The Basics

To work with JayCut, you first register an account at the site (don’t worry, it’s free). Unfortunately, JayCut will send you a copy of your username and password over plaintext email after the signup, so it’s probably wise to avoid using a login similar to ones you normally use. When that’s done, you’re ready to create your own video magic.

As you can see, there are tabs near the top to access different categories of media you might wish to include in your project. This can include audio-only tracks and still images. Video transition affects are included here as well, and will be covered in more detail later in this guide.

Adding Audio and Video Clips

Chances are, you’ll want to start adding video clips to work with. This can be done either by uploading a pre-existing file from your computer or by recording directly into JayCut. Both audio (via microphone) and video (via webcam) tracks can be recorded directly into JayCut through Flash. To being any of these tasks, you start by clicking the Add Media button in the upper right corner.

From here you can choose the source (existing file or new recording). If you choose a local file, it will be uploaded to JayCut and will show up in the Video tab.

If you choose to record from webcam or microphone, you’ll be given a screen like the following to choose the appropriate devices.

Followed by a test screen where you can verify that everything is working as intended.

Arranging Clips

Once you’ve finished recording and clicked Save, your clip should show up in the Video tab. If you don’t see it after a few seconds, try going to another tab and back again. When you see your clip, drag the thumbnail down to the sequencer at the bottom. Sometimes you have to drag verrrrrryyyyyy slowly and carefully, as not all browsers can handle JayCut with ease.

Continue with any other clips you want to add to your video.

Transitions

Once you’ve got your clips, arrange them so that you have the desired amount of overlap for a transition, as shown in the screenshot below. Then go to the Transitions tab and drag the desired effect into the row between the clips. It should snap for you to the correct location.

If you just click the thumbnail without dragging, the preview window on the right will give an A>B example of the transition effect.

Text Annotations

You can, of course, add a bit of text to your videos with a choice of font. In fact, if you use JayCut, you might end up the one person on all you YouTube not using white script on a blue background. The process is much like that for transitions. You open the Text tab and drag the desired style into the sequencer. Once it’s placed (and you can stretch the edges to determine time) you’ll see the text edit screen where you can enter your annotations along with font and size choices.

Saving/Publishing Your Video

While the free version of JayCut does not allow saving of the master version for later editing, you can publish your video to the web or save to your hard drive through the Publish/Download button in the lower right of the page. This will allow you to save or media to the location of your choice.

Update: The developers of JayCut has clarified that the “Save” button wasn’t disabled. It is just that it is always autosaving and LOOKED disabled.

Problems

JayCut isn’t perfect. As it requires some pretty intense browser power, it tends to run somewhat slow, at least on non-GPU accelerated browsers. Stability can occasionally be a factor as well, particularly on systems that already have some trouble with Flash. The worst issue, in my opinion, was not with the software itself but with the way the site handles new signups. I would think that in this day and age, they would know better than to send your username and password unrequested over plaintext email.

Conclusion

Those few problems aside, JayCut is an extremely impressive site. Prior to seeing it for myself, I’m not sure I could have believed you could put this much functionality into an easy-to-use web app. JayCut is part of the new breed of web applications that are beginning to challenge the belief (held by myself and others) that web apps will never quite match the speed, power and comfort of local applications. Will it be the editing platform of the next summer blockbuster? Probably not – but it will play a part in my next home video.

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Luckily there are several useful tools that allow you to edit your context menu.

1. CMenuEdit

CMenuEdit is a lightweight application (only 69kb in size) that allows you to customize the context menu of Windows Explorer.

The application comes in a zipped file. Once you have extracted the zip file, you will need to run the “install.bat” as administrator and it will install the necessary dll files to your system.

To use CMenuEdit, you just have to right click your mouse and choose “Properties”. You will see a Context Menu tab.

To add a new context entry, first click on the first icon to create a submenu, follow by the second icon to create a command. In the command field, you can specify the action such as open another program, select a file/folder, minimized or maxmized state etc.

Things that you can customize including the name of the submenu and command, add separators, brief description of the command/submenu, attach an icon and select, for a command, an external program, argumenus, working directory and window state.

