Zooms

Automatic zooms

Slyve zooms in where you click, while you record. The camera starts moving just before the click and lands on it. Clicks close together pan within one zoom instead of zooming out and back in.

When you type, the typing zoom follows the text cursor, also in text fields on web pages. It hands back smoothly to the pointer when you move it.

Follow typing: Normal or Close-up

A zoom that follows typing has a Follow typing depth in its inspector:

• Normal: the typed line stays in frame at the zoom’s level. The default.
• Close-up: the cinematic typing shot. The camera locks onto the text and zooms in until a line fills about half the frame, then rides the newest character so it sits a little past the middle, ahead in the direction the text runs (right to left text leads to the left). It glides from key to key without a jolt, a few backspaces leave it still, a longer run of them walks it back, and a wrap to the next line is one gentle pan. When you stop typing for more than about 1.2 seconds it eases back out to the normal follow, with no cut, and back in when you type again.

A Manual or Auto zoom with typing in it shows the same choice: Close-up makes it follow the typing. Each change is one undo.

To make every automatic typing zoom a close-up, set Follow typing to Close-up under Automatic zooms in the Motion tab, then choose Regenerate automatic zooms.

Close-up reads the full-resolution recording, so text stays as sharp as it was captured, and preview and export show the same frames. The camera’s motion blur follows how fast it pans. A close-up can go past 10× (up to 32×) to make small text fill the frame; text captured very small will look soft at that size, so record at a higher resolution for close-ups.

Automatic zooms on clicks need the Accessibility permission. See Permissions.

If you prefer to place every zoom yourself, turn off Settings › Editing & export › Automatic zooms. New recordings then start with no zooms. You can still add zooms by hand. Recordings you already have keep their zooms.

Add or change a zoom

• Click the Zoom lane to place a zoom at that moment.
• Drag a zoom on the lane to move it. Drag its ends to change when it starts and stops.
• To choose exactly where a zoom goes, select it and set Zoom mode to Manual. The preview shows the whole frame with the zoomed area as a box and the rest dimmed. Drag the box, or click where to zoom and the box centres there. Drag a corner of the box, or use Zoom level, to zoom closer or wider; the box stays centred where you put it. The same box, with its corners, is in the inspector. Switching from Auto starts the box where the automatic zoom was. Each move is one undo. Press Play, click away from the zoom, or click Done, to see the zoomed result again. Exports use the box you set.
• An Auto zoom follows the pointer. Where no pointer was recorded, the inspector says so and offers Switch to Manual.
• Zooms go up to 10× (a typing close-up can go further; see Follow typing).
• In the selected zoom’s inspector, choose Type › Loupe for a round Glass Loupe that leaves the rest of the frame in view. Set Follow to Cursor or Caret, and adjust Lens size and Magnify. Caret needs typing recorded during that zoom.
• Way in and Way out, in a full zoom’s inspector, are Smooth (the zoom glides in and out) or Cut (a punch-in: the zoom reaches full scale, or back to 1×, within two frames, blended so it does not flash). Use ways for every zoom gives every zoom the same choice. Each change is one undo.
• Turn on Perspective beat in a full zoom’s inspector for a cinematic tilt: the card swings in perspective as the zoom arrives, holds straight and sharp for reading, then swings once more as it returns. Tilt sets how far it turns (up to 12° either way) and Reading hold how long it stays front-facing (0.5–5 s; the swing gets shorter on a short zoom so the hold is kept). Privacy masks, the cursor and clicks stay on the turned card. With Reduce Motion on, the zoom stays flat.

Suggest zooms, in the Zoom lane’s menu, finds moments to zoom on from what changes on screen. It works for a take with no recorded clicks too, such as an iPhone recording.

Text detail at high zoom

Slyve resamples magnified recordings with an anti-ringing Lanczos-2 filter. It keeps the pixels in your recording as the source of truth; it cannot recover letters or digits that were too small or blurred in the original capture. For text that must remain readable, record at a higher display resolution or use a lower magnification, then check a paused frame before exporting.

How zooms move

Open the Motion tab (⌘7). Motion style sets how every zoom and the cursor move:

• Calm: gentle zooms that start softly, spaced further apart.
• Balanced: smooth zooms and a smooth cursor. The default.
• Snappy: quick zooms and a quick cursor.

The same tab has Clear automatic zooms. To set the style for every new recording, use Settings › Editing & export › Motion style for new recordings.

How many automatic zooms

Automatic zooms, under More in the Motion tab, sets what starts a zoom and how often, separately from Motion style. Changing these never changes how a zoom moves.

• Triggers: Clicks, Typing and Dwell (the pointer resting in one place for 1.5 s). Turn off what should not zoom.
• Follow typing: Normal or Close-up for the zooms typing starts (see Follow typing).
• Minimum gap: zooms closer together than this merge into one. A long gap keeps a tutorial calm.
• Maximum per minute: no minute gets more zooms than this. Slyve keeps the longest ones. No limit turns the cap off.
• Starts before the click (0.1–1 s): how early a zoom begins, so the camera has arrived when you click. It follows the motion style until you change it: 0.6 s for Calm, 0.4 s for Balanced, 0.25 s for Snappy.
• Stays after (0.5–4 s, 1.5 s by default): how long a zoom holds after the last click. Two zooms closer together than this hand off to each other: the camera pans from one to the next without going back to 1×, and the Zoom lane draws them joined with a seam.
• Click bursts: one zoom per (0.5–3 s, 1.2 s by default): clicks closer together than this make one zoom.

Each of these has a reset to its default.

The Preview line shows how many automatic zooms there are now and how many there will be. Nothing changes until you choose Regenerate automatic zooms. Zooms you placed or moved yourself stay as they are, and one undo puts everything back. Slyve remembers these settings for your next projects.