MMP - Jing

Jing Screen Capture 

There are a number of screen capture utilities out there and I'll talk about some of them as extensions to Chrome in an upcoming Monday Mouse Potato post. But, today I wanted to let you in on my favourite screen capture program Jing. The reason I like Jing is that it's really easy to use; the icon sits discreetly at the top or side of you screen; offers some nice features to add to the capture; and I can avoid going to the Start menu to try to find the Windows Snipping Tool - bonus!

So let's get down to what Jing can do. Once you've downloaded the program a sun will appear on the screen. Hover the mouse pointer over the sun and 3 rays pop out from the icon.

To capture something on the screen, click on the circle with the + sign. A cross-hair appears. Press the left mouse button down to draw a rectangle over the area you want to capture. Let go of the mouse button and the capture will pop-up with 4 choices:

1. Capture Image (Icon with a square within a square)
2. Capture Video (Video strip icon)
3. Redo Selection (Arrow icon)
4. Cancel (X icon)

 Choose capture image, and then add arrows, text, captions and highlights if needed. Once you're happy with the capture, save it to your computer as a PNG file (Portable Network Graphics) to use in reports, emails and presentations.

You can also capture action, up to 5 minutes long and save it as a video file (files can be large) with voice over if needed. Videos captured in Jing are saved as SWF files or flash videos. F.Y.I. you'll need Flash Player on the machine in order to play the videos.