Jing Blog

Managing Your Content on Screencast.com

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:45:03 -0500

Wouldn't it be great if you could have one URL that would direct users to a whole folder of content? Maybe you have a series of video tutorials or a few dozen images of a new design you're considering.

You can do it!

I made a short Jing showing how you can make folders and manage Jing content (3:27) on Screencast.com. Note: Moving content out of your Jing folder will break existing hyperlinks.

I'll share some more Jing and Screencast.com integration tips soon!

Screencast.com Trial Does Not Apply to Jing Users

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:50:34 -0500

Hi everyone, We’re aware of the confusion about the 60-day trial thing with Screencast.com and how it relates to Jing. The Screencast.com trial period does not apply to Jing users. The worst part is a lot of people probably tell their friends that this is some kind of trial and others probably take one look at Jing and don’t give it a try. We are working on a solution that will be less confusing in the future. I hope this eases some fears or confusion. Don’t worry, we've got your back. Mike Curtis and the Jing Team

Jing for Mac: Common Questions Revealed

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:14:13 -0500

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.

Screencast.com Unveils Major Release

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:53:42 -0500

The new Screencast.com: Bigger. Better. And Orangier. (We ate dozens, even hundreds of orange donuts to celebrate! I should have stopped at 3.)

Some of you might know a little about Jing’s relationship with Screencast.com. TechSmith makes Screencast.com, and TechSmith makes Jing. When Jing wanted a place to store video and images (Screencast.com’s specialty) so anyone could share Jings with others, we put two and two together, and made it so all Jing users got free Screencast.com accounts.

I know what some of you are thinking: This is the day when the other shoe drops and now we’re going to charge for Jing or your Screencast.com account or something. Nope. No fine print here my dear sirs and madams. HONEST. Everything that’s currently free is still free, and we love how people are sharing visual information all over the world.

So why should you care about the new Screencast.com? It’s better to show you instead of tell you. Over the next week I’ll make a few videos to show you how you can do things like:

Manage your content like never before
Create a Playlist or MediaRoll to display your content in a really convenient way. (Especially cool if you have your own blog!)
Use the spanking-new desktop uploader to take bunches of content from your computer and get it on Screencast.com

You don’t have to wait for me! Check out Screencast.com and log in with the email and password you used to install Jing. Poke around and check things out. You can send feedback to the Screencast.com team too. Important: If you move content out of the Jing folder, Jing links will no longer work. (You can always re-share the new links/location.)

We’ve been holding off sharing how Jing can be even more useful by leveraging Screencast.com, but now is the time! The release is here! Enjoy!

Take 5: The Video Time Limit

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:06:10 -0500

Those of you recording Jing Videos may have encountered the 5 minute time limit. Some folks have asked about that limit and why it's there. I wanted to share some reasons behind the 5 minute limit.

We think Jing is for quick and simple sharing. Record, send. No scripts, no editing, few retakes. Anything over 5 minutes starts to become a tutorial and we thought things like that are better suited for Camtasia Studio and the like.
File size. Depending on what you're recording, the file size can start to get massive. Once I recorded live video from a web cam and I was up to 55 meg in under a minute. This sort of relates to quick sharing in that we wanted to be friendly to viewers on less-than-ideal connections.
Our video format is SWF. One good thing about SWF is that the quality is lossless (no degradation between what you record and what viewers see). Learn more about SWF near the bottom of this post.

What are your thoughts?

Do you have a "magic number"? What I mean is do you ever launch a video and see it's 2:13 and say, "Sheesh, that's too much of an investment," but you see 1:58 and think, "I just might watch this." We aren't saying we have the answers. We're mostly curious to learn how people who want more than 5 minutes are using Jing. Do you care about file size? What is your viewing audience like? Do you save videos locally or put on an FTP server or Screencast.com?

Jing...the Musical??

