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 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.

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.

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.

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.)

Many of you have been asking for the ability to undo an arrow, a highlight or even a text entry when editing an image in Jing. If you are running Jing on a Mac, you do have the ability to reselect any previous edit and manually delete or change it. However, due to some constraints in our development time line, we deferred that capability on the Windows platform in order to get Jing out to all of you that much faster.

Of course, you all miss that feature a lot, right? Presumably so. Well, we hear you on that one loud and clear. :-)

To help with things today, we can at least offer you a keyboard shortcut to "undo" anything in the editor you have already created. For Windows users click the key combination "Ctrl + z", for Mac users click "Cmd + z" to undo an edit. It also has multiple undo, so you can keep "undoing" all the way back to the base image, if you so desire.

Oh by the way, you can also "redo" something you "undid" by pressing "Ctrl + y" on Windows and "Cmd + Shift + z" on the Mac. Keep in mind; once an image is shared or saved, the edits previously made cannot be undone or redone. While this solution may not seem optimal, it will at least give you an option to fix those "oops!" moments for now.

Preferences in the More ball is one of the few places the Windows and Mac clients are different. Even then, the differences are pretty small.

On the Windows Client Preferences panel, you can:

• Change your Screencast.com account login information.
• Choose whether Jing launches when you boot your machine.
• Select a hotkey to capture.
• Hide the sun launcher (continue to capture using the hotkey or the taskbar icon).
• Choose a location for the launcher.

On the Mac Client, Preferences is a bit sparser at the moment:

• Set a hotkey.
• Use the menubar instead of the sun launcher.
• Launch Jing on startup.

On the Mac, you can move the sun by dragging its center. You can move it to any corner, or any edge except where the Dock or Menubar are.

Updated October 10th, 2007: Jing 1.3 added the ability to get embed code from Screencast.com to the UI.

Additionally, Screencast.com now has a "Click to Play" feature that only loads a thumbnail of your video when embedded. This means that your video isn't loaded every time a viewer loads the page, saving your bandwidth for actual views of the video.

So, the developers posted short descriptions of the latest changes to Jing, but I thought I'd post a quick video. Isn't it easier to understand something when you can see it?

You probably noticed some changes in your History window with the 1.3 update; here's a rundown of the new features:

• Name and Size: Below each History item, name and size are displayed. Entering a name is optional at the time of capture; the default value of the name field is the date. If you never enter names for your captures, it may look like Jing is displaying the date and size (which can be handy too). http://screencast.com/t/aFDTUmYIm
• Mouse-over: Hold your mouse cursor over an item in your History for more information. A larger version of the thumbnail will display along with: Name, Kind (image or video), Size, Date, Dimensions, and Shared (where it was uploaded). http://screencast.com/t/tJyqDAo6nJj
• Sorting: In the upper left corner of the History window are two sorting options, Date and Size. Click either one to sort your History, with the most recent or largest at the top. http://screencast.com/t/Pymy3a1Yrfk
• Filter: In the upper right corner, select whether to view Images, Video, or Both in your History window. http://screencast.com/t/Cl3esON5SS

In an effort to increase the versatility of the Jing Project, we've added new sharing options. One of those options is Flickr, the photo hosting site. Because Flickr is an image only service, you cannot upload videos to Flickr.

To set up Jing to work with Flickr:

Flickr supports organization and privacy options. Groups of images can be uploaded into “Sets”. If the Set does not exist, Jing automatically creates it. You can also determine who sees your images by choosing a privacy level.

In order to expand your sharing options, Jing has added support for FTP uploading. Using FTP is something of an advanced feature and it requires a bit of know-how. To upload to FTP with Jing, you need access to an FTP server with a Web accessible directory and the knowledge to write your own share and embed code.

You need to know the following information to configure FTP upload:

• Server: This is the IP or DNS address of the server. Do not use "ftp://" before the adress.
• Port: The port to use for the FTP connection.
• Directory: The location or file path on your FTP server where Jing content is stored. This is relative to the user's root directory.
• Username: Your username to log into the FTP server.
• Password: Your password associated with the username.

With all this information, Jing can upload to your FTP server. Unfortunately, because of the wide variety of ways your FTP server might be configured, we can't generate the URL or embed code for you. This means you get to create your own. To make this easier, we've added tags that act as variables that you can stick in your own code. For more information on using these tags, check out this blog post.

