.
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[...] Let’s start with an example. The URL for a recent post on thoughtsparks on the Jing application is: http://www.thoughtsparks.net/2007/08/28/jing-makes-desktop-screen-and-video-a-snap/ [...]
[...] video and is a little more flexible. Jing has its strengths as well which I outline in a previous review on thoughtsparks.net. CamStudio’s interface is not as slick, but for serious video capture of desktop and voice [...]