Jing Pro lets you take a screenshot or create a HD quality screen recording of what you see on your PC.
You can then share it by pasting a link to the content in your email, post it on forums, tweet it on Twitter, publish to Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube.
This review looks at the new features in the professional version and how it compares against the free product. We liked everything except for 1 thing – and it wasn’t the price.
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Price
$15 per year
Pro v Free
There are 2 versions of Jing – Free and Pro. Today, we’re looking at the new Pro version which costs $15 per year.
What can you do with Jing Pro?
Tony Dunckel at Techsmith describes the differences between the Free and professional version, “you can provide a quick “in person” intro to your videos, send “video postcards” to your kids away at school, or even show off your latest big purchase to your friends by recording with your webcam.”
He then provides some interesting tips on how to use Jing.
Easy Region Selection
Hold down the Ctrl or Shift while selecting the area to record and the selector will maintain standard aspect ratios of 4:3 or 16:9 for widescreen.
This ‘easy region selection’ lets you choose any dimension you want while locked to the set aspect ratio. Or you can snap to a standard present dimension such as 320×240 or 640×480, etc.
Share to Different Screencast.com Folders
You can setup new folders on Screencast.com and create new buttons for each different folder (Jing allows up to 8 unique buttons). This helps organize your work and maintain projects in different folders.
Output to Snagit & Camtasia Studio
Use Jing Pro to take the screenshot and then send the image/video to Snagit or Camtasia Studio where you can edit it.
Aspect Ratio
You can stop wasting time resizing images. Instead Jing screen captures can be configured to automatically fit into your blog, website. Nice time-saving tool.
New folders in Screencast.com
After you have taken the video, you can save it on Screencast.com. This is what generates the URL that you then share with your colleagues
It now lets you organize things a bit better with online folders.
MPEG-4/H.264 format
Jing Pro uses MPEG-4/H.264 format, which should improve the quality of your videos on sites YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler.
Publish to YouTube
You can now automatically send your videos to YouTube.
No more Jing logos
Jing logos are no longer displayed at the start and end of videos.
Webcam
Add an introduction or show the object you’re discussing by switching between webcam and screen recording. The webcam feature is now available in Jing Pro 2.1
Othere Key features
• Screenshots directly to Snagit where you can edit the image.
• Publish it Screencast.com where you can store, file, organize and track the videos.
• Edit Jing created screencasts in Camtasia Studio. You can also combine multiple videos into a single video, or string several together with a table of contents.
• Create different Jing folders on Screencast.com, by topic/project/client.
• Adjust the video’s size to fit your blog or website.
• Centralize conversations and comments with the new commenting feature.
• Annotate captured images with arrows, callouts, text and highlights to add emphasis
• Narrate Jing-recorded screencast videos for even greater clarity before sharing
• Generate HTML code to so you can embed it on your blog or website
• Customize the sharing buttons so those they use most are only a click away.
• Screencasts are delivered in HD-quality video for the Web
• Jing logos and links are removed from the start and end of newly-recorded videos.
• Publish directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and MSN Video, Flickr
• Jing Pro produces MPEG-4 AVC video files for Flash delivery with H.264+AAC compression.
System Requirements
Windows – XP or Vista; Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0; 3.0GHz Pentium 4 processor; 1GB RAM
Mac – Mac OS X 10.4.11, or 10.5.5+; QuickTime 7.5.5+; 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor; 2GB RAM
Jing Pro comes with a free Screencast.com account that provides 2 GB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth transfer monthly.
Limitations
There are some limitation and restrictions on Jing Pro.
Here’s a few to start with.
• It doesn’t let you edit proxy settings within the JING application. So, if you are behind a firewall or need to reconfigure on the road, it may get tricky.
• You can’t use it as a standalone app without connecting to Screencast.com.
• You need to be online as it’s web-based. Fine at work but not much good when you don’t have web access or if the web goes down.
• When it does go down, you need to re-enter your username and password again. This became such a pain for me that I stopped using it and went back to SnagIt.
• There is still a 5 minute limitation. So, if you’ve video is more than this, you’re out of luck.
The Pro version is fine if you don’t want to upgrade to Camtasia Studio but want an easy-to-use video-capturing software, for sharing videos on YouTube/Facebook.
Jing is very good at what it does and for $15 per year is not so expensive.
For light-weight users, the Free version should be fine. You can take nice screenshots, small videos and upload to Screencast.com which also offers 2 GB of storage space.
On the downside, the Free version support only SWF format while Jing Pro supports SWF ands MPEG-4 video, which is required for YouTube HD.
If you really want a powerful video-editing app, maybe look at Camtasia instead. This is the industry standard in video capturing and worth the money.
If this is all new to you, sign up for the free version and play around. If you still like it – and use it after a few months – then consider upgrading.
The bottom line – Should I buy the Pro version?
No.
Of all the limitations the 5 minute restriction is the biggest barrier. Actually, this is the main reason I have not signed up. If this was raised to 15 minutes, then yes, I’d signup. But 5 minutes is too short!
Simon makes this point on the blog:
“In the above “94 Comments” 5 min is mentioned over 50 times … I think that you should listen to the user group and as I stated before: “drop the time limit on the Pro version and you will make conversions of people from free version to Pro version, and at the end of the day some $$$”
Matt adds “great job with the Jing project. The idea for allowing users to cut down videos to 5 minutes is a good alternative. The problem you may face is losing the beauty of simplicity that Jing offers and still leaves the 5 minute constraint.”
Tony Dunckel and his team have done a terrific job on this application. Most all products from Techsmith are exceptional – Jing Pro is no different.
Don’t take my word for it.
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