The idea of a screen capture tool isn't new. There are plenty available and Windows itself can grab a complete screen with a quick press of the PrtScrn key. To be different, Techsmith's Jing has to do a bit more.

Yes, it's a screen grabber, but it can also grab screen videos and upload to a Web site, where they can be directly viewed by other people, once you've given them the links. The basic Jing is free to download and use, but the Pro product offers an extra video format and other perks.

Jing has a discreet presence, once installed. A small sun-coloured spot latches onto the top of the screen - it can be moved if you'd rather it elsewhere. Click on it and three other little spots pop out like satellites, offering Capture, History and Settings. To capture a screen, you mark the area you're interested in with cross-hairs that pop up when you click Capture and select either still or video. When it has finished recording, Jing saves a PNG file for a still or a SWF for a video.

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Grabs can be saved not only to your local drive, but to an account on the TechSmith-hosted Screencast site. The program also provides a link which can be included in emails or blogs, so anybody can view your shots or videos. There's 2GB of space on Screencast free when you sign up.

Jing video capture is intended primarily to capture screen videos, like its sister product Camtasia, so audio recording is aimed at narrations, rather than system sound. According to Techsmith, results from recording system audio vary, depending on the brand of sound card and the facilities provided in the Windows mixer.

We had trouble getting system audio to record from the Realtek sound chip on our test PC, under Vista 64. Recording an iPlayer video also gave a low frame rate in the Jing recording, but recording a screen video was fine, as was recording audio through a headset mic.

The Pro version of Jing has three main advantages over the free one. It can produce MPEG-4/ H.264 videos, which are smaller and handle rich content better than SWF. It enables you to upload videos directly to YouTube and, finally, it removes the Jing header and footer branding from your videos.

The Pro version needs a higher spec machine to run, including a 3GHz P4 with 1GB memory for the Windows version and a 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB for Mac.

Jing Pro is a quick and easy tool for recording stills and videos, and offers an innovative interface, too. It's very simple to use and the facility to pop the results on Screencast makes sharing them a cinch. $14.95 a year isn't going to break the bank, so the only down side is if your hardware doesn't support system sound capture.