The Problems with “Free” Jing
October 12th, 2007 by Greg R Notess
So I tried the free Jing Project software from Techsmith and posted an example a few weeks ago. Jing is free to download, available for Mac and Windows computers, and (if you register to share your Jing screencasts) comes with a free account on Screencast.com. I was impressed to see that the free account did not expire in 60 days (as it would if you just went to Screencast.com and registered for a free account) but did not expire until 2015). The free account comes with 200MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth, which seemed generous enough.
Alas, it is not so. Despite a recent change intended to help reduce bandwidth consumption, I am now over. After 339 views of my 3MB screencast (for 2 minutes and 39 seconds, which seems about right for that length of a screencast), I hit the 1GB limit. So what happens when you hit that limit? I received several email messages ahead of time warning of the approaching cap with offers to upgrade my bandwidth, for a fee ($21.95 for 100GB, which would be more than enough but too pricey for my needs). If you choose not to pay, the screencast is just no longer available until the next month’s cycle starts. See the big blank spot in the post (assuming you look before Oct. 29) for how it displays when it has been embedded.
I do not blame Techsmith for needing to fund the service, but this should be a caution for anyone hoping to use Jing as a completely free screencast option. If your screencast is large and/or even moderately well viewed, you are likely to need pay the price for the appropriate level of hosting. Do remember that Jing is in beta and Techsmith may well change the terms or provide other alternatives. At this point, if you want to use Jing, another option is to plan on hosting the screencast on your own Web site.
Unfortunately, the ease of using Jing to produce and share a screencast gets lost if you want to try this approach. It is still easy to record and save, but Jing just saves a single .swf Flash file. While you can just upload the .swf and point to it with a link, it gets more difficult to embed it on a page with a site’s navigation features, branding, commentary, and other content. My solution, which may not work in all browsers, was to build a page and then use the following code to embed the .swf:
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="627" height="391"> <param name="movie" value="FILENAME.swf"> <param name="quality" value="high"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"> <embed src="FILENAME.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
width="627" height="391" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>
Note that the width and height elements need to be set in two places, and you need to know what those dimensions are. You can see this backup version hosted on this site, but producing a page like this took much more time than using Camtasia Studio, Captive, Wink, or other screencasting software that produces both an .swf and the HTML page container.
Greg – appreciate the candid feedback. You summed it up pretty well. If users find they are using Jing to the degree it exceeds the monthly limits, offering up increases in account storage and bandwidth for a fee are necessary to offer this free to everyone.
We know that Screencast.com is the ideal hosting solution for Jing because it’s designed specifically for high-fidelity screen content and won’t distort your media when being viewed. That being said, we also have learned that sharing has a broader definition. We have started work on extending our sharing options outside of just Screencast.com. With those additional sharing options, you’ll be able to get the URL or embed code returned as well – making everything you described above dead simple to do with Jing.
Again, thanks for the open feedback.
Tony Dunckel
Product Manager, The Jing Project
At least you could get it up and running. Jing crashed on me every time before I could even get it booted up.
No chance for a review.
Jing won’t boot up on my WinXP either. I think it has something to do with the .Net Framework installed on my machine and Jing. I contacted Techsmith tech support and they blamed it on my video card driver that was outdated.
Best,
Lawk Salih
Just discovered Jing today and I’m unbelievably impressed. In fact, suspiciously so – I started to wonder “what’s the catch?”. But really, for a free service the limits are very satisfactory. I’ve tried another free screencasting program that was pretty dreadful, so Jing is simply a delightful surprise.
I really like this program apart from ONE fact.
If I try to take a video capture which includes the start button at the bottom of my screen then the damn buttons for video control ( start, stop etc) always get in the way, meaning I can’t click on it. I could of course use the start button on my keyboard but my clients would have no idea what I just did..
I thought I was missing something but have searched the support pages (which were unfortunately lacking in any indepth support) and found nothing to remedy this.
Shame because I think the rest of the program is absolutely gorgeous in its simplicity.
I use it almost daily – until of course I needed it to work while having powerpoint, word, photoshop and illustrator open at the same time. It goes through the motions of capturing an image – but will no longer paste to PS.
So I save to a file, then open it in photoshop – pretty much eliminating its usefulness.
I wonder if this is a memory issue? Seriously
I’am unable to use Jing anymore as Jings tool bar has changed for my use. The capture still works but no where to be found is the save and share buttons. No fix in sight here, help please !!!!!!!!!!1