Tonight I tried out a new software called Jing which can be used for screencasting (up to 5 minutes worth) and screen captures. Typically I use the "Print Screen" button on my keyboard and then pop open Photoshop for cropping. Then I've got to save for web and ultimately upload to Blogger (or somewhere else). Jing is making the screen capturing a snap! I can crop and annotate right from my desktop. Too cool! And it's free!

I did the screencast below as a test. Unfortunately YouTube just did not know how to handle it so I had to upload it to Jing's partner site Screencast.com. I also uploaded the photos there (for this blog at least). So below you're seeing the embedded item coming from ScreenCast. (All well and good but I'm limited to 2GB of storage and 2GB of transfer per month. I'd much prefer to have it up at my webhost where those bits are "unlimited" BUT I'm lazy and don't want to write my own embed codes when this site will do it for me.)

Anyhoo - I used the software to review Coraline.com which is a great movie site (I think). (Special shout out to Adrea who got me to visit the Coraline site!)

(Coraline.com's intro begins with a nice "in concept" explanation as to why the site takes a long time to load.)

And here's my screencast about the software and the movie site (note that the site does not display in real time in the screencast.... the actual site flows fluidly employing the parallax effect).

(The only big issue with this embed is that I have to manually resize it to fit in this blog space. When you start playing it there is a small rectangle in the bottom right - click that to view this full screen.)

So I totally love that site! It reminds me of the EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for A BUG'S LIFE. (Which I gave a presentation on when I was in a class called "The Business of Independent Production" back at Emerson College. I also spoke on the movie sites for PRACTICAL MAGIC, a re-release of THE LITTLE MERMAID and the Vince Vaughn PSYCHO - so that gives you an idea of how long ago I started paying attention to this stuff. I remember that back then the BUG'S LIFE website was THE END ALL BE ALL of websites. We were all talking about that site back in the day. Sigh... memories.

So Coraline's treatment is wonderful and I'm hoping that 9 The Movie will get equivalent treatment (because that story just looks more interesting to me). Right now the site is just a placeholder frame holding a trailer.



Sites mentioned in this post:

-Coraline.com
-JingProject.com
-Wakoopa.com
-9TheMovie.com

Labels: 9, coraline, jing, screen capture, screencast, wakoopa