A Free New Tool From TechSmith

First of all, I am still sick, so this is going to be a short post, but I wanted to get something posted and I wanted to get this information out there for people.

TechSmith, the company that brought us Camtasia Studio, has released a new tool that’s completely free. The tool is called “Jing”, and from the limited time I’ve had to play with it, it seems wonderful.

Jing isn’t completely new. In fact, it’s been around for about six months. However, a new release was made on Nov. 28, 2007 that, according to the changelog, includes a lot of monumental improvements. I’m not sure how long Jing will be a free product, but as long as it is, I encourage you to try it out.


Jing allows you to capture anything from your desktop. You can record video or capture image stills. You can also record audio into your video capture. Basically, as long as you don’t ever have the need to edit your video captures, Jing is all you need. It allows you to capture the video, record the audio, upload the media straight to a site like screencast.com (for which TechSmith provides a complimentary membership) and then embed the recording in your blog entries. With basically two or three simple clicks, you can record, upload and post your media.

As you can see from the video below, you can use Jing to capture video quickly and efficiently. Jing supports sound input as well, but I don’t have a microphone currently hooked up to my computer, so there is no sound for me to put with the recording.

The video below took a total of six clicks:
1) I moused over the “Jing” icon at the top of my screen and clicked on the “Capture” icon.
2) I then clicked to measure the “capture area”.
3) Then, I clicked the “video” icon to record the video.
4) Next, I clicked the “Stop” button to end the recording
5) I clicked the “Share” button to upload my capture to screencast.com.
6) Finally, I clicked the “Embed” button, which places the code needed to embed the video in your clipboard, so all you have to do is right-click and choose “paste” from your mouse menu, and voila, your video is ready to post in your blog.

One Response

  • allen

    hmm – the video doesn’t start in IE!