Snapline Studio

Recording a Studio take

A Studio take starts from the same Record Screen bar as any recording: flip its switch from Quick to Studio, or give Record in Studio a shortcut in Settings. It records a region, a window or a whole display, at 30 or 60 frames a second, with your microphone and what the Mac plays if you turn them on, and it pauses and resumes like any recording. The bar says how long the free disk space will last.

The pointer is not filmed. Snapline keeps where it moved, where it clicked and what it looked like beside the video, so the editor can redraw it later in any style. Press Zoom (⌥⌘Z) while you record and the moment is marked rather than zoomed; the editor turns each mark into a zoom you can still change. When you stop, the project opens in the editor.

The look

• A background behind the recording: one of ten gradients, a colour, an image of your own or a screenshot from your History, your current desktop picture, or the recording itself, blurred. Or none at all.
• A frame around it: padding, rounded corners and a shadow, each on a slider. A new take opens already styled.
• A canvas to fit where it is going: Original, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:3, 4:5, or a size of your own.

The cursor

• Redrawn, not filmed. The cursor you actually saw (the I-beam, the pointing hand, an app's own), or a black or white arrow, a dot or a highlight ring, at 50 to 400 percent of its size.
• Smoothed. A spring over the recorded path takes the jitter out of your hand, and stays pinned to every click, so a click still lands under the pointer.
• Out of the way. It can fade when it has been still for a few seconds.
• Clicks you can see and hear. A ring, a ripple or a dot at each click, in a colour and size you choose, and a click sound if you want one.

Zoom

When a take first opens, auto zoom reads your clicks and puts a zoom wherever they cluster, so a recording zooms in where something happens and back out between. Each zoom is a block on the timeline: drag it, trim it, delete it, or add your own at the playhead. A zoom goes from 1.1× to 3×, follows the pointer or holds still on a point you drag on the preview, and eases in and out at the speed you pick. Running auto zoom again keeps the zooms you placed by hand.

The timeline and the sound

The timeline has the screen and the zooms on two tracks, with a filmstrip and the sound's waveform. Split at the playhead with S, delete a piece and the rest closes up, trim either end, and undo anything. Space plays, J, K and L shuttle, and every key is listed in the editor's own shortcuts window. The sound is mixed to a loudness you choose, with its own volume for the microphone and for what the Mac played.

Export

An MP4, in H.264 or HEVC, at the canvas's own size or at 720p, 1080p or 4K where those are smaller, at the take's frame rate or 30 frames a second, of the whole timeline or just the part between In and Out. The export is an ordinary recording in History: play it, copy it, share it or make a GIF of it like any other. Export the whole timeline again after more edits and it replaces the one before, in place.

Projects stay yours

A Studio project is a single package in your screenshots folder. It saves itself after every change, reopens from History, and is never uploaded anywhere: Studio, like the rest of Snapline, works on your Mac. What a trial or a Studio Trial made stays yours when it ends. Only starting a new Studio take needs Studio; opening, editing and exporting a project you already have never does. Projects open on a Mac with Apple silicon, as Studio does.

Studio asks for no new kind of permission: a take needs Screen Recording, as any recording does, and Microphone, or Input Monitoring for Record Keystrokes, only when you turn them on. It never asks for Camera, since a Studio take has no camera. The privacy policy says what a Studio project keeps and what a version with Studio tells our license server.

Not in Studio today

So that nobody buys it for something it does not do: a Studio take has no camera bubble, the editor has no captions, a project holds one take, and the only thing you can bring into a project is a background image. A Quick recording still does the camera bubble, as it always has.

Trying and buying it

• In the trial. Snapline’s 14-day trial includes Studio on a Mac with Apple silicon.
• With a license already. Press Try Studio in Settings, License for a 14-day Studio Trial. Each Mac can try Studio once, so a Mac whose own trial included Studio is not given a second go.
• New to Snapline. The Snapline License with Studio is one purchase for both.
• Adding it to your license. Press Buy Studio in Settings, License. Studio is added to the license you have, and every Mac it is activated on picks it up at its next check, with nothing to re-enter.

Studio is bought once and kept, like the license. It shares the license’s update window, so one renewal keeps both current. It covers every seat on the license whose Mac has Apple silicon, and an Intel Mac goes on running the rest of Snapline as it does today. Prices are on the pricing page, in your currency. Snapline needs macOS 14 or later.