For Jing: One idea for the product manager of Jing to generate revenue. Offer an enterprise version of Jing that is a paid service that can be embedded inside other Websites, web applications and even desktop applications which are web enabled. In the case of a website owner: they would embed a premium version of Jing which allows visitors to their website to quickly record anything on their screen (preferably not requiring download) and the video or screencaptures be transferred to the Webdeveloper based on their desires. The website visitor wouldn't have to get a Jing account. The Jing/screencast account would be the web developer. Here is an example use case: A new web application is launching and wants to solicit feedback from their users. They also want their users to be able to record video and screencaptures to illustrate their point easily. They embed Jing into their web service w/ some simple embed code.

The paying user would be the business, the web site, the web developer etc. This could be used as a: feedback tool, user experience tool, beta testing tool and, more broadly, a service that could be used in anyway that a user wishes to use it to add value to their service of application.

My .02. Cheers,
Travis Stoliker

I would allow longer than 5 minutes for pro users.

I'd like to be able to save images as compressed JPG for small size web sharing. PNG are great, but tend to be very large.

I would make it run under Linux since there is no similar offering on this platform.

I think I would focus on creating Facebook and Twitter integration. That's where the people are.

For both Facebook and Twitter, this would take advantage of their simple APIs to create applications that create output buttons in Jing once the the connection has been established.and confirmed. In Facebook, an Attach Jing icon would appear under status update window letting you add Jing content from Screencast or any other defined storage location. And the Twitter output button in Jing would prompt a dialog to add text counting down your remaining characters of the 140 limit and then auto post it for you, again, with a predefined storage location such as Screencast. The Twitter output would create a custom shortened URL on the fly, something like Posterous does, such as http://jing.ly/xxxx.

Then, push it out as another Jing Pro benefit and watch your subscription base soar.

my 2 cents,

Jim Reppond

I would offer a 30 day trial of Jing Pro.

I would also work on Facebook/Twitter/FriendFeed and other web service integration. I might even make a simple API or XML file format so that additional services could be added by the user community. I would also offer a few different button designs for custom capture buttons.

• Add a 'Send capture to email address' button - as twittered :)
• Improve capture performance on windows
• Improve the UI design of the settings windows
• Improve the usability of the history (don't make me click)
• The windows can be lost when you tab between programs, a bug that needs fixing
• It's way faster to upload to personal FTP space than screencast.com - could pro users get priority upload bandwidth?

- transparency options for arrows and text on mac.
- ability to add arrows and text in movies as well.
- resize videos/images before saving/compressing.
- define a region and apply a (blur/pixelate/..) filter (not editable, can be destructive. just for quick and dirty operations).
- raise the recording length for jing pro users
- cmd-tab navigation for the jing windows
- showing jing in the cmd-tab window in osx, maybe with a preference to show/hide? (like shown here: http://tinyurl.com/lfrpsa)

SFTP capabilities!!! I can't use this at work till I get it!!!

Add clearer directions and steps when attempting to embed the video. It is difficult to find how to do this unless you go to the actual website. and read the directions.

Add drawing tools

Add annotation features for images like Skitch of Fireshot and basic annotation of video.

Bump up the video limitation from 5 minutes to 10 minutes.

I have I Show U - for me it is a no go - your quality is great!

SO - 7 minutes or more of recording time - PLEASEEEE!

I would like the Pro version to recognise my Logitech Fusion web cam without me having to disable a TV card in the machine every time I want to use it

Allow for overdubbing voice to an existing recording (or merging in an existing, prerecorded MP3, maybe at specified points in the timeline). I know this is what Camtasia is good at, but recording scripted voiceover while driving a GUI is sometimes tricky.

Hi,

Great product.

I havent read any of the comments above, so i dno if this has already been said, but i would love it if i could keyword tag each video or screenshot that i make so i can find it with a search later.

I want to use Jing as a knowledgebase system internally, rather than typing out procedures in MS word. Because doing it with Jing is so much faster.

Problem with video however, is being able to find the relevant video later.

So a good search function would be excellent

Thank you

I can't actually get Jing to work, so that would by my first priority.

Starting Jing the first time immediately brings up an error message: There was a problem getting the list of countries.

Huh? What?

Then I have to create an account on Screencast.com. I don't need screencast.com, but I'm forced to create an account. But I can't because when I enter the info I get an error.

Sorry, but this is being removed from my machine immediately, just like I removed SnagIt, so I can find something that works.

Would like to have a preloader so there is a ##% showing until capture is fully loaded. Mainly use this for storing files on company network and as of right now users see a blank white page until swf is fully loaded.

