Hi,
I thoguht I'd make a wee instructional screen capture video for my class and put it on youtube for them to access. I downloaded the jing free version, whcih is a nice screen capture package. BUT .. it only produces .swf files, and youtube can't read these. I've been surfing around looking for a freeware video converter, to no avail. I installed one called 'prism', but it doesn't work with .swf either! Any suggestions?
ta
REbecca

Tags: convert, file, format, swf, video, youtube

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I haven't been able to find a way to convert Jing files either. That's why I stopped using it. You can share the file you've created through screencast.com. However, you have to pay. As I recall, they have a trial period that's free so you may want to check it out.

I use a program called TipCam. It's almost as easy as Jing. You can get it at utipu.com

I made a short tutorial of how to use it if you're interested.
You are the Man! I'll go check out your tutorial and the site now.
Ta
Rebecca:

I work for TechSmith and wanted to answer some of your questions. First of all, you're right, converting those SWFs is not easy. When Jing was first released, it could only produce SWFs. It's a simple way to make a screencast, but doesn't work well with YouTube. The Pro version took almost a year to develop; encoding while recording is not easy to do.

The reason you're going to have a hard time converting the SWF into a video, is that the SWFs Jing creates aren't just a SWF animation, it's also has an embedded player. This makes it almost impossible for generic SWF to AVI converters to work on the SWF. Usually all you get is the audio with a scrabbled image of the player. I haven't yet found a converter that is able to do it.

Anyway, Steve is right, Screencast.com has a free account that gives you 2 gig of space. If you find you need more, you can pay for it. Also, be careful with anything that records to FLV, since YouTube doesn't use that format anymore. FLV is fine for posting to a private site, but YouTube will usually compress the tar out of it and make it look a little weird.

If you have any other questions, let me know.

- Chris McQueen
Thank you - good to have it explained - a kid in my class told me I'm a 'noob' yesterday - newbie, I assume!
Ta
TipCam works pretty well and the price is right!
One more bit about TipCam. As Chris points out the files don't work so well with YouTube. I'd forgotten about that. I usually upload my files to blip.tv. The flv files created by TipCam go directly up on Blip with no transcoding needed. So, what you see when you create the file is exactly what you'll see when you stream the file from the net.

That said, I do have to say Jing is pretty cool for what it does. I haven't checked out the Pro version yet.
Greetings from New Zealand,
Thank you all for your replies - very helpful. I do like jing, and will definitely keep using it, and will probably train my class to follow my links to screencast.com, and also try one of the alternatives mentioned for when I really want to use youtube. Computers and web2 are amazing, arent they?
ta, manytimes over.
I successfully used Screencast-O-Matic.com to record screencasts. You can download the screencast as .mov file and then upload it to YouTube.
There is another screen recording tool called DemoCreator. You can publish the video as AVI and SWF with it. Besides, it is with powerful editing features. It is really helpful for me to make great software tutorials.
If you have access to server space (like a personal or school website), you can upload the .swf file and then send the link out (so your link might look something like www.[example].org/magazine_wiki_intro.swf). This is the solution I use with Jing files (and Jing is such a handy program!).

If you want to get fancy (and are familiar with a bit of html code), you can insert a Jing flash file into a webpage (example: Portfolio Object). This idea might come in handy if you wanted to create a collection of screencasts for a class to use.
You could use Camstudio to screen capture, which is free to download and will give you an avi file
Try using ScreenToaster instead. I'ts a free online tool that does not need to be downloaded. You can download videos you make as .mov files. I personally love the non-free version of Jing -- Snagit. It's under $50 and will make your screencasts in a format that you can upload with no problems. Their support is fabulous and you can use free and completely functional for 30 days. Good luck.

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