Download CMenuEdit here

2. ShellMenuView

ShellMenuView is different in that it does not allows you to add entry to your context menu. Instead it scans through your existing list of items in the context menu and display them in a window, you can then choose to enable/disable the entry in the context menu. This is useful for cleaning up your context menu.

The ShellMenuView application does not require any installation and it is fully portable. Simply unzip the file and run the .exe file.

To enable/disable the entry in the context menu, simply scroll down the list to find the entry, right click on it and select “disable/enable selected item”

Download ShellMenuView here

3. FileMenu Tools

If you browse the FileMenu website, you will find very little documentation, but it is surprisingly a very useful (and user-friendly) tool for editing the context menu.

Once you have installed FileMenu Tools, you will have a new entry “FileMenu Tools in your context menu. In it comes with a series of useful commands.

To edit the items, you have to open up the FileMenu Tools application. Here is where you can enable/disable the list of commands in the FileMenu Tools context entry. Just place a check (or remove the check) to enable the command.

In addition, you can also add your new submenu and command. Similarly, you can specify actions such as open a program, copy to folders, delete specific files etc.

Download FileMenu Tools here

4. Fast explorer

Of all the context menu editors mentioned above, Fast Explorer is the best. It comes with a Windows Explorer interface that makes it easy for anyone to edit their context menu. In addition, it also comes with a registry bug that help you to clean up your context menu registry.

At the main screen, you can choose to add a static item or a submenu item. Static items are entries that appear when you right click on the mouse.

The center pane is for you to add new item while the right pane allows you to configure the item.

In addition, Fast Explorer is also able to detect and clean up orphaned context menu items or remove context menu items added by other applications or context menu extensions. This feature is very useful since it enables its users to clean up the context menu registry, without having to manually dig into the registry.

Fast Explorer homepage

Download Fast Explorer Installer | Fast Explorer Portable (the download link at the Home page is not available, so we have hosted the files at our server)

This should round up the list of context menu editor app. I am sure everyone has a different way of utilizing the app. Tell us about it in the comments.

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So we need pictures. Where can we get them? We can:

- go around the neighborhood with our digital camera.

- snatch a picture or two from image sharing community sites like Flickr or Picasa Web Album.
- capture the picture from our computer screen.

Geeky bloggers like me prefer the last. The method fits my blog theme and I don’t have to stand too long under the sun nor face legal threats for ‘stealing’ copyrighted images.

Shoot the screen

Almost everybody I know agrees and recommends Gadwin Print Screen as one of the best tools out there, and I am sure that this simple tool will be very useful you.

It is a small application that resides on the taskbar after it is installed in your Windows.

The first thing you would want to do is adjust the settings. Right click on the icon and choose “Properties”.

Here users can choose:

• the hot key to use – default is “Print Screen” key.
• what area to be captured – current window, client window, full screen, or rectangular area
• where to save the image file
• what application to open the file
• what is the default image file type and – if wanted – the default size
• and so many other options

Manage the Image

If you choose an application to open the captured screen image, you can do further editing to the file. A free alternative application you can use for this purpose is Fast Stone Image Viewer.

This one is a very reliable image editing application for daily use – rotate, resize, crop, adjust color, and such (but please do not compare it to Photoshop); more than enough for common blogging activity. All the images in a folder will be shown in one pane, ready to be manipulated. Use the Edit menu to access many of the commands.

It also has screen capturing feature, but less comfortable compare to Gadwin. Fast Stone doesn’t reside in the taskbar – so you’ll need to open the main window first, and there’s no shortcut key to do the capturing.

One little neat trick

Here’s something that anybody could try to make their screenshot unordinary and catchy.

• After taking the screenshot, open the image with Fast Stone
• Go to “Edit –> Rotate –> Rotate by any degree” menu
• Move the rotation slider slightly to the left to rotate the image counter clockwise (or the opposite to rotate it clockwise). I think about 15 degrees is enough. Click OK afterwards.
• Go to “Edit -> Cropboard” menu and crop the image to your preference. But I’d suggest somewhere in the middle.
• Click “Crop To File” and “Save” then “Close”.

And you’ll have something like this:

Not very professional, but… neat, huh?

If you have other favorite screen capturing application, share in the comment below.

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