The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

Check here for an updated index of tips and training blog posts. As new posts are made, links will be added.

Getting Started 

Getting Started With Jing
How do I use this thing called Jing? A quick video explaining how to use Jing.
Jing on Mac: Common Questions Revealed Using Jing on a Mac? Check this out! It answers the most questions.

Capture

Select Something to Capture
Adjusting the Capture Area. A video showing how you can adjust the capture area.
Sharing Images with Jing
Recording Video with Jing
Capturing Dropdown Menus. Learn from this video how you can capture dropdown menus.

History

History 201: Jing 1.3 to Present. Learn how to manage your stuff with the History features added in 1.3.
Editing a Previous Capture. A video tutorial on editing a previous capture and sending it to different output.

Share

Getting Embed Code from Screencast.com.
Configure Jing to use your Flickr account
A video tutorial on using Jing with your Flickr account
Share to an FTP server
Save to a file

Writing Share and Embed code

Learn to write Share and Embed code for FTP and File output.
A video tutorial on Share and Embed code.

The Quick and Simple Version

1. Download, install, and run Jing.
2. Click the capture button, and select something on your screen to share.
3. Choose to grab an image or record a video.
4. Edit your image or preview your video.
5. Hit Share to upload your file to Screencast.com. The URL is copied to your Clipboard.
6. Paste the URL into your conversations or anywhere else you want to share.

The Illustrated But Still Really Simple Version

First things first; download and install Jing. The PC client requires .NET 3.0 framework from Microsoft. If you don't have it, the Jing installer downloads it for you during the install. Once Jing is installed, you're ready to get started.

Odds and Ends

Screencast.com

Jing files are hosted on Screencast.com. To use Jing, you'll need to sign up for a Screencast.com account. This will provide you with 200 MB of storage and 1GB per month of bandwidth. The normal trial account for Screencast.com has a 60 day limit, but to get the most out of the Jing Project, and to share our appreciation for your feedback, we're offering a trial account with no expiration until the end of the Jing Project (date to be determined). Enjoy.

Managing your History

Your History is where all your captures are sent after you Share or Save. Here you can re-Share, Save, or Delete your previous captures.  Deleting a capture deletes it from your History as well as Screencast.com if it has been shared. This breaks any links to this media that you may have shared. Shift or control click for multiple deletion.

Feedback

We want to know what you think of Jing and how you're using it. Comments, criticisms, compliments... anything. We want to know how you think Jing can be improved. Getting your feedback is the whole point of the Jing Project.

To send us your feedback, make frequent use of the Feedback button in the More ball to go to the Web feedback form. Another great way of getting your feedback straight to the product team is to comment on the Jing Project blog.

Getting Help

To get help with Jing, click on the Help button in the More button. There you can find a link to this post as well as a link called How do I... that links to all the tips, tricks, and training posts on the Jing Project blog. Be sure to comment, to let us know how helpful the posts are.

For tech support issues, please visit our Support Center. 

Jing is a fun application to play with.  If you've already installed Jing I hope it's been fun to poke around and peek at the different features. If you haven't installed Jing yet, here's an over-view of the features and how the thing works.

Music: Kevin MacLeod

Disclaimer: This video shows the very first version of Jing. So if you find yourself wondering "My Jing looks different than the one shown in that video" - it's because Jing has come a long way since then and looks slightly different now. Regardless, the video is still awesome ...

Greetings friends, family, colleagues, customers, and newcomers too - welcome everyone. I’m Tony Dunckel, and it is my pleasure as the product (err, project) manager to bring you Jing.

The Jing Project is our journey to discover how we can improve everyday conversation. Think of all those IM chats, emails, blog posts and comments you’ve made over the years. Now imagine a more visual world where integrating screen captures and screencasts into those took nothing more than a matter of seconds. Can you imagine it? I can - I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it - it’s Jing.

Our goal is to explore this with all of you and together see how we can bridge the visual world and our daily conversations into a richer, more effective way to communicate.

Before we embark on our journey, I’d like to introduce a few of my comrades, who represent the real genius behind the Jing Project and who will be contributing to our discussion on this blog.

“I'm Michael, the Lead Developer for Jing. I worked on the Windows development side of Jing and the original (constantly changing) project concept. If you’re upset about the system requirements... it's my fault.”
-- Michael Malinak

“Well, I'm Chris, and I work with the Instructional Design team at TechSmith. I didn't work on the development of Jing, but I got to tag-a-long for the ride, which has been a lot of fun. Oh, and I made the intro video too.”
--Chris McQueen

“Hello people of the interwebs! My name is Alan. I am the interface designer for the Jing Project. I absolutely love Jing, and I'm extremely excited to see where you, our users, will help us take this project!"
-- Alan Dennis

“I'm Don, and I made the sun shine on the Mac version, and some other stuff. We used Jing a lot during its development, and we think you'll find it useful, too.”
-- Don Sherry

“Hi, I'm Nick. I did the Jing Project's page, blog, and other webbie things. I also helped out with the Mac interface. We hope you have just as much fun using it as we had making it.”
-- Nick Gorsline

“Matt Dyer is a user assistance developer who enjoys writing about himself in the third person. He does his best to make sure that you know all the cool stuff you can do with Jing.”
-- Matt Dyer

“Hi, I'm Betsy, the Chief Evangelist at TechSmith. I can't wait to see all of the wicked cool things you do with Jing! Feel free to contact me so I can show off your masterpiece here on the blog!”
-- Betsy Weber, visit my blog

And with that, we invite you to not just use Jing, but to live it and incorporate it into your daily conversations. This blog is all about your feedback and creating an open dialog about where we should take this concept. Have fun!

