Capture a Video

Jing and Jing Pro can capture and share videos (up to five minutes long) from your computer screen. Narrating a quick video is a great way to show someone exactly what you mean. 

(Jing Pro is no longer available for purchase. Learn more.)

Once you select your entire desktop, window, or custom area, click the Capture Video button. If it's the first time you're making a video, Jing will ask you which audio device you'd like to use. For example, many laptops have a built-in internal microphone, but you may also have a webcam, USB microphone, etc.

 

There is a 3-second countdown before you're on! The yellow filmstrip-like vertical bands start scrolling to indicate a recording is in progress.

• Click the Pause button to gather your thoughts or bring a new window or application into the recording area.
• Click the Restart button if you made a blunder and just want to start the recording over.
• Click Stop to conclude recording.

Your video is displayed in the Jing Preview window. Check to make sure the audio sounds right and you recorded everything you meant to. Sometimes listening and analyzing yourself causes one to be overly critical. Hey, it's Jing. It's supposed to be fast. Unless the audio is really poor or you accidentally captured something confidential on your screen, why not just send it off? Now it's time to save or share the video.

Here are a few more video specifics:

• Jing records audio (you can mute it though) from the selected device. If the list of devices ever changes, Jing prompts you to select one the next time you record a video. You can also manually change the device at any time in the Preferences. If you're having trouble recording audio, please view this help topic.
• If you're sending your videos to a site that will resize or re-encode your video (like YouTube), you may want to learn more about dimensions that will work best.
• Jing (and Jing Pro) has a 5-minute time limit--it's for short, fast communication; not so much for long tutorials or presentations.
• Jing's videos are best viewed in a Web browser. If you make videos using the MPEG-4 video format in Jing Pro, they can be viewed by more applications, will likely be smaller in file-size, record high-motion content better, and may be editable in an editor of your choosing.
• You can't annotate Jing videos--just images.

Tip: Saving a video and then attaching it to an email for others can be problematic. A lot of computers don't know how to open the (SWF) videos created with the free version of Jing. Often you need to drag the video into a web browser to play it. A better solution might be to use the Screencast.com button then share the link with others. This way they can click the link to see your video and you don't clog their email with large file attachments.