Fri, 30 May 2008 13:19:10 -0500

Betsy Weber over at the Visual Lounge Blog tipped me off about some new Jing-inspired lyrics. Some of you may know about My Favorite Jings music video the Jing team made for fun back in December. Who’d of thought the Sound of Music would inspire more Jingified verses? Maria Andersen is an amazing educator with her own blog, and changed the words to How Do you Solve a Problem Like Maria? What’s next? Well, I’m thinking Michael Jackson! Anyone out there want to try their skills at being the Weird Al for Jing? Jing It (You can hear the beginning of the song in case it's been a while since you broke out the Thriller album.) They told him all his comments were very unclear This wall of text I wish would disappear Put an image in their eyes or it’ll be a long year So Jing It, Just Jing It Select a region, no need to preplan Just wanna see the point, you can sound like Tarzan Copy, save, Flickr, put wherever you can So Jing it, or you’re makin’ me sad Just Jing It, Jing It, Jing It, Jing It No one wants to hear you speak it Send me an image, mark it up right Do it right now, I don’t have all night Just Jing it, Jing it Just Jing it, Jing it Just Jing it, Jing it Just Jing it, Jing it

Recording System Audio with Jing--Windows Edition

Fri, 16 May 2008 14:53:25 -0500

"How do I record my system's audio when I make a video?" We hear that question a lot, and if there was a simple answer I'd be shouting it from the rooftops (which I'm sure no one in the TechSmith office park would appreciate). There's actually more to this question than meets the eye (cue robot transformation noises).

By default, Jing for Windows uses your system's specified recording device. (Mac users, I haven't forgotten you. I wrote a post for the Mac that uses Soundflower.) The default recording device is usually the input microphone, whether you have a microphone or not. We designed Jing with quick and simple communication in mind, so it made perfect sense to us to record voice narration with our videos.

If you decide you'd rather have system audio, here are a couple of options. I want to be clear here: Jing can only record from one input source at a time. This means if you want to record system audio, you can't record voice narration on that video. Also, not all sound cards have an internal sound mixer to record (in fact, the laptop I'm working on right now doesn't have one). With those caveats in place, here's how to change your system's default recording input.

Changing your system's default recording input

On Windows XP, go to your Control Panel and open Sounds and Audio Devices. On the Audio tab, click Volume in the Sound recording section. This brings up the Recording Control. This is where things can get tricky.

If you're lucky, there's a input here labeled something like "Stereo Mix", "Mono Mix", "Mixer", or "Wave In". It could be called something else too; unfortunately there isn't much of a standard among different sound cards when it comes to what to call this. If you don't see one of these (or something vaguely similar), go to Options > Properties and if it is there, make sure it is checked. If it's not there, your sound card probably doesn't have an internal audio output that it can record from.

Use a patch cable with your line in and line out jacks

All hope isn't lost though. If you're serious about recording your system audio, I've got one more idea you can try, courtesy of Mike Curtis, my cube neighbor and fellow Jing Project blog contributor. This one might require a little investment though. If you happen to have a short cable around with two male "mini" stereo ends you can plug one end into your computer's "line out" jack and the other into it's "line in" jack. I happen to have one I use to plug my iPod into my car's auxillary stereo input that I bought for five dollars or so at a local Radio Shack. Not all computers have line in and line out jacks, but yours might. This creates a loop from your line out signal (which should be your system audio) to your line in (which you can set to be the recording source by using the method I described above).

A word of caution--be careful to use your line in jack and not your microphone jack. Your microphone jack is designed to take a much weaker signal than your line in jack. Not only are many microphone inputs mono only, but the difference in signal level creates distortion as the audio signal clips. It doesn't sound pretty, and I think it's safe to say your viewers probably won't want to hear it. :)

Hopefully one of these solutions helps you record system audio with your Jing videos. Remember, if you change your recording input in the Recording Control, you'll need to turn it back to your microphone to get voice narration with your videos.

Recording System Audio with Jing--Mac OS X Edition

Fri, 16 May 2008 14:00:00 -0500

I mentioned here that users often ask us how to record system audio when making a Jing video. The answer for Mac users is a little easier, but comes with the same caveat as the Windows version: you can only record one thing at a time (voice narration or system audio).

That said, using SoundFlower from developer Cycling '74 is a great way to route audio on the Mac. Soundflower creates an internal input and output channel; you can tell your system that you want your audio pointed at the internal output and your recording pointed at the Soundflower input. This creates a software loop inside your machine that points your system audio right to your recorder. This means that programs like Jing (which records the default system input) records your system audio.

The downside to this is that while your system audio is rerouted with Soundflower, you can't hear it from your speakers or headphones. That's where Soundflowerbed comes in. It pulls off some trickery and allows you to hear what Jing is recording.

Here's how you do it.

First things first, install SoundFlower. You need administrator access to your machine to do this. It requires a restart as well.

