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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Jing Screencasts Bandwidth Limit

I had used Jing several times recently to create screencasts. I have been pretty happy with it as a tool, but I got a message from Jing that told me that I had nearly used up my monthly bandwidth. Basically, with the free account you get 2GB of bandwidth and once that's used up you have to wait for the start of the next month. Whew, it's almost Nov. 1. Luckily, viewing of my recent screencasts (LinkedIn for Finding Expertise and Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answer) will be pretty low over time.

Still the bottom line is that Jing works great, but it definitely is not something you can use if you plan to have more than a few people viewing your movies. So, as a blogger, you probably can't use Jing to record things.

So, I'm now back to searching for a free tool that works to create screencasts that I can use for my blog. I don't do it very often, so it needs to be free. The best thing would be if I could also do it while recording voice from myself and someone else. In other words a screen sharing tool with voice and screen recording. And it needs to be low cost or free.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good point. But keep in mind, that you can export any Jing presentation as a Flash file. If you have someplace on the web, you can place that file there and then embed it into HTML or link to it. Probably a couple more steps to get everything the way you want it... but the point is, you are only crippled by this limitation if you are using Screencasts and Jings bandwidth.

Tony Karrer said...

Wow, thanks. Didn't see that you could "save as Flash" from the app. You think they would have mentioned that when I asked their support people about running into bandwidth limit. They only told me I could upgrade my account.

Thanks for the information. So, I will continue to use Jing until I have a better solution.

ZaidLearn said...

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the Jing(s) bandwidth point :(

Here are a few other free screencasting options to consider:

http://delicious.com/zaidlearn/Screencasting

Have a great day learning :)

Warm Regards,

Zaid(Learn)

Harold Jarche said...

That's what I did with my first try at Jing (uploaed to my own site as a *.swf), so no bandwidth limitations. You still have the 5 minute limitation, though.

Anonymous said...

Camstudio is always an option. You can read more about it here. Off course the benefit of Jing is it's high quality screencasting. So you could always host the swf files some where else.

Anonymous said...

Even better, I think you can give Jing your FTP details and publish to your site automatically -

http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/09/26/jing-and-ftp-a-complete-setup-guide-and-template/

Also - 2GB/month is not a lot for a high traffic blog - but is probably going to be fine for 99% of bloggers.

Anonymous said...

Screentoaster.com

ZaidLearn said...

Hi Tony,

I posted a post dedicated to your search for another free screencasting tool:

http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/10/8-free-screencasting-tools-for-tony.html

Have fun learning!

Warm Regards,

Zaid(Learn)

ZaidLearn said...

Hi Tony,

Just want to update you that we have added another 7 free screencasting tools to the list:

http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/10/8-free-screencasting-tools-for-tony.html

That means the are currently 15 free tools (there) to explore, before even considering a commercial alternative :)

Warm Regards,

Zaid

Unknown said...

well, screentoaster is amazing. If you want to more editible function, DemoCreator would be a good choice.

PokerFacePR said...

Hi Tony,

with the help of Alex McCabe I was able to get Jing to upload straight to FTP and put a link into your clipboard for unlimited sharing - no bandwidth or storage limitations.
To embed you would have to change the custom code to the code given in Alex McCabe's link (dont forget to change domain address).

All I needed however was an easy way to share my Jing vids. I made a YouTube vid to capture the entire setup process:

http://youtu.be/xxiJJsul44U


@ Alex McCabe
Thank you so much for you link! It really helped me out a lot.
Your link pointed me in the right direction.