Features

Everything Prequel does to a recording

Nothing about the look is fixed while you record. Here is the whole list: what Prequel captures, what it does on its own, and what comes out.

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Capture

Records your screen, camera, microphone and system audio

Prequel records the screen, the camera, your microphone and the system audio as four separate files. Nothing is mixed while you record. The framing, the volume and the layout are still open when you stop.

Screen, window or region

Record a whole display, a single window, or an area you drag out. Every display your Mac has gets its own picker.

Camera recorded as its own track

The webcam is never burned into the screen recording. Whether it appears, what shape it is and where it sits are all decided afterwards.

Microphone and system audio on separate tracks

Your microphone and the sound coming out of your Mac, on separate tracks with a gain each. System audio arrives through ScreenCaptureKit, so there is no virtual driver to install.

Countdown, global shortcut, pause and resume

A countdown of 3, 5 or 10 seconds, and a global shortcut you can rebind. Pause and resume part way through, or discard a take without leaving a file behind.

Captured at native resolution

Recording runs at your display's own pixel size. A Retina Mac exporting at 1080p has roughly three times the pixels it needs, and a zoom spends that headroom.

Prequel's own windows are excluded

The dock, the picker and every other Prequel window are excluded by id. Recording your whole screen does not record Prequel recording it.

Automatic

Places the zooms for you, from your clicks and typing

Prequel watches where you click and type while it records. The editor opens with the zooms placed, the camera framed, a background on, the audio balanced and the cursor cleaned up.

Clicks and typing clustered into shots

Clicks and bursts of typing, clustered into shots with a lead-in and a lead-out. A push lands on the thing rather than behind it.

Every generated zoom is editable

A generated zoom is identical to one you add yourself. Move it, retime it, point it somewhere else, delete it.

Add zoom and pan again at any time

Add zooms automatically fills the stretches that are not already covered. A take you have cut about in gets topped up rather than started again.

The editor

A full editor that opens on the take you just recorded

Nothing to import and nothing to line up. Every control changes the video in front of you rather than a setting you have to render to see.

Fourteen layouts for the screen and camera

Fourteen arrangements in three groups: the screen and camera together, the camera alone, or the screen alone. One for the video, or a different one per clip.

Zooms that follow the cursor, a region or a field

Follow the cursor, hold still on a region you draw, or track the field you are typing into. Level, speed, and an ease you drag as a curve.

Perspective tilt and focus falloff

A perspective tilt and yaw on the push-in, so the frame has a direction. Focus falls away from the subject, with its own sharp area and strength.

Five camera shapes, sized and mirrored

Five shapes, with a roundness, size and border of its own. Mirror it, zoom into its picture, and let it shrink out of the way while a zoom is in.

Backgrounds, padding, corner radius and shadow

Your desktop picture, a hosted catalogue in four groups, gradients, solids, or an image you pick. Padding, corner radius, border and shadow on top.

Fifteen pointer styles, smoothed and blurred

Fifteen pointer styles, sized to survive a zoom. Smoothing, motion blur as it travels, and gone from the frame when it goes still.

Also in the editor

Captions, transcript, timeline, logo and presets

Captions transcribed on your Mac

Transcribed on your Mac, with nothing uploaded. Six looks, any of nine faces your Mac already has, and a colour for the word being spoken.

Edit the transcript to edit the video

Open the transcript and correct what it heard. Delete a sentence there and that stretch of footage leaves the video with it.

Timeline with filmstrip, waveform and split

Filmstrip thumbnails and a waveform under every clip. Split at the playhead, trim from either end, delete a clip, duplicate a zoom.

Your own logo anywhere in the frame

Any image, anywhere in the frame, sized by its corner. An SVG stays sharp at whatever size you export.

Change one clip or the whole project

With nothing selected you edit the defaults. Select a clip and every change becomes that clip's own, with a dot beside the control saying so.

Save a look as a reusable preset

Save a look and put it on the next recording. A preset carries the arrangement, the background, the captions, the camera and the frame.

Export

Exports MP4, HEVC or GIF on your own Mac

Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine: hardware H.264 or HEVC through VideoToolbox, composited in Metal. There is no upload step and no cloud render.