Answers to some FAQs
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.
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@Martin--You can indeed change the name by typing in the preview window. This isn't really what you're asking for, but it is a work around if you want more specific or randomized names. Giving the user more input on the default naming scheme used is a great idea.
@Brett--Screencast.com does support embedding media on your own site; in fact, the Embed button in Jing gives you the code to do so without ever visiting Screencast.com: http://screencast.com/t/TocG3Pbdq
I don't have a good work around for your problems with the SWF format; it has drawbacks as well as benefits. When it comes to quick and simple though, we felt it was hard to beat. We recognize that small mistakes might require you to redo the video, so we tried to make that as easy as possible with the restart button. If you click the restart button during recording, it "reboots" your recording to the initial countdown while keeping the exact same recording area.
I am a computer consultant my job it to find the best products for my clients. I take pride in being the best I can be.
Jing is obviously intended for n00bs, youtube and myspace.
If you want free stuff that that is more tweaky try
http://camstudio.org/
or cheap
http://www.fraps.com/
Their Camtasia Studio 5 is a VERY nice product.
However; is is too expensive for someone that is not profiting from the results made with the product. I have purchased several copies for clients as aids in technical training. It is a product I highly recommend.
But.....if your just a blogger I would question the legality of this product as it can be used to circumvent DRM, by that logic you might as well get yourself a ripped off copy of Camtasia because they are both grey.....
Camtasia Studio is in my opinion is the best of the best like Photoshop, Nod32, Flashfxp, Winrar and PerfectDisk. It is a standard app.
how do I get the url of a video?
I record it, go to history and click on embed or share and get "Capture Shared" "you've shared your capture" Where? what is the url so I can email it to others? I use XP
Thanks
... newbie
pi--I thought I'd chime in and clear up the noob/YouTube misconception. Jing is intended to be quick and simple, but that doesn't mean it's only intended for new users.
Think of it like this: do you need thousands of dollars of audio equipment to leave a voicemail? Instead of editing and producing a video like you would a music video or TV commercial, using Jing is more like calling a friend and leaving a voicemail. It may ramble on a bit and contain quite a few "umms" and "ahhs" but the message gets through.
Jing isn't designed to be a "content creation suite" like Camtasia Studio or some of the other products mentioned. It's a tool for creating quick content that can be shared with the touch of a button.
I'll be sure to let the Camtasia Studio 5 team know you like it. :)
As for DRM grey areas... I'm not a lawyer, but it shouldn't be any more of an issue than using the PrintScreen key is. Is it possible to use Jing to abuse copyrights? I'm sure you could if you tried, but the tool itself doesn't function as anything other than a VCR (I suppose a DVR is a more appropriate metaphor now) for your computer screen.
newbie--When you click Share or Embed, the URL is copied onto your Clipboard. All you need to do to put it into an email is paste it using Ctrl+V.
I have a question:
Where within my computer the captures of Jing are stored? Does it only keep the last capture temporarily in the clipboard or does it store them all somewhere locally on my drive? If Jing do store all the previous captures I could do with it much more then just upload the latest capture to some host sites.
Thanks,
Gideon
Are you planning to release a linux version ?
I'm going to have to agree with the SWF format being the major reason why I couldn't use Jing. I need to be able to watermark the videos that I produce and using the SWF format makes it very difficult to do this and contrary to one of the FAQs here, I resize the video down to aid in file size without any significant loss in visual quality.
As a Mac user I've been looking for a good product and Jing looks like an interesting project, but as it is, it simply won't work. On Windows I use Camtasia, I guess I'll just have to keep hoping that it will be ported one day.
Gideon--The selected output destination is where your file is stored. If you select FTP, then the capture is sent to the FTP server you specified in your settings. If you choose Screencast.com, it goes to your Screencast.com account.
Copies of files are also saved on your local disk. These appear in your History. Once an item is deleted from your History, it is removed from your machine and the output destination (if possible).
Tii--We're not working on a Linux version at the moment. We haven't ruled out working on one in the future though. :)
David--I can certainly see why SWF isn't convenient for you. I didn't mean to imply that you can't scale video and keep it readable; keeping it readable does require the right encoding (which isn't the same in every case). In order to re-encode or do things like add watermarks, we'd need to add a production step after every recording.
Jing isn't meant to be a replacement for Camtasia Studio, but on the Mac I can see why you'd want to use Jing for that reason. The good news is that you won't have to wait forever: TechSmith Mac Development
I'm glad to see the development of Camtasia Studio for the Mac. I hope it won't take too long to get some early releases out to the public. Until then I'll unfortunately have to keep using other alternatives.
Along the lines of what Gideon asked - can you share two items in one email or IM by hitting ctrl+v for the first item, then going into your history to choose a different item to "imbed" on your clipboard, then hitting ctrl+v again? (hope that question makes sense...)
Thank you!
please excuse my ignorance, but where exactly can I find my "Clipboard"
Sorry if this is redundant, but couple of questions:
1) Does the video capture also capture audio playing? ie: I want to caputure a Quictime movie.
