Courses
Record course lessons that hold attention
One distance from the viewer for forty minutes is what makes a lesson hard to watch. Prequel varies it for you, on the moments that earn it.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
A lesson is longer than anything else you will record on a screen, and length is what exposes a flat recording. Forty minutes at one distance from the viewer is genuinely tiring to watch, in a way that four minutes is not.
Course platforms are full of advice about this. It usually amounts to: edit more. Add zooms, cut the pauses, vary the shot. All correct, and all of it priced in hours per finished minute.
The pass is already made
Prequel records where you click and type while it captures, and clusters those moments into zooms before the editor opens. What you get back is a lesson that already changes distance with the material — in on the thing being demonstrated, out when you are talking over it.
Every zoom is an ordinary timeline slice, so disagreeing with one is a drag rather than a rebuild. Level, speed, tilt and yaw are per zoom, with blur falling away progressively from the focus, so a slow shallow push for a walkthrough and a faster tighter one for a highlight are the same control set at different values.
A course has to look like one course
Lesson one and lesson eleven are recorded months apart, and it shows.
Because none of the look is decided while you record, it does not have to. The camera shape, its size, its corner, the background, the padding, the radius, the border and the shadow are all settings applied to a finished take. A lesson recorded today can be given exactly the treatment you gave the first one.
Files you can actually host
Export runs through your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal, at a constant frame rate. A forty-minute lesson comes out as one MP4 at a size a platform will accept, rather than the enormous MOV a plain screen recording leaves behind.
Automatic
It arrives already directed
A raw screen recording is flat — one distance from the viewer for the whole take, with the thing that matters too small to see. Prequel watches where you click and type while it records, and opens the editor with that pass already made.
- Zooms placedOn every click and every burst of typing
- Camera framedShaped, sized and set in a corner
- Background appliedPadding, radius, border and shadow
- Audio balancedMicrophone and system on separate gains
- Cursor cleaned upSmoothed, resized, hidden when it idles
The editor
Everything you would have done in post
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Zooms that follow the work
Push in on the cursor, a region or whatever you are typing into. Level, speed, tilt and yaw, with progressive blur falling away from the focus.
A camera you frame afterwards
Circle, squircle, rounded or wide, in any corner and any size. The webcam is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Backgrounds worth shipping
Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids. Padding, radius, border and shadow on top.
Cuts on a real timeline
Trim the dead air, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip and a playhead that scrubs. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
A cursor that behaves
Four pointer styles, resized to survive a zoom, and gone from the frame after a few seconds of stillness rather than parked over your work.
What you see is what exports
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file is the frame you approved — not a close approximation of it.
Quality
Exports that hold up
A video that looks produced is worth nothing if the file is soft. Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal — so 1080p60 records without dropping frames and 4K is a setting rather than a compromise.
- Resolution
- Up to 4K
- Frame rate
- Up to 120 fps
- Codecs
- H.264 · HEVC
- Encoding
- Hardware, VideoToolbox
- Compositing
- Metal
- Output
- Constant frame rate MP4
Formats
One MP4, shaped for wherever it is going
Switch a recording from landscape to vertical and the look holds — the framing is stored in proportions, not pixels, so nothing slides off the frame on the way.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Be there for the first build
Prequel is in development. Leave an address and we will send it the day it is worth installing.
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
Can I keep the framing consistent across a whole course?
The camera shape, size, corner and the background are settings on the take, so a lesson recorded in week six can be given the same treatment as one from week one. Nothing about the look is decided while you record.
Can I pause in the middle of a lesson?
Yes, from a global shortcut, so you can stop to find a file or answer the door without leaving it in the recording. Paused spans are subtracted from the timeline rather than frozen into it — the file is as long as the lesson, not as long as the session.
Is a long lesson going to be an enormous file?
Export is hardware H.264 or HEVC through your Mac's own media engine at a constant frame rate, which is a great deal more efficient than the MOV a plain screen recording leaves you with.
What resolution should I export course lessons at?
1080p is right for most course platforms and keeps the file small enough to upload comfortably. Export at 4K when the lesson is mostly code or dense interface, where the extra pixels are doing real work. Both come off the same take.
How do I stop a forty-minute lesson feeling flat?
By not holding one distance from the viewer for forty minutes. The automatic pass varies it for you — pushing in when you click or type and pulling back when you move on — and zoom level, speed and easing are set per zoom if a particular moment wants more or less.
Can I make a short promo clip from a lesson?
Yes, from the same recording. Trim to the ninety seconds worth showing, switch the frame preset to 9:16 or 1:1, and export again. The framing survives the change because it is stored in proportions rather than pixels.
What do I need to record course videos on a Mac?
An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later, and the Screen Recording permission. Your microphone and webcam are asked for the first time you record with them.