Once that's done, click on the Apple menu and select System Preferences>Sound. On the Input and Output tabs, select Soundflower (2ch) as your input and output channel, respectively. Launch Soundflowerbed and from the icon on the Menubar select Built-in Output.

That's it; Jing is now setup to record audio from your system. To record voice narration, just go back and switch the input back to your microphone.

Here's a Jing (0:36) of the process. The video picks up right after I've installed SoundFlower and resarted my computer. Remember you can only record one input. Therefore there's some nice music in the background of this video, but I wasn't able to use my microphone to speak to you.

Video - What's new in Jing 1.6?

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:37:08 -0500

Hello!
For those of you who'd rather watch a video than read the release notes, I put together a little video to show the new features in Jing 1.6:

Enjoy the video, and enjoy the new buttons!
- Anton
PS: To all of you who correctly predicted the new buttons on my my last blog post: Good Job!

Jing for Windows/Mac - Version 1.6

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:23:46 -0500

Hiya.

Many of you asked for it!

Like a lot of you.

So here it is...Jing with Copy and Save (again)!

Here's what this update contains:

Save button is back
Copy to clipboard button is new
UI is modified in preparation for 'something big' ;)

You can download Windows Jing here.

You can download Mac Jing here.

have a good day
Bill 'we are working hard on your other big requests' Scanlon

What’s going on with the Jing Project?/ Making the Best Jing Possible

Fri, 02 May 2008 10:18:47 -0500

I have to admit: Besides some performance-improving updates, there really haven’t been many noticeable changes to Jing in the past few months.
So what have we been up to? A lot! We are working hard on _Making the Best Jing Possible_.
What does that mean?
It means that we are aiming to improve the overall usability, performance and experience of Jing. While most of the really cool and exciting concepts are still in the works, we also have some features that are ready to be implemented. So instead of waiting until we are done with everything, we are going to release a new version of Jing sometime very soon with some of those new functions already included.

Take a peak.

Notice the two new buttons? I’m not yet going to tell you what they do, but I’m sure you will love them!
So keep your eyes open for a new version of Jing – coming very soon - and taking us one step closer to the _Best Jing Possible._

Good, Better, Best...Bester?

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:29:04 -0500

Hiya,

In previous articles, I've explained how Jing for Windows (winJing) has had issues with poor memory management and that, though we've cleaned them up, Jing may still appear to occupy a fair bit of memory.

Investigating and fixing these memory issues has been quite an adventure and I thought I'd share...in slightly cutesy form.

[fade in]

Jing's Memory Usage
Finding, Fixing and Faking(?)

{Opening credits go here}

In the beginning, Jing was a good application.

It allowed me to share quickly and simply.

It stayed out of my way, but was there when I needed it.

However, it was the biggest memory hog on my machine. And as one of its developers, that was very embarrassing. So I made some time to see what I could do about it.

To lay a baseline, I did seven full screen (dual monitor) image captures and saved each to the Desktop.

The resulting Jing memory usage was ridiculous.

After each capture, the memory lept a mile and never leveled off or decreased. The unbounded and continuous growth was a strong indicator of poor memory management on our part.

So, I set off looking for problems. And golly did I find some doozies.

Shame on me.

After taking some time to track those down and mop them up, I repeated the seven image captures.

After the first three captures, the Mem Usage leveled out and remained pretty much unchanged thru capture seven.

The worst memory management problems seemed to be fixed.

'Well that's better' I thought...er...said...outloud...to myself.

"Hmm...But I know what might be best..."

The .NET framework (which winJing uses ) cleans up unused memory via something called 'garbage collection'. It does this infrequently because it has to completely stop the application and it takes a bit of processor time.

But I figured, maybe I could call it manually.

I mean, I know what I'm doing, right?

I am so smart! S - M - R - T! And all that.

So I did it manually and this is what I got:

"Cool! Yup. That's the best." I thought.

"But I should probably be sure there isn't something bester."

I did a little looking around and eventually I found a function...a special, magical function.

Real Harry Potter stuff.

And bam! Pow!

"Wow! That's the Bestest! I've shrunk Jing to 29 MB of memory!"

That's impressive, especially for a multimedia .NET application.

I was pleased with myself, but unfortunately, it wasn't true.

As I have stated in this article, only looking at 'Mem Usage' can be misleading.

What I really wanted to look at was the Virtual Memory Size ('VM Size' in XP or 'Commit Size' on Vista). That would more accurately reflect the affect my code changes were having.