2) Once captured I can just save the file to my hardrive and then upload on my own to my server?
I'd like to try and develop a tutorial on using Entourage for my company, this seems like it may be the way to go.
Thanks!
bananapancakes--You can absolutely share two items in the way you just described. Additionally, you can always double-click an item in your History to open it to share it to other destinations.
MrL--For a brief overview of the Clipboard, check out this article on about.com. It's really just a metaphor for where cut and paste data is stored.
Jeff--Jing captures its audio from your recording device. If your recording device is set to be your system audio, then it will pick up system audio. It's almost always set to a microphone though. It's not usually a good idea to try to record other movies (copyright issues aside). Jing doesn't compress live action video very well and the resulting file is almost certainly going to be bigger than the initial video you already have.
You can absolutely save a file and upload it to your own server. If you have FTP access to your server, you can send it directly there with the FTP output as well.
christina--Currently there is no way to send a Jing image directly to the Clipboard.
Once I do a capture how do I convert the capture into a file in which I can save and view later or I can place on a website so that other people not necessarily Jing users can open and view the video. Please help.
Chad--To save a capture, select the file output. This saves the file (either in the PNG or SWF format) to the destination specified in your File output setting. In other words, you select a default place for your saved files to go, and using the File output puts them there.
To view media created with Jing, your viewers do not need to be Jing users themselves. This is true if the media is hosted on Screencast.com, your own Web server, Flickr, or even if you just save the file and email it to someone. SWF files have no default viewer in Windows, so you'll need to open them in a Web browser manually to view a saved SWF.
Matt, you're doing a great job. Some people just don't get what Jing is all about no matter how many times you explain it to them. Jing is free software that does exactly what it's designed to do. If you added all the features that everyone asked you to, someone would still complain that it won't rustproof their car.
hello,
great product - well done. I'm making a series of short videos for a software demo and I can't work out how to save to my work server? Is there any way to do this or save to a hard drive?
Many thanks
How do I do something simple like print what I've captured with Jing?
I have just downloaded Jing and I can not find my clipboard
Please help
Thankyou
Denise
I think this is a pretty simple question. I simply want to "grab" a Flash Video that streams over the Web (in this case a Flash Video on a corporate Web site) and get it as a .SWF file that I can then convert using a different SW program in order to upload to YouTube. I just tried doing this grab. The video worked, but the audio grabbed my laptop microphone instead of grabbing the audio of the Flash. Is this because I muted my audio, but not my microphone? In essence, is this sucker truly RECORDING in every sense of the word? Please advise. Thanks! BTW, interesting approach. I won't tell you that my company has a site license to HyperSnap.....OOOMPH!!!
Denise--Your Clipboard is a metaphor for the place where the stuff you copy is stored. You don't actually ever need to see your Clipboard--just paste and the URL of your content shows up.
Steve--Jing records from your computer's recording input. I'll be posting a longer tutorial on changing this soon, but the quick and dirty explanation is to go to your Control Panel and change your computer's recording input to your sound cards internal mixer. Not all sound cards have one though. (That's assuming you're on a Windows machine; it's much easier on a Mac. Download Soundflower and point your system output and your recording input to Soundflower. Instant internal patch cable.)
I just started using Jing and I like it so far. I am having a problem with the video capture. As soon as I hit the stop recording button Jing crashes. I am using windows vista premium and I think the problem is vista won't allow jing to capture the video. Any suggestion on how to work around this problem? Fred
How do I take the .swf created by Jing and replay at a scaled down size, proportional to the original dimensions? Width and Height don't seem to accomplish that.
Thanks,
Ron
Hi Ron,
Yeah, changing the width and height tags just basically crops the video, and that's not good. Right now there's no way to do what you want without converting the swf to something you might be able to edit. We want to remedy this, but we don't have a timeline as of today. Thanks for adding your voice to those that want to scale the swfs. It bugs us too. :)
Mike Curtis, TechSmith
Hi,
I've been a fan of TechSmith products an infact I own SnagIT and Camtasia. I just gave Jing a shot to use it as my lightweight screen/video capture tool but the video capture doesn't work on my PC.
I installed/re-installed it SEVERAL times and yet I can't seem to make it work. Maybe it's just Vista?
I'd be glad to use it on my Vista though, given how lightweight and cool it is!
-Amit
Hello Amit,
I just wanted to let you know that I forwarded your issue to the Tech Smith Tech Support team. You should expect them to email you directly.
You should be able to record video on Vista, so I'm sure it's just a little something that needs to be worked out.
Mike Curtis
I use Jing on an iMac running Leopard. It is very difficult to finish a video as Jing simply crashes and disappears at about 1:30 into the video. The size of the video is about 1000X700. Is there anything I can do to make Jing more stable and stop this crashing?
I've saved several videos, and now want to upload them to my jing site to share the URL.
How to?