Jing

CNET Editors' review

What began as a freeware project to easily share basic screen captures and screen recordings has grown into a solid application and capture distribution system with a premium component. Jing's attractive application takes a sound, simple approach to capturing; begin by dragging the crosshairs to define your capture field and then take a still or start a recording. When you're done, save it to your computer or upload it to Screencast.com (operated by Jing's publisher), an FTP site, Flickr, or YouTube (for a premium). If you've got Snagit or Camtasia Studio, TechSmith's premium programs for capturing and editing stills and videos, respectively, you can click a button on the post-capture toolbar to send the capture along for deeper editing than Jing's basics can supply.

Apart from sharing ease, Jing has some other clever features that don't diminish its conscious simplicity. The yellow "sun" icon that can be moved around the edges of your screen is what you hover over to get started, though in the brief preferences menu you can hide the sun and call up the crosshairs with a hot key. Two other hot keys now help Jing's capture crosshairs snap to common aspect ratios. Press Ctrl to maintain a 4:3 aspect ratio and Shift for 16:9 wide-screen proportions. While locked into a ratio, dragging out the crosshair shows you boundaries for common screen measurements within that ratio that you can easily snap to, like 320x240 or 640x480. This is a nice addition in keeping with Jing's visual, low-text-density design.

In the latest release, subscribers to the $15-a-year Jing Pro gain the ability to record from their Webcam. You can toggle between Webcam and screen recording during a screen capture.

Less convenient is the requirement of the Microsoft .NET Framework, which can take several minutes to install if it's absent. Once that's out of the way, though, you've got on your hands a well-featured screen capture app that's visual enough for nontechies to use and has enough features for sharehounds to easily distribute recordings and images that require limited post-capture modifications.

Jing 2.1 (Windows):

Publisher's Description

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All User Reviews
  • All versions:

    2.9 stars

    out of 79 votes

    • 5 star: 20
    • 4 star: 12
    • 3 star: 12
    • 2 star: 13
    • 1 star: 22
  • Current version:

    3.3 stars

    out of 12 votes

    • 5 star: 2
    • 4 star: 5
    • 3 star: 1
    • 2 star: 3
    • 1 star: 1
  • My rating:

    0 stars

    Write review

Results 1-10 of 12

  • 2.0 stars

    "captured screen but could not get sound to work."

    November 16, 2009  |   By becrick

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    easy to record video without sound

    Cons

    only records for five minutes

    Summary

    used it to record a webinar,but it was useless without sound.Five minutes or recording time is too short.

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  • 2.0 stars

    "Required Registration ?"

    November 11, 2009  |   By Jobe1977

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    Didn't find any since it required registration

    Cons

    Requested registration, not good..

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  • 1.0 stars

    "Was not what I was looking for."

    November 2, 2009  |   By joelot15

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    I do not know as I did not use it.

    Cons

    None that I know of.

    Summary

    Ok I guess.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Nice Little Application"

    October 4, 2009  |   By kirkules

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    Easy to load and use. It is free.

    Cons

    Only 5 minutes per recording.

    Summary

    When it is free and it works it is hard to complain.

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  • 3.0 stars

    "Great resolution, but NO sound in the free version"

    July 8, 2009  |   By Sentient Paradox

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    I'e tested quite a few free video screen capture tools, and this one so far is hands down the best quality video resolution I've seen.

    Cons

    Jing said "Microphone is on" when I started recording. My mic is properly hooked up. I have a professional recording project studio, so I know what I'm doing. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with my set up. The SWF files saved contain no sound.

    Summary

    I do have a trouble ticket filed with their help site, and am awaiting word. I use Pro Tools, Cakewalk, Audacity, and several other recording softwares and DAWs. I have no idea why Jing isn't capturing sound even though it says it is.

    Hopefully they can help find the answers, and I can come back and increase the rating here, but there is obviously some kind of conflict going on here.

    Every Google search I've done about this problem has turned up with posts saying if the software says the mic is on, and there is no sound in the video, something is wrong with my system.

    In this particular instance, that is simply NOT the case. There is NOTHING wrong with my system or my configuration. Jing is the ONLY software that is not capturing my mic.

    Updated on Jul 8, 2009

    Well, I think it's rather ridiculous that we can't change the star rating when updating a review, because this one deserves to be changed to a five.

    I've discovered that the problem lay not in the software, but in a routing setting in one or more softwares on my computer. It took quite a while to get it working, and I'm not entirely sure yet which setting change made the difference. It is odd that Jing, for whatever reason can't pick up the firewire signal coming from my Projectmix I/O when every other program I have recieves it with the same settings, but nevertheless, I DID get Jing to finally capture the signal in the final files.

    Sound quality isn't great (I have a Shure SM-57, studio quality mic), and it should come across far better than it does, but this IS a free software, so it does deserve five stars as far as I'm concerned.

    Updated on Jul 9, 2009

    Still think this deserves a five as a free software, however I wanted to use for online tutorial delivery, and the sound quality simply didn't cut it. Support says it's because it's set up for online, but I have many far more high quality files on my sites that deliver just fine. No need for the quality to be that poor. I ended up buying a far better one that allowed for 44.1 khz delivery, which is the recording industry standard. The videos deliver perfectly well over the web. My advice:

    If your just going to create stuff for your friends, Jing is fine. If you want to create anything remotely professional, don't bother with ANY free software (not yet anyway, check the date of this review, you never know what will be out there in a few months or years!). I went with iShowU HD for only thirty bucks, and it's well worth it.

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  • 2.0 stars

    "Where's the sound?"

    June 28, 2009  |   By DolceSirena

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    East install, loved the "sun" gui, intuitive and relative easy to use

    Cons

    I couldn't get the sound to record.

    Summary

    I uninstalled the program.

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Good modern job done here"

    June 21, 2009  |   By poulstaun

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    Its easy to work with-has functions I have not tried out Yet
    Its free..

    Cons

    Just wonder why my normal AVI player cant play the files it make.
    For me no sweat though DivX can-- but still strange

    Summary

    I think the Graphic is super in this program- nice when all things do not look the same

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Simple. Even my seven-year old granddaughter use it."

    June 17, 2009  |   By jingcatapusan

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    Quick and simple to use

    Cons

    No cons that I can think.

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  • 4.0 stars

    "been using sidebar feature, but this one is better"

    June 17, 2009  |   By djdude1327

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    Much easier to use than the Sidebar capture feature, and has more options.

    Cons

    Haven't found any yet.

    Summary

    Easy and fun to use.

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Excellent - very quick and precise. Love this program."

    June 17, 2009  |   By CWS_dgooch

    Version: Jing 2.1

    Pros

    very quick

    Cons

    do not have any cons at this time.

    Reply to this review

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Results 1-10 of 12

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