Hello!
Did you know that you can move Jing's Sun Launcher?

Just left-click on the sun launcher (press Shift and click for Macintosh), hold down the mouse button, and move the sun launcher to a different edge of your screen. It's easy.

For those of you who would rather see what I'm talking about, I updated one of my old videos that explains in detail how the sun can be moved. Check it out:

This video is of course also available in the new Jing Help Center.

In an effort to address the Jing Pro video problems associated with the latest release of QuickTime (v7.6), we have released a new version of Jing (for Mac users only). Jing will prompt you to install this latest version the next time you restart.

With this new version, Mac users can once again record videos in .MP4 format and share those videos as desired. We do however, view this release as a step in completely resolving the problem, as there are still a few lingering issues.

Remaining issues:

• Videos may get out of sync between the video and audio if the user mutes and restores the audio during the recording OR the user pauses and resumes during the recording.
• If the user's CPU becomes highly stressed, the resulting video and audio content may also become out of sync.

We will continue to investigate the remaining issues. That being said, we wanted to restore the ability to record .MP4 videos as quickly as possible with this release.

NOTE: Windows users of Jing will be not affected by this update.

It is never fun to bring bad news, but we just found a crash bug this morning when attempting to record an .MP4 video with Jing Pro on a Mac with the latest version of Quicktime (v7.6). Jing makes use of the Quicktime encoding engine to create the .MP4 video files. Apple just released this new version of Quicktime today, so we are working quickly to resolve the situation and have a fix available as quickly as possible.

The good news is that our .SWF recording format still works. Until we get this resolved, Jing Pro users on the Mac can go into the Jing Preference and change the default video recording format back to SWF. Below a quick video on how to make that change.

This is not a problem for users of the free Jing version, nor is it a problem on the Windows versions of Jing. I apologize for any inconvenience - we want this fixed as badly as you do.

Tony Dunckel -- Product Manager, Jing

Hi everyone, I'm posting this on behalf of Brooks Andrus--the guy who's behind the new Jing player. Take it away Brooks:

So here's the problem: Some people want to use Jing with their own FTP server, but they want it to function in a more sophisticated way than just throwing the h.264 MP4 file up there. Some people want their own embed code and the ability to control video behavior. Trouble is, this can become an activity that's not for the feint of heart you might say.

To make it easier to get started, I've provided the Jing player files, some sample embed code and created a "how-to" video that will show you how you can incorporate the files and custom code so Jing videos on your FTP server will act similar to Jing videos on Screencast.com.

Steps described in my video:

1. Obtain the files. <-- I zipped them up here for you.
2. Upload the files to your FTP server in the correct folder.
3. Customize your FTP button(s) in Jing.
4. Enter basic FTP information.
5. Enter custom code. You can paste and modify my supplied code from the text file. (Note: the bug I refer to at the 2:00 mark only refers to Mac Jing and is now fixed.)
6. Test the FTP button settings.
7. Make a Jing video and give it a try!

Try watching the video in full screen mode for a better experience.

Brooks Andrus, our resident flash guru on the Jing team, is the person behind the new Jing flash player. He made a video that provides a bit of behind-the-scenes rationale and some information about resizing videos. He's a humble guy but I was able to coerce him into putting a nice video together for our staff to understand our player enhancements.

In my opinion, this has universal appeal for all Jing users - enjoy!

There's also information in the Help Center for modifying the embed code in order to change the video dimensions.

Embed specifics for the following is located at the end of each topic:

• Screencast.com
• YouTube
• Flickr
• FTP

P.S. A special thanks to Mike Curtis, Jing's writer extraordinaire, for his contributions on this post.

Here are some ideas for getting the best videos possible. Do you have other tips? Screencast.com has a bunch of screencasting advice.

