YouTube
Screen recordings ready for YouTube
Record, look at a take that already has the pushes and the framing, trim what you fumbled, and export at 4K.
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Screen-recorded YouTube content lives or dies on retention, and retention on a tutorial is mostly a function of whether the viewer can see what you are doing. A 1440p recording of a 15-inch display, watched on a phone, is not a video — it is a wide shot of some text.
Record at native resolution, push in afterwards
Capture runs at your display's own resolution, so there is headroom to zoom into. A Retina Mac recording a 3024 by 1898 screen and exporting at 1080p has roughly three times the pixels it needs, which means a 2x push lands on real detail rather than an upscale of it.
Prequel places those pushes for you. It notes where you click and type during the take, and the editor opens with the zooms already clustered onto those moments. What arrives is closer to an edit than to footage.
The parts you would otherwise do in post
The webcam is captured as its own track and never burned into the screen recording, so its shape, size, corner and whether it is mirrored are all still open when you stop. It can also come and go mid-video, because layout is allowed to change across the take.
Backgrounds, padding, corner radius, border and shadow are settings rather than a compositing job. The cursor gets four styles, a size that survives a zoom, and an exit from frame when it has been still for a few seconds.
The pauses come out on a real timeline, with a waveform under every clip.
Export
One MP4, H.264 or HEVC, up to 4K and up to 120 frames per second, at a constant frame rate — which matters, because variable frame rate is what makes an upload's audio drift out of sync.
There is no watermark, no export limit and no upload step. Recording, editing and rendering all happen on your Mac.
- Record your screen and cameraPick a display, a window or an area you drag out, with your camera, microphone and system audio each on their own track.
- Zooms and layout are applied automaticallyPrequel reads where you clicked and typed, then places the zooms, frames your camera and sets a background behind it.
- Edit, export and shareMove a zoom, trim a clip or fix a caption, then export one MP4 at up to 4K or send a link that plays anywhere.
Zoom and pan
Zooms that follow the action
Prequel automatically zooms in when you click or type, then softens the rest of the window so viewers know where to look. Every zoom is added to the timeline, so you can move, retime or delete it at any time.
Layouts
Switch layouts clip by clip
Choose from fourteen layouts for the same take: camera in the corner, beside the screen, split with it or hidden entirely. Use one layout for the whole video, or change it clip by clip.
Subtitles
Subtitles you can edit like text
Prequel transcribes every word on your Mac when the editor opens. Fix captions by typing in the transcript, choose a subtitle style or delete a sentence to remove it from the video.
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thanks so much for jumping on this call
Iwanttoshowyousomethingcool
[pause here]
we’ve been building for the past few months
Teleprompter
A teleprompter that follows your voice
Prequel hangs your script from the notch, just under the camera, and follows your voice — the word you're saying lights up as you say it. Wander off script and it waits for you; skip ahead or fall behind and it catches up within a couple of words.
Instant edit
Start with the edit already done
Prequel records where you click and type, then opens the editor with zooms already placed, a framed camera and a polished background. Spend less time building the first cut and more time fine-tuning.
- 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 by hand
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Guide attention automatically
Prequel zooms into the part of the screen that matters: the cursor, a region you draw, or whatever you are typing into. Set the level, the speed and how much the rest of the frame blurs.
Look present without taking over the video
Your camera stays framed and out of the way: circle, squircle, rounded, wide or portrait, in any corner and any size. It is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Make recordings look designed
Add a background, padding and a shadow without editing any of it by hand. Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids.
Cut the parts nobody needs to see
Trim the pauses yourself, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
Keep the pointer out of the way
Fifteen pointer styles, resized so the cursor survives a zoom. Smoothed while it travels, and hidden after a few seconds of stillness.
Export the frame you approved
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file matches what you signed off in the editor.
Quality
Videos stay sharp at 4K
Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine. 1080p at 60 fps records without dropping frames, and 4K is a setting you pick.
- 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
Export in any frame
Turn one recording into different formats without manually reframing every element. Switch from landscape to vertical and the layout stays intact.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Record demos worth sharing
Free for 7 days. No watermark on anything you export.
No credit card required
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
Is there a watermark?
No. The export is your video.
Can I record at 4K60 without dropping frames?
Capture and export both 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. Up to 120fps, at a constant frame rate.
What size should I export a YouTube tutorial at?
1920 by 1080 for most tutorials and 4K when the video is mostly code or dense interface. Both are frame presets, and there is a YouTube preset that is 16:9 at 1080p if you would rather not think about it.
Do I need to upload anything to edit it?
No. Recording, editing and export all happen on your Mac. There is no upload step and no cloud render, so a forty-minute take does not begin with a forty-minute wait.
Can I record my face and my screen at the same time?
Yes, in one pass and as separate tracks. That is what lets you decide afterwards whether the camera is in the video at all, what shape it is, which corner it sits in and whether it appears for the whole runtime or only the introduction.
How do I make a screen recording look less flat?
Put it on a background. Padding, corner radius, a border and a drop shadow are all settings on the take, over a solid colour, a gradient, your own desktop picture or an image you supply — which is most of the difference between a raw capture and something that looks made.
Can I make a Short out of the same recording?
Yes. Trim to the section worth clipping, switch the frame preset to 9:16 and export again. The framing is stored in proportions rather than pixels, so the camera and the padding stay where you put them.