Free Screen capture program (Mac and WIN)

Cheekygeek

Newbie here, so if this is not in the best place feel free to move it.

I've seen some people confused on how to do screen caps to show their workflow (etc.). I did a search and it seems that no one has mentioned Jing Project here yet, so I'm going to. It's a wonderful, easy to use program and can also record up to 5 minutes of video (in addition to image screen capture). Images are PNG and video is SWF.

Get it at: http://www.jingproject.com
(no affiliation, just a happy user)

gus

Being a new (ish) mac user i must ask...how is this different to pressing shift>cmd>3 ?

Maybe the video ??

Cheekygeek

And then, there's the video/screencast capability (but only 5 min.) and last time I checked, no sound.

gus wrote:

Being a new (ish) mac user i must ask...how is this different to pressing shift>cmd>3 ?

Maybe the video ??

gus

Hmm....i just tried it but its now in my rubbish bin. I can do all that & a lot more in CS3 which is pretty well permanently running on my comp. Tks anyway.

Richard

Cheekygeek wrote:

Newbie here, so if this is not in the best place feel free to move it.

I've seen some people confused on how to do screen caps to show their workflow (etc.). I did a search and it seems that no one has mentioned Jing Project here yet, so I'm going to. It's a wonderful, easy to use program and can also record up to 5 minutes of video (in addition to image screen capture). Images are PNG and video is SWF.

Get it at: http://www.jingproject.com
(no affiliation, just a happy user)

Can it do video capture of the screen? I mean directly from the screen, not with a camera. That would save me a lot of time when trying to demonstrate some PP methods.

Edit: OK, I looked at their Web site, and here's the deal: Yes, it will do direct from the screen video, but the videos are hosted on their site. This is free for now, but they appear to have commercial plans for both the product and hosting service. Personally, I don't have enough need for this to actually pay for it, so I think I'll pass.

Andy

Richard wrote:

Can it do video capture of the screen? I mean directly from the screen, not with a camera. That would save me a lot of time when trying to demonstrate some PP methods.

Edit: OK, I looked at their Web site, and here's the deal: Yes, it will do direct from the screen video, but the videos are hosted on their site. This is free for now, but they appear to have commercial plans for both the product and hosting service. Personally, I don't have enough need for this to actually pay for it, so I think I'll pass.

Yes,yes and yes.

It's a neat product and we use it internally here @ Smug all the time.

Cheekygeek

Yes, they have a (currently free) hosting option, but it also gives you an EMBED option, which gives you all the code you need to embed a file. If you have access to a web server, save a copy of the code (ONCE) and just change the paths in that code to point to YOUR server location, instead of theirs. Then just save the swfs as a local file and upload them to your server space. Use the adjusted code in your blog, or whatever.

(Not familiar enough with this forum to know if SWFs can be embedded in posts/comments).

If you want to do longer-than-5-minute video screencasts, then you are looking for a different tool. (See my Screenflow post, if you are a Mac user. It is a program that will blow you away.)

DavidTO

Interesting. I've been using Skitch. Having no need for motion and being lazy, I think I'll stick with it. But I know where to go if I need motion capture!

Andy

DavidTO wrote:

Interesting. I've been using Skitch. Having no need for motion and being lazy, I think I'll stick with it. But I know where to go if I need motion capture!

Skitch is awesomely easy and does everything I need. Sometimes you need motion, and when that's the case, Jing ftw

Cheekygeek

Andy wrote:

Yes,yes and yes.

It's a neat product and we use it internally here @ Smug all the time.

Seems a little odd to me that it has never been mentioned here then. From my little bit of nosing around here and getting familiar with the place it appears that a big part of learning is "showing your work". A basic primer on how to do just that would seem to be one of the prerequisites to getting the most out of the forum.

STATIC Screen Capture 101 (Mac and Windows)
and
MOTION Screen Capture 101 (Mac and Windows),
as it were.

It is obvious that those who provide the best answers on this forum know how, but if the goal is to move users "up the chain" and turn them from the people-asking-questions to the people-giving-answers (over time) screen capture is one of the very necessary prerequisites to being clearly understood. Just a suggestion.

DavidTO

Cheekygeek wrote:

Seems a little odd to me that it has never been mentioned here then. From my little bit of nosing around here and getting familiar with the place it appears that a big part of learning is "showing your work". A basic primer on how to do just that would seem to be one of the prerequisites to getting the most out of the forum.

STATIC Screen Capture 101 (Mac and Windows)
and
MOTION Screen Capture 101 (Mac and Windows),
as it were.

It is obvious that those who provide the best answers on this forum know how, but if the goal is to move users "up the chain" and turn them from the people-asking-questions to the people-giving-answers (over time) screen capture is one of the very necessary prerequisites to being clearly understood. Just a suggestion.

I mention Skitch all the time (since that's the one I knew about and use on a daily basis). But it's a fantastic idea that we add this to our Tutorials section.

Schmoo?