• Don't record the full screen if you don't have to. Select a capture area.
• Close or quit programs you don't need. They steal computer system resources.
• If you've only got SWF (Jing) try to minimize high-motion content.
• If you're going to YouTube or another site that will resize your video keep their preferred height and width ratios (scroll to bottom) in mind.
• If you're going to record your full screen you may wish to change to a lower resolution. This will help performance and will likely provide a better viewing experience.
• Take a quick gander and clean up your screen. Otherwise you may send a cluttered video--or worse--your viewers will see something you really didn't want them to see!!
• Fluid, deliberate and patient mouse movements can help people follow along.
• Don't attach videos to emails. Use the link provided by Screencast.com or wherever it's hosted.

Want to learn more about the Jing Pro video formats? There's a new entry in the Help Center.

Today marks an exciting and long awaited milestone for Jing. After endless feedback and requests from passionate users like you, we are pleased to announce Jing Pro!

Jing Pro brings you simply the best-in-class experience for quick visual online conversation. Imagine everything you already know and love about Jing, then add:

• HD quality video for the web
• Direct output to YouTube
• No more branding on the end of your videos.

Pretty sweet, huh? Best yet, it's only $14.95/yr. (Yep, that's a mere 28.8 cents a week)

Now, for you video gurus out there, Jing Pro now encodes in real-time directly to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC as well as the SWF format Jing has been using. This provides ample flexibility to share your Jing Pro videos just about anywhere. And for those who have been itching to tweak their Jing videos, these new Jing Pro videos will import into Camtasia Studio 6 and iMovie to edit, merge or anything you want.

Of course you're probably thinking, "Oh - here's the catch now they are going to make us all upgrade to Jing Pro, right?" Nope, that's not our style :-) You can continue to use Jing for free just as you always have (in fact, even the free version received a couple enhancements today). Our commitment is still focused on bringing simple visual communication to the world. We just realized that a lot of you needed just a little bit more and Jing Pro is here to answer that call.

So, enough talk - let's Jing! You can check out Jing and Jing Pro at www.jingproject.com.

Hi, I wanted to share a little information about some new things all Jing users are getting. You may have heard about Jing Pro by now, but did you know that you can still use the free version of Jing like you always have? I should say, better than you always have!

Watch this 11-second video to see how to manually check for Jing updates. If you don't already have Jing, download it free.

One of the exciting new things in Jing is the customizable buttons. Don't worry, you can still use your buttons the way you do now. Jing won't mess with the buttons you've already established when you upgrade.

Now though, Jing is giving you the option of really being in charge of your buttons. You can name them, delete them, move them around, and even create multiple buttons (up to 8 total). Why in the world would you want 3 Save buttons for example? Well, important videos could go one place, maybe you have a folder related to a client or class, and maybe a 3rd saves the content to a shared network drive or something. Learn more at Jing's new Help Center.

There's one more big thing I wanted to point out. Have you ever been in the situation where you recorded your entire screen and your viewers were annoyed because they had to scroll around all over the place to see what you were doing? For those of you who wanted to resize the height and width in your embed code, that'll work now too.

Oh, and when you update it'll be hard not to notice the sleeker look. Some smaller things you may not notice is that we've gone through and tried to improve the in-product contextual help. Probably the best example is when you go make new buttons. We have more consistent messages when you upload content or get an error too.

As always, please send us your feedback and we'll keep on working!

We're happy to announce a spiffy, brand-new Jing Help Center. It's the one place to go to discover everything Jing. Almost every article has a short, informative video you may even find entertaining. We think people will like the new Help Center, as previously on this blog help topics would become buried in all kinds of non-helpful posts--and search was therefore less helpful too.

Speaking of this blog--do you like the wider, lighter, cleaner look? We've done other maintenance too. Namely, we unpublished all old, help-related posts that applied to old versions of Jing or simply were improved over on the Help Center.

So, here's the plan. If you'd be so kind, send us your comments and feedback on the Help Center. Meanwhile, this blog will become more devoted to interesting and creative ways to use Jing, and hopefully we'll start getting some guest bloggers too. Want to tell a story? Have an idea for a post? Send it!