Record and share what happens onscreen with Jing

Recording screencasts is a good way of demonstrating both problems and their solutions. Jing is easy to use and can upload videos to the internet.

Installation is simple, although an account with Jing is required to use it. The basic account costs nothing to set up. This only requires an email address and a password, and the account creation is part of the installation process.

Once installed and running, Jing appears as a small yellow semi-circle at the top of the screen. Moving the mouse over it reveals three options: Start recording, view past recordings and options.

Clicking on the recording option allows you to select the area to be recorded. It will detect program windows automatically or you can click and drag to select a specific area. This interface can also be used to take an image of the screen.

Audio is captured from the microphone input on the computer by default but it can be set to other audio devices if available.

A hotkey can be set for starting recording more quickly than going through the Jing menu.

If you have the more expensive Camtasia Studio installed, Jing can send its files to it after recording has finished. There are no other editing options though, which is a slight shame.

Jing Pro costs US$15 a year and has a worthwhile selection of extras. These include a single click upload to Facebook and Youtube, MPEG4 recording instead of SWF, no Jing logos and the option to include the view from a webcam in your video. That seems like a good deal for the extras, though you may still need to buy an editor to get the best from videos.

The Windows versions require the .NET Framework (this should be installed through Windows Update) and a 3GHz Pentium 5 processor, and 1GB of RAM is recommended. You should also have Adobe Flash Player installed.

Jing is also available for the Mac. Click here to download this version. It required Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later, QuickTime 7.5.5 or later, 2GB of RAM and a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or later.