For those wanting a quick and dirty example of how a URL or embed link might look, try adjusting this URL for your own use. In the Share field, replace the domain and directory with your choices while leaving the [filename] tag for Jing to replace automatically: http://www.yourDomain.com/yourDirectory/[filename]

Because of the multitude of ways you can set up the FTP and file sharing options, we can't automatically generate share or embed code for you. What we did do was create a versatile system that lets you create your own code. We've created tags that act as placeholders which are automatically replaced by Jing every time you share with the relevant information (like the name of the file).

Here's an example. If I were to set up Jing to share to a folder named "Jing" on my local hard drive using the File output, I would want to get back path to that file on my Clipboard when I clicked Share. To do that, I would enter this code: C:\Jing\[filename]

The location of the file is specified, and the Jing automatically places the [filename] tag with the name you gave the file. If I were to name an image "blogtest" and hit the Share button, the text copied to my Clipboard is "C:\Jing\blogtest.png". This simple substitution allows you to write whatever kind of code you want to get back on your Clipboard.

To set up the FTP Share code, instead of the local directory use the DNS address of the Web accessible directory where you uploaded your file. For a directory named "share" it might look something like this: http://www.yourDomain.com/share/[filename].

In addition to the [filename] tag, there are also [width] and [height] tags for writing video embed tags. To write video embed code, use the same techniques as above, but use the embed tag. An example would look like this: < embed src="http://www.yourDoman.com/Jing/[filename]" HEIGHT=[height] WIDTH=[width]>

With all the new sharing options that are available in 1.4, you may be saying to yourself, "Those are great, but what happened to the Save button?" At first glance it may look like we've gotten rid of save functionality in Jing, but when we added FTP and Flickr support we decided to make saving more like our sharing options, and so we came up with File output.

What does clicking Share with File selected do? It saves a copy of your file. It doesn't, however, pop up a Save as dialog every time. Instead, you set up your File output just like you would Screencast.com, FTP or Flickr. You select a target directory (like C:\Jing) and when you hit Share, your file is sent there. Your file can be named in the preview window (the default name is the date and time). The destination directory can be anywhere your local machine can save to, including network drives. This makes File perfect for those who have a place to share on their network but can't use outside file hosting.

To configure file:

Because of the wide variety of ways you might configure your File output, we can't generate the share or embed code for you. This means you get to create your own. To make this easier, we've added tags that act as variables that you can stick in your own code. For more information on using these tags, check out this blog post.

For those wanting a quick and dirty example of how a share or embed link might look, try adjusting this path for your own use. In the Share field, replace the file path while leaving the [filename] tag for Jing to replace automatically: on PC C:\Jing\[filename] or on Mac ~/Desktop/[filename]

Greetings! I made a video using Camtasia Studio showing how you can save a video or image to your desktop. Please pardon the audio. I used the built-in mic on my laptop while travelling and I recorded in far from ideal circumstances. How to Save to Desktop (4:24)

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.

The other day, I had this conversation with one of my coworkers:

Me: "How is it going? Oh, you're using Jing!(smile)"
Him: "Yes, I'm trying to show R. this design for a poster."
(He tries to take a capture, grabs the wrong area, and then redoes the capture.)
Me: "Neat. But why don't you just resize the capture area instead of redoing it?"
Him: "Hmm????"
Me: "Let me show you..."

So I showed him, and then I started wondering "How many Jing-Users don't know about this feature?".

And out of that came the idea to create a series of short videos that highlight a certain feature or function in Jing.

So here is the first video - on Adjusting the Capture Area - Enjoy!

More videos are in the works... keep your eyes open. Thanks.

Reason #23 why Jing is cool: It lets you move the sun.

Isn't that epic?

To make it more clear what I'm talking about, I put together the most epic Jing tutorial yet: Moving the Sun

I hope you enjoy the video - and have fun moving the sun!

Hey there,
If you're using Jing on a Mac, you might have asked yourself:

• How do I start using Jing?
• Why can't I run Jing from the dock?
• Do I have to use the sun? Can I move it?
• How do I turn this thing off?

Fortunately, Casey in TechSupport put together a 2 minute video to answer some of the most common questions people have about Jing for the Mac..
Enjoy!

If you have specific questions about Jing, you can also Contact Support directly.

Edit:I was asked how I edited and resized the video. This was done with Camtasia Studio, one of the other screen recording tools that TechSmith makes.