So far I think the most important suggestion is giving the option to write a compressed JPG file. PNG is great for most things, but the file size gets very large very quickly when you aren't capturing solid colors or smooth gradients.

Another small suggestion I have (if this is not already possible) is to allow users to retrieve the URL for an uploaded capture from the history. There is the option to re-upload it, but this is not exactly necessary when all I want is the URL.

Back to the original question, "If you were the Jing Product Manager for a day, what would you do? What would change? What features would you add? And, why?"

What would I do?
I would take all of these great suggestions into consideration. Except the ones about recording length. Originally, I thought the 5 minutes should be extended, but that moves away from the Jing realm and on to the Camtasia realm. Perhaps functionality should be added to Camtasia Studio that mimics Jing, but allows some of these advanced features. That would be SWEET!

What would change?
The Jing website would change. This website should be more community driven. Perhaps add a box for "latest Tweets" or "featured user". It would also be neat to have some downloads for free publicity, such as wallpapers, icons, and site badges (you know, the ones that say things like "Powered by Jing!")

What features would you add?
I do not wish to discuss this in a public blog. I would share my idea to a Jing team member if they contacted me via email.

Once again, great job on a fantastic product! I can't wait for updates :)

Jing could really use a Print feature. As it stands now, I have to capture the image, open an imaging tool, size the canvas, paste the contents, the print. This is a lot of work - shouldn't be too tough to add.

Personally, I'd like to see Jing Pro turn into a truly fully featured product, or at least moreso than it is. Figure out what the most used features of SnagIT and Camtasia are, remove the fluff, and turn that into Jing Pro.

For example, I'd like to see more robust annotation options both with images and videos, and more video editing options. Personally, I'd pay $50 if you added that kind of stuff.

(On a personal note, I love that Jing runs on both my Windows and Mac laptops, making it easy for me to use on both systems)

1. "Border width" increase and decrease buttons on the Textbox object AND Frame object... similar to the Font size increase/decrease buttons found on the Textbox object. So I can choose to make smaller, sleeker... sexier borders... or bigger fatter uglier ones. :)

2. Jing tools on Snag-It... I'd like to see the Jing tools become "cross-application" because they are good for their niche uses.

For quick commenting the Jing Textbox is far superior... instant background color (white) for readability, colored border for easy recognition... but the backgroundless, borderless Snag-It Text tool and gradient-rich, tweakable Callout tool are both needed for professionalism.

I also like Jing's Arrows and Frames and would like to use them with Snag-It if I need to do a scroll roll (non-Jingable capture).

Jing's Highlight tool is the only object where SnagIt's wins hands down.

3. I'd like a Jing screenprint to be instantly resizable... not by a percentage or pixel measure, just a quick and ugly "grab an edge or corner and shrink" type deal (do keep the aspect ratio on the corners though...)

This should be enough "simplicity" to please the Jing model and not so pro-tool enough to replace the Snag-It resize entirely...

allow more than just 5 minutes. (5 minutes is just enough for a small quick demo)

Great Program!

I would add:

1. the option to highlight the cursor during video capture
2. the option to highlight clicks of the mouse
3. an increase in time to 10 minutes for the pro version

Thanks!

First I’d fix the webcam audio-video sync problem. I can never get a Jing Pro webcam recording to sync video and audio. The Jing video transition from webcam to screen cast looks great, but the out-of-sync recording renders this Jing Pro feature unusable.

The second thing I’d do is provide a one-click option to simultaneously upload an attachment to screencast.com while a Jing video uploads after clicking the share button. With this feature, sharing the link to a Jing video would also share the attachment. The current interface requires logging into screencast.com, opening a folder, launching the video, and clicking the attachment button before attaching a file to a Jing recording, which takes time.

The third thing I’d do is provide options to tweak appearance of a Jing video, e.g. play, pause, volume, etc. controls. The current Jing brown and gold video control bar is too tall and doesn’t allow volume levels between on and off. As product manager, I would add some of the Camtasia Studio appearance options to Jing Pro.

Other than that, Jing is great. Thanks for developing it!

I would add an option to 'follow' or 'track' the mouse movement. (but with a smooth delayed fluid motion type of tracking) This would allow for the user to navigate through a screen or menus over a large area while maintaining the capture area size. (instead of the current setup of moving the screen into the capture area.

I would add a live audio signal meter to reassure the user that the audio is active while recording. And help the user keep the recording from peaking or being too quite. Currently, I found the audio didn't record sometimes due to software and mic issues. But I wasn't able to tell until after I recorded.

