There are lots of tools to use for screen captures, but one of the most useful and intuitive applications to use for screen cast video capture is Jing by Techsmith. It’s available for Windows and Mac. There’s a free version and also a Jing Pro version for $14.95 per year. (Note: Jing Pro is retired; use Snagit instead.) Screen shots and videos can be easily saved and shared on your favorite social media site; that’s the beauty of Jing. Your Jing account is connected to a Screencast.com account with 2 GB storage for easily storing your videos.

Once you sign up for your account, and install Jing, you can begin recording immediately. If you want to record audio, be sure to plug in your mic first. You can also set your Preferences by clicking on the gears on the sun logo before your first recording.

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Ogg-Theora video is the open source codec supported by Firefox, Chrome, and Opera to play HTML5 video. If the world were perfect, and all browsers supported Ogg Theora this would be the HTML code to play this simple HTML5 video demo:

<video src="Videos/cat.ogv" controls></video>

If you use this format instead, you will be ready to add the code to play H.264 and Flash:

<video width="320" height="240" poster="Videos/cat.jpg" controls>
<source src="Videos/cat.ogv" type"video/ogg">

</video>

where “poster” is the image used while the video is loading, “width” and “height” refer to the video dimensions, and “controls” adds the native video controls. The Dev Opera site has information on other attributes and also how to script your own controls.

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Safari, Firefox, and Chrome now support HTML5 video; Opera support is coming soon.  Since the iPhone does not support Flash (and there are more users every day, especially with the iPad coming), it’s time to begin the transition.  I was interested in a solution that supplemented or enhanced the Flash video using JWPlayer that I have been using for several years.  Here is a demo of simple HTML5 video.

There are a number of methods for using HTML5 and Flash together:

• html5 video fallbacks with markup
• Video for Everybody! This also includes an example for editing the .htaccess file in the footer of the post.
• Video Tag Embed With Fallbacks
• Video on the Web
• Using the HTML5 <video> tag with a Flash fallback
• Fallback options for HTML5 video
• Introduction to HTML5 video

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