I’ve recently been trying out some free screen recording/capture software called Jing. You can fint it at http://www.jingproject.com. It’s made by TechSmith which is the same company that makes Camtasia (a full-featured, and full-price, screen recording software) and Snagit (A full featured screen capture software). Before I go too much further in case your confused with the terminology:

• Screen recording is when you record your sceen as a movie. Most software also allow you to record a microphone input simultaneously so people can see what you’re doing and hear what you’re saying. More advanced software (like Camtasia) allow you to do things lik edit this video after you’ve recorded it.
• Screen capture is when you take a still picture of your screen. In it’s most basic form this functionality is built into both Macs and PCs. Software allow you to do more with the picture in terms of cropping, editing and annotating (adding text and arrows and things).
• Another name for screen recording is screencast. Screencast has the added implication that not only have you recorded your screen put you have also uploaded it to the web for people to see it (like broadcast but with yoru computer screen). While I’m at it I might as well throw in vodcast or video podcast. This has a somewhat broader meaning because the content does not have to be a screen recording. Also one might expect a vodcast to be a series of web videos published using RSS or iTunes compatible feed.

So, Jing has a number of things it does that are good:

• It does Screen recording
• It does screen capture
• It allows you to upload to Screencast.com and other sites like Flickr and Yahoo (more on that later)
• You can also save your files locally
• It’s free!
• There are Mac and PC versions.
• It keeps all of your captures and recordings in a “history.”

There are some things that are not so good:

• You can only record 5 minutes of video with screen recording
• You have to pay to save your video in high quality mp4 format ($15 per year).
• You can’t use Jing to edit your video after it’s recorded (so also no features like zoom and highlighting mouse etc., have to use other apps to do that).
• The default file format for the free version, flash .swf file, is not one you can easily bring into another video editor either (if you pay the $15 you do get it in a more easily editable format—mp4 with h.264 compression)
• It uses whatever microphone the computer has set up to use so change the mic you have to go into your computer’s settings, you can’t do it from Jing. This is not obvious at first.
• It’s relatively new so there are some kinks still to be worked out. This is offset by their quick response in customer service and posts in their support forums.

With all of that said it’s a great application for being free. It seems TechSmith wanted to put out an application that make screen recording easy and accessible without eating into their market for Camtasia and SnagIt.

Screencast.com

After you’ve made a screen recording you often want to put it somewhere on the web. There are a number of sites that allow you to publish video (for free!) with YouTube being the most recognized name. Jing can be configured to work with you YouTube account (which you have to set up on YouTube first) and when you are done with the screen recording you can push a button and it will publish to YouTube.

Not to be outdone TechSmith has made their own site for publishing videos on the web. It is http://www.screencast.com. One of the nice things about screencast.com is taht it doesn’t compress your videos in the same way the YouTube does. When you are making a recording of screen with text on it that you want people to read this feature can be very important. However, there are of course limits. You are allowed 2GB of storage space and 2GB of bandwidth per month. The video is not streaming so every time someone clicks on one of your videos the entire size of your video is subtracted from your monthly bandwidth allowance. If you’re teaching a number of classes with a number of videos then it’s a lot easier than it seems at first to eat up this monthly bandwidth. If you run out of bandwidth then students won’t be able to watch videos until the month ends (they do things on the 5th of the month). So it’s a good idea to have a backup space.

There is an admin interface for screencast.com that allows you to do a number of different things. You can monitor how much storage space and bandwidth you are using and put metadata (description, keywords, author etc) on each of the videos you have uploaded. You can also create “Playlists” of the screencasts you’ve uploaded.

These playlists get their own RSS and iTunes compatible feeds. I’ve used this feature to create playlists for classes and then post the RSS feed on a blog. Also students can subscribe to the feed using iTunes so that they can download your videos. That is something I’m going to encourage students to do because then when they want to see a video more than once they can watch it locally without downloading it again and using up more bandwidth. Right now I’m dangerously close to using up all of my available bandwidth. This also highlights the fact that I need another option for deliving the screencasts.

Of course, as with Jing, TechSmith offers paid versions that allow more bandwidth and storage space. However the cost for this is much more painful than the $15 per year for the pro version of Jing. The charge at screencast.com starts at $9.95 per month (or $99.95 per year) which gives you 25 GB of storage space and 200 GB of bandwidth per month.

I should also point out that although screencast.com is tied to Jing and has the name it has, you can upload any video you want as long as it’s in the right file format.