It didn't used to. When Apple gave us their first preview of OS X 10.7, code named Lion, Jing rolled over and played dead. In fact, all of TechSmith's screen recording software tools choked on the new OS. This wasn't good.

Our development teams went into hyperdrive and came up with a new way to capture screen video on Macs and the updated versions of our products released today are testaments to the agility of our development organization as a whole.

For Jing specifically, this release also marks the last update for PowerPC Macs. PPC Mac users won't be prompted to upgrade to a newer version of Jing until they migrate to a newer Mac platform. We didn't want to cut the PPC users out and leave them high and dry as that would suck, and isn't our style.

Download the new version now! (It will work on your current operating system AND on Lion when it's released.)

To be clear:

• Today's Jing for Mac update supports Lion (in addition to previously supported OS versions).
• All Mac Jing users should install the update (even PPC Mac users).
• From today forward, Mac PPC users will no longer receive Jing updates. However, today's version can still be used indefinitely.

As always, if you notice anything unusual after updating to this new version of Jing, or want to send us feedback please let us know. Thank you for using Jing...Rrrraaaarrrr!

-Dirk Frazier, Jing and Screencast.com Product Manager

PS - If you use Snagit or Camtasia on Mac, those apps have been updated to be ready for the Lion release, too.

I made a little video that attempts to explain why you might care about embed code. I then address the top three reasons people contact us for embed code help.

The top problems are:

1. The code is displayed to viewers (instead of the video)
2. Video is way too big for blog or website
3. Code doesn't work, or isn't accepted by html tool

I welcome feedback on the video, especially as I plan to create a three-part series on embed code. This would be the "Basics" video. Do you like the live intro or should I just cut straight to the screencast? Anything you want me to cover in the next videos?

Don't forget you can click the Full Screen button to watch the video at it's original size. I also made a low-res version that is a faster download.

Finally, here's how to get embed code straight from Jing.

This only applies to some Jing Pro users on Mac.

Have you seen this warning?

The situation occurs when you stop recording a video, the Preview Window opens and Adobe Flash presents a warning dialog about Jing trying to connect to the Internet. My hunch is this warning dialog is so easy to dismiss many people don't bother reporting it or look for a solution.

Well, when you get a minute, you can change the Flash settings and never be bothered by it again. Check out this support article to learn how.

I thought it would be helpful if I created a sort of FAQ about SWF--the video format used in the free version of Jing. If you have more questions, post them in the comments and I'll update this post.

What is SWF?
It stands for Shockwave Flash, and maybe you've heard of Adobe Flash Player or played some Flash-based online games. It's a file type intended to deliver a compact file size containing multimedia content to the web.

What are strengths of SWF?
As it pertains to Jing:

• It works great for web delivery, and we thought primarily people would use Jing to communicate via Internet-related tools
• It's available for Mac and PC
• It's royalty-free (obviously a big plus for a free product)
• It's lossless--meaning that you get really crisp and pixel-perfect screen capture capability.

What are some weakness of SWF?
As it pertains to Jing:

• It's not a true video format. This means hardly any video editors will touch it, and when a lot of people double-click the file, their computer doesn't know what to do with it...people have to know to put the file in a web-browser. (Learn how to automate this.)
• It's not good at capturing high-motion content. In other words, it does a lot better capturing your typical computer programs than a video game or, ahem--online video.

Can I resize my SWF video so it fits better in my blog or website?
You sure can. I recommend reading this post.

So what might the MP4 (technically, MPEG-4 h.264 AVC) format offered by Jing Pro mean to me?
In short,

• It's better at capturing motion.
• It's generally editable in third-party applications.
• It's usually a smaller file size.
• It's a standard video format--works on any number of sites that support video.
• It's playable outside of a web browser. In other words, people can just double-click the file and generally have a great experience. Double-clicking a SWF file is generally unsuccessful because it requires a browser to play it.

You can learn more here and see some side-by-side comparisons of the differences here.

David, one of the Web Designers here at TechSmith, shared a creative and time-saving tip with me and I wanted to share. He set up his Mac so that in one click, Jing images automatically open in Photoshop.

The problem he had was he often captures things off his screen with Jing but needs to edit or enhance the images in Photoshop.

The typical workflow is capture, save, tab to Photoshop, open, then navigate to file. It works, but it's a lot of clicks. "Surely there's a better way," thought David.

David utilized Jing's ability to automatically save to a specific destination combined with a little magic from Automator (which is built into the Mac OS). Now, he just clicks the save button, and the image is instantly sent to a designated folder. Meanwhile, Photoshop monitors the folder and opens anything that's in the folder. Neat!

David made an informal video (4:15) showing the process.

Some folks at TechSmith are putting on a tech show of sorts. You can watch it live or on our YouTube channel after the fact.

We're calling it The Forge...see TechSmith--smith, as a play on blacksmith, which uses a forge, for tech...

Well, the first episode is today at 2 pm Eastern time (GMT -5:00). We've got Jon Udell lined up to talk about Screencasting, a microphone review, and it's live so who knows what will happen?

Learn all about it on the Visual Lounge.

The upcoming release of Jing for Windows is going to include proxy support--including authenticated proxy support.

We're looking for a few people who have tried Jing in their school or workplace and have been unsuccessful due to proxy server conflicts. We've done a lot of testing, but it would be nice to try Jing in the greatest possible variety of conditions. Can you help us verify Jing works in your setup next week? We want to especially make sure it works in authenticated environments. If you're interested, please contact us.

P.S. We haven't heard of Mac people having proxy issues, but if you are, let us know!

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of people that use Jing. There are those that try it, love it and often send us requests for additional features. We listen hard to these requests.

Then there are those that try Jing, then quit using it for some reason. We wanna hear from these people too. We work hard to learn where Jing is letting them down.

One thing that clearly needed improvement was the Jing update process. Jing used to require updating as soon as a new version was detected. And it was possible this might happen right as you're trying to capture and share. You literally couldn't use Jing until you updated. Sorry about that. It's better now though. The update process is much friendlier and forgiving.

To explain it, here's Bill and his Jing Art flower:

"We've changed the update process in this release so the NEXT time Jing wants to update, there'll be a 14-day grace period before requiring the update. Jing'll also allow you to know what's in the update before you install it. Hopefully, that'll allow shares to be completed, while still getting the latest and greatest features and fixes.

And if you ever ended up in the loop where Jing says there's an update, you update and it says there's an update, you update and..., this release should stop that nonsense. We haven't yet solved the problem. We think a proxy server or browser might be caching the old version, but we aren't sure. But now Jing should only let you know about the update when it's SURE it's got it. Let us know if you see it happen again...on the NEXT release."