I thought I'd try and tackle some of the frequently asked questions I see pop up in blog comments and feedback emails. If you have more, comment away and I'll try to answer as many as I can. As always, if you are having specific trouble and need technical support, please visit the TechSmith support page.
Can you explain one more time how Jing works?
Happy to. Jing is about quick and simple visual communication. Use Jing to grab an image of your screen and throw on some text and arrows to make a comment. Or, record a video of your screen and use your microphone to add narration. Afterwards, click Share to upload your file to your preferred destination (Screencast.com, your FTP server, Flickr, or a local or network drive). The destination of your upload (usually a URL) is copied to your Clipboard. You can paste this URL into an email, an IM chat, or a blog comment. Jing makes it easy to "show" so you don't have to "tell."
What's the Clipboard?
The Clipboard is something that exists on both Windows and the Mac. Whenever you copy something, whether text or an image, it is stored on the Clipboard. Once something is on your Clipboard, you can paste it (using Ctrl+V on Windows or Cmd+V on Mac) into a email or Web browser, for example. Only one thing can be on your Clipboard at a time and Jing replaces whatever is currently on your Clipboard when you upload.
When you upload with Jing, it puts the location of your file on your Clipboard. Try pasting the URL into an IM or email to enhance a conversation you are already having. If you share to a file on your local disk, you can paste the location into an Open dialog window in an editing program.
Can I change the resolution of my video after a I record?
The short answer is no. The long answer is still no, but here are a couple of good reasons why. The first is the real-time SWF encoding Jing uses when recording video. Because we encode in real-time, there's no delay between the end of the video and the ability to share it. Encoding the video at other resolutions would add time and complexity, which is the opposite of the quick and simple communication we are hoping to facilitate. The other reason has to do with resizing videos of screen content. Fonts, and computer screens in general, don't resize very well. If you were to take a screenshot of a text document and scale it down, the text would be unreadable. It's even worse when the recording size and the produced size are not using the same aspect ratio.
Long story short (too late, I know), when you resize videos the compression that occurs during encoding makes your video hard to watch. You're better off making whatever you want to record smaller (or even changing your screen resolution) so that your viewers have a reasonably sized video.
Can I choose my output format?
When creating the Jing Project, we took a long, hard look at the file formats available for sharing images and video on the Web. We wanted formats that could be encoded in real-time (so there was no delay between recording and sharing) as well as formats that everyone on the Web could use. This meant being platform independent.
For images, we chose PNG. The PNG format provides lossless compression and very reasonable file size. For video, we went with SWF. One of the primary reasons we chose to use SWF was the ability to encode the video while it records. Other formats may require the video to be encoded after the fact, adding a lot of processing time after recording and delaying sharing. Another big factor was price. Many other formats (FLV for instance) require a fee to be paid for every copy of the software to license the technology used in the format. This adds up when you give your program away for free. In order to keep Jing free, we had to choose formats that didn't have any costs associated with them.
How does Screencast.com protect my content?
When you upload media to Screencast.com, a unique URL is generated. It's randomized and won't show up on any search engines (unless you post it on a blog or web page that gets indexed). This means that the only way to see Jing content uploaded to Screencast.com is if you have the URL. Viewers can't navigate to it in the Screencast.com library and or browse to it by changing the information in the URL.
Greetings everyone! I want to introduce you to Laura Bergells and share how she uses and describes Jing. Besides, it’s nice to have “real-life” people instead of TechSmithies like me sharing examples!
Laura’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is a successful independent Internet marketing consultant, writer, presenter, blogger—you name it—since 1999. She’s also a SnagIt and Camtasia Studio user. In a post on her blog she used a couple of phrases that really caught my ear and resonated with me. Check out Laura’s two "video voicemails" on her blog post about Jing!
Here’s what Laura says about how she makes the choice between using Camtasia and Jing, and why Jing makes a difference in her work routine:
"The reasons I use Jing instead of Camtasia for what I call 'video voicemail' is speed. Jing is lightning fast: I just grab, talk, share. It requires much less effort than even picking up a phone.
With a phone, I might get voicemail. Or I might have to wait until my client is in front of the computer to visualize something I'm explaining.
With Jing, my clients can get brief, disposable learning objects -- when they're ready to use them. This saves everybody time.
My clients get visual and auditory information they need, when they need it. And I get to be more productive. Everybody wins with Jing!"
On our corporate blog, The Visual Lounge, Betsy Weber has been posting videos made by the Training Department at TechSmith. We've even had our newest (and only) Instructional Specialist make a Jing video explaining how to setup and use the Flickr feature in Jing. So, here is that video:
And, stay tuned for more Jing videos coming out this week and through the month of January.
Oh, and, here's a little bit about Anton:
Anton, originally from Germany, just recently accepted a position as an Instructional Specialist for the Training Department. Prior to that he had been an intern at TechSmith for over four years. As part of that role he created many of the Camtasia Studio and SnagIt tutorial videos in English, German, French, Korean and Japanese. He also has a degree from Michigan State University in Interdisciplinary Studies w/Sociology and a degree in German.
In his free time, Anton likes to play soccer, listen to music and spend time with his 5 roommates and 9 animals (3 dogs, 3 cats, 3 rats).
Hello! Remember the awesome tutorial on writing your own Share and Embed code that Matt Dyer created back in November? We now have a video tutorial that goes along with it; I'm hoping it will clarify some of the steps involved in creating your own Share and Embed code.
Enjoy the video - it runs just under 5 minutes:
This is my first Jing Blog post, but I'm sure there will be more. If you have any suggestions for additional Jing videos, just comment on this blog and I'll consider them when I make the next video. Thanks... and until next time.