I would also like to see an overdub option, as mentioned by Ted.

repeat of another "First I’d fix the webcam audio-video sync problem. I can never get a Jing Pro webcam recording to sync video and audio. The Jing video transition from webcam to screen cast looks great, but the out-of-sync recording renders this Jing Pro feature unusable."

1. add more drawing tools. Specifically, the ability to draw lines, at a bare minimum.

2. add a callout tool (combined arrow + text). The only way to do callouts now is to add a textbox and an arrow separately. This is cumbersome. Most of the time you want to annotate the arrow. (This is something missing in SnagIt as well. The callouts do exist there but there is no clean arrow+text tool.)

Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated! Keep it coming - we're listening and reviewing it all!

Betsy Weber | Chief Evangelist | TechSmith
twitter: @betsyweber and @techsmith

Don't make everyone sign up for a screencast.com account. Not everyone needs screencast. Allow licensing for multiple copies, which would be good for my business. Make it where it will record 10+ minutes of video. Allow you to select different codecs and compression such as .wmv, .avi, and etc. Allow you to draw on a video frame - more different types of lines and sizes, also an angle tool so you can show the angle - this would be helpful for videos used for evaluation purposes. The ability to immediately have the video hosted on a backend account (no account creation) and get the html code so it could be pasted anywhere I want. (Similar to how www.animoto.com does it with their videos).

I would add another output option in the free version other than SWF, preferably MP4 .h264, but FLV (VP6) or AVI (Xvid codec) would also be acceptable -- you guys know this stuff better than I do.

The problem is that SWF is rarely ingestable by video transcoding software. In other words, video sites can't easily convert a free version Jing video to another fomat. In our case this dead-ends the produced videos and we have to reshoot the SWF videos (doing a recording of a recording) to make them usable.

However, there is another free competitor's tool that allows export to FLV and AVI. We have reluctantly switched our recommendation to this other tool because Jing (the free version) will not be compatible with our enterprise-wide video platform, due to its SWF-only output format. We still recommend Camtasia for users who want a professional tool, but as far as free tools go, Jing is too inflexible formatwise. I'm afraid though that people will use this other free tool and be more inclined to upgrade to its professional version rather than switching to Camtasia (creatures of habit and all that).

1. I came here to suggest integration with Twitter/Facebook/MySpace and see that others have same idea. The integration should work something like this: You have the buttons for Upload to Screencast, Upload to YouTube, and the third option escapes me. So we want to upload the video to one of these options while have option to Twitter the link. So a checkbox to the right of the buttons would allow us to do our Upload and send the link to Twitter, or if left unchecked, just Upload no Twit. We would set the default Twitter profile in the options. When uploading and checkbox is enabled, a dialog pops up to verify account or change. I have multiple Twitter accounts and have the need to switch the one I would be Twitting to. Only have one Facebook and MySpace account.
2. Need a second check box allowing us to Save to file, while uploading to YouTube. So we can keep copies at a specified location. (Not just in the Jing dataStore folder.)
3. When recording, need option to extend beyond 5 minutes, or after save, immeditely start a new 5 minute video.
4. Need option in History dialog, to convert a Swf to MPEG or other video type. Yes, can be done in Camtasia, but that's overkill just to do one conversion.
5. In YouTube, we can assign tags and comments to the video so that people can better search. I'm wondering if there is a way to assign those tags and comments at time of upload from Jing.

Love the first guys idea of having an Enterprise version. Would love to see Jing integrated in Autodesk's CAD products. Architects and Engineers could pop a quick video of their issue and send in to Support, or interoffice to each other, or Twit/MySpace/Facebook their work for a portfolio.
Integration of Jing in any software, just as a Help tool, would be priceless.

Bring back the embed button graphic.

Yesterday a competing free tool that outputs to MP4 was released. I'd love to recommend Jing instead, but... SWF-only output is a no-go.

I downloaded Jing for Mac for personal use. NIce 'sun' in the corner of the screen, Thought this will be wonderful.

Wrong.

After setting the screensize and starting the video, all the dropdown menus in Aperture/Photoshop or Firefox were all 'grayed out' rendering its prime function totally useless i'e' I couldn't explain how the menus worked to my audience.

Needs a serious review because at the moment it is totally useless.

My problems with the software are the voice sync, and the webcam not working. Wasn't aware that I had to disable the TV card for it to work but it's more trouble than it's worth to do that.

I was made aware of a free version (not Jing) when I purchased and it looked like it could do exactly the same for nada!

Hope the problems can be sorted out, especially the webcam because it is awesome!

hackbridge