I got a Mac Book last week.  My windows computer died after some auto-update and I took the opportunity to try something new.  I’m very happy with the change!

This past week I’ve been trying to find Mac counterparts to Windows software I’ve come to rely on.  One of these is Camtasia from TechSmith.  It is a screen capturing (recording) software I use to make training videos for my Content Spooling Network product.  Camtasia isn’t available for Mac.

After some searching, I found that TechSmith has a new “project” called Jing.  Was I ever impressed!  Yes, it is available for Mac, but that is just the tip of the iceberg for how cool this sofware is.  (And it is also FREE for the time being!)

What I like

With Camtasia, I had to do my recording, then open up a new production with this recording, then convert the recording to make it web friendly, then upload.

With Jing, I just create the recording, then hit the “Share” button.  The recording automatically uploads to Screencast.com in a web friendly format.  If I don’t want to make it public, I can just save the file and upload it to my own server  — after finding it in one of the application folders.

What I don’t like

I don’t like that there is a 5 minute recording limit.  Also, a few times my recording just stopped and the Jing application closed for no apparent reason.  One final issue is that there’s a handy menu either at the top right or bottom left of the recording window that lets you pause or stop the recording.  I found this menu bar getting in the way of things I was trying to do on the screen (like move to a different tab in my browser).