If we look at Virtual Memory Size, we can see the fuller story of my improvements, and reveal the true result of the amazing memory shrinking function.

Good Jing (poorly managed memory):

Better Jing (better memory management):

Best Jing (better memory management and manual garbage collection):

Bester Jing? (better memory management, manual garbage collection and magic (Jinguloso! with wand flick)):

Now, I think comparing these numbers directly, requires a big lump of salt, because the .NET framework is managing the memory. But I think the expansive differences here make it validish to do.

So, cleaning up my poor memory management gained me about 167 MB!

167MB...wow...how embarrassing.

Attempting to do my own garbage collection got me another 32 MB.

But at what cost?

Garbage collection has to stop the entire application and is CPU intensive. And when done manually, it has to be called twice to be 'sure' it worked.

Lastly, my special, magical function resulted in a HUGE 103 MB savings in Mem Usage even after the other 'improvements'!

But it didn't do anything to reduce winJings actual memory size (You can clearly see why the Mem Usage is not the column to watch for memory leaks).

So what did the special, magical function do?

It forced Jing out of RAM and into paged memory. It essentially forces the Mem Usage to be as small as possible, but Jing's actual memory size is unchanged.

So, it doesn't make Jing any smaller.

However, that doesn't mean it's not useful.

It is still good to take up less RAM when you aren't using it. The OS actually calls this magic function when applications are minimized to make room in case any foregrounded applications need it.

Jing, however, is never minimized. It's always there, even when you aren't using it. Because of this, we'll be looking into possibly calling this function in future releases. But we'd only do so if we find it actually improves system performance and is safe.

We won't call it just to fake people out and make Jing's memory size look smaller. :)

As for garbage collection, we decided it's better to let .NET do what it's designed to do, keep an eye on our memory management and try to explain what is going on to users who inquire why a 'light, simple sharing app' is taking up 200MB of Mem Usage.

So, in the end, I only improved our memory management. But it should be a huge improvement. And we'll continue looking for other improvements as we try to make Jing as lean and mean as possible.

have a good day,
bill 'I think I'll make my own 29 MB build of Jing...it just looks so cool…ignorance is bliss' scanlon

Jing and The Mega Huge Email Attachment

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:57:01 -0500

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a forwarded email you’ve already seen with the 1+ MB photo attachment? You know, the funny kittens or the neighbor’s new granddaughter (and they also have a new 10 megapixel camera apparently)? Well, I made a rough video a while back that was inspired after receiving an email with numerous huge attachments of versions of the photo you’ll see at the end of the video. While it was kind of funny, it was extra annoying because I was not on a high-speed network at the time. I’d would have rather had a Jing hyper link so I could look at it if I wanted to, or just save it for later. "Jing conquers large email attachments video":http://www.screencast.com/t/QWfSkcAy (1:09)

Watching for leaks in Jing for Windows

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:58:26 -0500

Hiya,

Are you the type who likes to keep an eye on your applications?

Do you crack open Task Manager and check the 'Mem Usage' to see who's the biggest hog on your system?

If you are and you see Jing behaving badly, please let us know.

However, I do have a suggestion.

I'd recommend you not look at the 'Mem Usage', but rather the 'VM Size'. The 'Mem Usage' is the amount of RAM that Jing is using at that time and it varies depending on things like the total amount of RAM available and the amount of RAM other applications are using.

The Virtual Memory Size ('VM Size' on XP's Task Manager, 'Commit Size' on Vista's Task Manager) shows the Jing ONLY memory...at least to a best approximation. From what I can find, these numbers all seem to come with a bevy of 'sort ofs' and 'mostlies'.

If this number is growing consistently and never leveling off or decreasing, it's a sign that we may have some 'poor memory management'.

So, if you've got a minute:

If you notice the virtual memory growing a lot or if your other apps or Jing seems to run slow, please let us know.

have a good day,
bill 'My current Jing Virtual Memory Size' scanlon

Jing for Windows - Version 1.5

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:40:26 -0500

Hiya.

Here's the faster, leaner Jing for Windows!

Here's what this update contains:

Capture selection should start more quickly
History should be open more quickly
Memory 'leaks' cleaned up
Over all memory usage decreased
Automatic selection of 'sub windows' restored

You can download it here.

NOTE: There is no corresponding Jing for Mac update.