TechSmith's screencast service Jing goes pro

On Tuesday, TechSmith released Jing Pro, a paid premium version of its free screen capture and casting software. The new service, which runs $14.95 a year, upgrades videos to H.264 encoding, takes off the Jing watermark in the bottom corner of recorded clips, and gives users the option to upload directly to several popular video hosting sites including Facebook, YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo.

Of the news, one of the biggest changes is the move to the MPEG-4 AVC video format. It's the go-to format for iPods and iPhones, as well as set-top boxes like the Apple TV and TiVo. Likewise, it's been adopted by YouTube, which makes a separate encode for each file for Flash players and hardware that run H.264 clips. This means that going forward your screencast may end up being able to be watched on a wider range of devices.

On the export front I'm a little surprised TechSmith is offering such a simple way to offload captured videos to third-party hosting sites. It's really nice, but will no doubt cut into potential revenue from people who might have paid the extra cash for the company's video hosting sister product, Screencast.com. This service has a higher cap on its file size (2GB up from most service's 1GB max), but limits how many people can watch your content to 2GB of streaming video.

In addition to the launch of Jing Pro, TechSmith put up a new support site called the Jing Help Center, which has a handful of how-to videos and support documents. This is available to both free and pro users.

Download Jing (via CNET's Download)

[stockseer]

Kudo's on your work Josh!

I have used JING for many months for our stock market videos; since predicting the 'panic of '07' etc.

This morning I upgraded to 'Pro' and have to tell you that there are a few issues:
a) the MPEG4 file size was more than quadruple (for the same length) of the comparable Flash video;
b) a couple of our members had trouble (or 'chop') trying to view the H264; but never have issues with the basic .swf or Flash recordings;
c) tried to play the MPEG4 recording on my iPhone 3G which you suggested would work; but it didn't. Rather I simply got the notice that you have to have a Flash plugin for it to work; and of course there is no Flash plug-in due to whatever squabbling continues between Apple and Adobe;
d) I think TechSmith has a wonderful little product here; and express appreciation for their efforts; as I really think that all that's needed is for both RIM (Blackberry) and iPhone to support Flash, without any required conversions, which are too time consuming for those of us terribly busy all day;
e) I would enjoy seeing you and CNET press these device makers to support Flash or at least .swf in it's non-royalty form, if that's what this is all about. Hard to blame the video software maker; they've done a great job; but the support from the device makers remains entirely too spotty self-oriented.

cheers!

gene inger
www.ingerletter.com

[Cliffs_Note]

I recently upgraded to Jing Pro. I did a 30 sec. video with both swf and mpeg4 versions. The mpeg4 was about 2.5 megs and the the swf was 2 megs... so only about 25% increase in size for video... I didn't think that was bad at all. What's great is we now have a tool to capture screen action and go to a video format with pretty good clarity... My previous attempts with other programs led to a blurry look. I certainly concur with item e) gene.... especially with the iPhone... they need to get flash working on these devices.
Josh good article.... on your point however regarding the hosting of the media, I would have ran the other way if I couldn't put the media on my own server via ftp... As a web designer, I want control over my files, especially if I make use of them on various websites... I wouldn't have considered Jing if it wasn't for this feature. By the way, it was a little challenging to get it working at first, but even while Jing was free, I was able to get customer support to lead me through each step... now, I capture a video on my computer and it immediately gets uploaded to my own server... very cool.

[kasimcev]

To Cliffs_Note , if you need screenshot tool which uploads your screensnaps to YOUR OWN ftp server, try Jet Screenshot. It is free and works even better than Jing. You can find it at http://www.JetScreenshot.com

[Dilly_G]

ok i am a student from palisades high school and you guys sound like you know what your doing with jing pro now i downloaded and it doesnt work i dont get sound and the picture is very bad now i want to know if i did something wrong in the downloading process i just need some help becuase my teacher and i are trying to use it for school and we want to know how to make it work.