Jing makes taking quick captures of your screen easy. Here's an overview of what happens after you choose to capture an image.

Here are some other things to keep in mind about images and Jing:

• While editing, you can undo using Ctrl+Z on the PC and Command+Z on the Mac. To redo, use Ctrl+Y on the PC and Shift+Command+Z on the Mac.
• What you select is exactly what viewers see. Images are saved in the lossless PNG format and are not resized.
• Sharing your capture will close your preview window. To open the capture to edit, share, or save again, double-click on the thumbnail in your History. You cannot undo or redo after a capture has been shared.

Thanks for all the amazing feedback! We're trying our best to keep up. We just released version 1.2.4. You'll be prompted to update the next time you share through Jing.

Here's the things we did for this release:

• Correctly run on non-US formatted date systems
• Ability to install and run on 64-bit systems (we still run in 32-bit mode)
• Limit to a single copy of Jing running on a machine

After selecting a region or window of the screen, use the Video button to begin recording.

Here's some things to keep in mind when recording videos with Jing:

• Jing records to the SWF format at 10 FPS and has its own built-in play controls. SWF is a lossless format, so a large selection area means a larger file.
• Jing records its audio from your microphone, not the system sound you hear from your speakers.
• There is a 5 minute limit for recording video. The timer on the record panel counts down from 60 seconds after 4 minutes have elapsed, so you know exactly how much time you have left.
• Keep your audience in mind. The shorter the recording, the smaller the download.
• Don't worry about making a perfect recording. Just think of it as sending a video voicemail.

The feedback to the Jing Project has been absolutely amazing. With such an overwhelming response, we're doing our best to respond to every piece of feedback, but it may take a day or two. Please bear with us as we work through all of your comments, for which we are extremely thankful.

The Jing Project Team

To update, just download the new version from our main page. To install, either run the script, or quit Jing, and replace your old version with this one. Note that you will not be able to share to Screencast until you update to this version.

In this release, we fixed:

• Problems when registering with a product called Growl. We don't currently support Growl, but this version avoids a conflict
• Large videos can now be shared. We had problems with videos over 20 megabytes
• Deleting items from your History after you have deleted them via Screencast

This post will try and track known issues with the Jing Project. It will also be updated as we figure out answers and/or new problems. We're also tracking bugs in our Support System.

Windows Client

Mac Client

First and foremost, let me share my gratitude for the abundance of feedback on the Jing Project. The tremendous response from all of you, both positive and negative, has been extremely helpful and informative.

As a part of that feedback, we have received a lot of questions on Jing's use of Screencast.com as its hosting service and why we aren't offering the option to share to other hosts of choice. So, I thought I'd share my perspective on this.

All of you are well within reason to request this and frankly we agree. Keep in mind our goal with the Jing Project is simply to see if you value the idea of enhancing your everyday conversations with quick and simple images and videos. Using Screencast.com as the hosting mechanism for this project is both a matter of convenience and richness at this early stage.

Since TechSmith both owns and operates Screencast.com, we have a considerable amount of flexibility and influence on making the creation and sharing of this content incredibly seamless. In addition, Screencast.com does not alter your videos when displaying them to your viewers, creating a high-fidelity viewing experience for your visual conversations.

That being said, we recognize the abundance of hosting sites already in existence and realize those would likely need to play a part in a more full-featured version of Jing. So in the mean time, we’re providing free access to use Screencast.com so you can give Jing a serious test drive. No worries about the content you create – you own it and can take it with you whenever you want. All we ask for is your feedback about Jing – a pretty fair trade, right?

Anytime you Share, Embed, Save or Copy with Jing, a copy of your capture is stored in your History. From the History, captures can be shared, opened, or deleted.

• If you share an item already on Screencast.com or some other destination from your History, you aren't using up more storage space. Jing checks and if the file is already uploaded, it gets the URL and copies it to your Clipboard.
• You can also get the Embed code from your History, so if you decide to embed your capture at a later time, it's easy!
• Double-click an item to open and edit (for images) or preview (for video). You can add new annotations to an image, or send it to a different destination, but doing so creates a new entry in your History.
• If you're not connected to the Internet or Jing can't upload to Screencast.com, your capture is sent to the History.

I'm seeing some neat uses of Jing lately!

I heard from Len Charnoff from the Digital College blog. He used a Jing video in a Flickr group he belongs too!

Len is a member of the Feathery Friday group on Flickr. Each Friday a new topic is announced. So, Len posted his picture of his bird and supplemented it with a Jing video! The Jing video gives you so much more information about his bird than the single picture did. You can see his post in Flickr here. Or click the screenshot below to watch his Jing video.

I also found a blog entry from Microsoft OneNote and PowerPoint MVP, Kathy Jacobs. She has a contest going on and if you Jing her to answer her questions, you could win a copy of SnagIt and Camtaisa Studio! You can read about the contest here.

How are you using Jing? Jing me!

When capturing something with Jing, the first step is to select an area of your screen. Jing automatically selects your entire desktop or snaps to a particular window as you mouse-over it. You can also click and drag to select an area.

After you've selected a region, you have two options for changing what's been selected. Click and drag inside the selection frame to move it around. You can also mouse-over the edge to resize the frame.

Watch this video to see frame movement and resizing in action:

(FYI, you can't actually use Jing to record Jing region selection. It does its best to stay out of your way when recording your screen, which means not allowing multiple instances of capture concurrently. I made the above video in Camtasia Studio, and then used Jing to record the preview window as it played back.)