Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Creating Screen Captures

TechSmith, who produces Camtasia Studio and Snagit, also provide a free screen capture program (available for both PC and Mac) that will allow you to create short (5 minutes or less, but should a screeen capture really be longer than that?) videos. 
This product is called Jing. Today, Jing is offering an expanded set of features in Jing Pro, which costs $14.95 a year. For this price you get a better quality of movie (an MPEG-4 AVC), smaller video files, a link to upload directly to YouTube (you can still upload to other video sharing applications like Facebook), and the Jing branding is gone from the final product. 
I've attached a sample video I created using the free Jing. This file was uploaded to Screencast.com, which has some free space for Jing users and clicking on the link will take you to Screencast where you can view it.  The movie gives instructions on adding photos to Office 2007's PowerPoint.


1 comment:

given said...

May i suggest another screencasting tool ?

ScreenToaster - www.screentoaster.com

ScreenToaster is a free web-based screen recorder designed to capture screen activity in real-time then embed videos in blogs and websites. It works in all browsers and doesn't require any download.

- Live audio capture
- Embed webcam in screen capture
- Subtitles
- Accelerated or slow-motion playback / Pauses
- Upload to Youtube
- Download your screencast in .avi

What bloggers say about ScreenToaster:
Techcrunch, Michael Arrington : "The ease of use is just awesome. It takes literally seconds to create and publish a screencast."
Digital Inspiration, Amit Agarwal: "ScreenToaster Does a YouTube for Screen Videos."
Go2Web20, Orli Yakuel: "So right now, ScreenToaster is the best choice that you'll find, and the results are very good. Seriously, I couldn't find any reason not to use it. Overall, you'll save yourself time & money."
ReadWriteWeb, Frédéric Lardinois: "ScreenToaster is definitely a contender for being one of the best and easiest to use tools available."
Mashable, Jennifer Van Grove: "We think ScreenToaster is an excellent solution that brings advanced screencasting options to all levels of computer users. ... It’s a safe option to recommend to clients, friends, and family members."
Master New Media, Robin Good: "And again, more than anything else ScreenToaster is by far the simplest and most immediate screncasting tool to use out there. If you want to know what I think, here it is: ScreenToaster is going to toast them all. Seriously."