Choose a video style
Pick the Classic or Studio look for a narrated video, switch Studio's pieces (including Tight pacing) on or off, and see which colours it uses.
The video style decides how the finished MP4 looks and moves. Studio puts your recording in a rounded window on your brand colours, zooms in close on each step, spotlights the button or field in use, adds branded title and end cards, and lets the narration set the pace, so the footage between narrated steps moves quickly. Classic shows the recording full frame, at its own speed, with a zoom and a step card on each step. The narration and steps are the same in both.
New narrated videos use Studio. Videos made before Studio existed keep Classic, so re-rendering them doesn't change how they look until you choose otherwise.
Both styles are available on every plan. The Studio style has nothing to do with the Studio plan.
Pick Classic or Studio
- In the editor's left rail, click Voice.
- Scroll to Video style.
- Click Classic or Studio. A small sketch under the choice shows the frame in the colours the video will use.
The choice saves straight away and applies on the next render. If the video has already been rendered, the panel says "The current video still has the old style." with a Render MP4 button, which renders the video again. See Render, download & share.
Switch Studio's pieces on or off
With Studio chosen, each piece has its own switch:
| Switch | What it does |
|---|---|
| Branded background | The recording sits in a rounded window on your brand colours. Off: the recording fills the frame. |
| Deep zoom | Zooms in closer on small buttons and fields. Off: gentler zooms, as in Classic. |
| Highlight | Spotlight dims the screen around the button or field in use and outlines it in your colour. Step cards shows each step's title and description beside what is clicked. |
| Colour transitions | A sweep of your colours from the title card into the walkthrough, and from the walkthrough into the end card. |
| Title and end cards | Branded cards at the start and end of the video. |
| Cursor | Off, Highlight ring or Arrow: a cursor drawn by TurtleScene that moves to each click. |
| Tight pacing | The voice sets the pace: footage between narrated steps is sped up, and still screens are cut. See below. |
| Cut long waits | Shortens only the long waits between steps. Included in Tight pacing; it can be switched on its own when Tight pacing is off. See below. |
| Quiet music | When no music is picked, a soft built-in track plays under the voice. See below. |
A spotlight appears only on steps where TurtleScene found the exact button or field and it stays in place for the whole step. Other steps get no highlight, rather than one in the wrong place. If a step you care about has none, check it on the Hotspots tab. See Steps, zooms & timing.
Your recording already shows a mouse pointer? Keep Cursor on Off, or the video shows two pointers. Most screen recordings do. Use Highlight ring to mark each click without adding a second arrow.
Title and end cards
With Title and end cards on, a video whose intro and outro you haven't set gets both: the title card shows the video's title beside a frame of your recording, and the end card shows your product's website (or name) with "Try it yourself". To change their text, or to switch either card off, use Intro & outro on the same tab. See Intro, outro & music.
The AI-written script includes an opening line spoken over the title card and a closing line spoken over the end card. Each card stays up long enough for its line. See Script & voice.
Tight pacing
A recording runs at the speed you clicked through it: typing in a form, scrolling, waiting for a page or an AI answer. Played back at that speed, the narration finishes long before the next step and the video sits in silence. Tight pacing (on by default) lets the narration set the pace instead:
- Each step's narration, and its click, play at normal speed, with the frame before the click held if the line needs longer.
- After each click, about a second of what it did plays at normal speed, so viewers see the result.
- Everything else between two narrated steps is compressed to a second or two. Footage that moves (typing, scrolling, a page loading, an answer streaming in) is sped up 2–8 times, so it reads as fast-forward. A still screen is cut, which you can't see because nothing changes. Very long stretches lose their middle as well.
- A short pause (about half a second) comes before the next step's narration.
Where the script has a line for what happens between two steps, for example "Asana builds the project from the template.", that stretch keeps as long as the line needs, and the line is spoken over the fast-forward.
With Tight pacing on, a step with a long line starts on the wide view while the narration describes the screen, and the zoom and spotlight come in for the last few seconds before the click.
It never touches a step's narration, the pause before its click or the click itself. Your own cuts don't change, nothing is removed from the recording, and the steps and their times in the editor stay as they are. After a render, the switch's description says how much shorter the last render was.
Tight pacing works best with the AI-written script, whose lines are sized to how long each screen is visible. If you wrote very short lines yourself, most of each screen is sped up. Click Regenerate script on the Script tab to get lines that fill the time.
To keep the recording at its own speed, switch Tight pacing off. Cut long waits then decides whether long waits are shortened.
Cut long waits
With Tight pacing on, long waits are already cut, so this switch shows as on and can't be changed. With Tight pacing off, Cut long waits shortens only the long stretches where nothing happens, such as a page loading, an AI writing its answer, or you reading before the next click:
- A still screen between two steps for more than 6 seconds is trimmed to 1.5 seconds.
- A screen that keeps changing for more than 15 seconds, such as a progress bar, an image being generated or an answer streaming in, is sped up so it lasts about 6 seconds. The first and last 1.5 seconds play at normal speed, so viewers see it start and finish.
It never touches a step's narration or the pause before its click, and it keeps a moment after each click so viewers see what the click did. A new screen appearing always plays at normal speed.
Your own cuts don't change, and nothing is removed from the recording. After a render, the switch's description says how much shorter the last render was. To leave every wait in, switch both Tight pacing and Cut long waits off, or to cut something they kept, mark a cut yourself. See Trim & cut waits.
Quiet music
When you haven't picked music for the video (under Music on the same tab) and the workspace has no default track, Quiet music plays the built-in Calm track softly under the narration, and lowers it further while the voice speaks, so the short pauses between steps aren't dead air. It's on for new narrated videos; videos made before it existed keep rendering without music until you switch it on.
Music you pick for the video, or the workspace default, always wins. To have no music at all, switch Quiet music off. See Intro, outro & music.
See which colours are used
Under the switches, Colours shows the swatches the video will use and where they come from:
- Workspace brand: your workspace's Primary colour, or the colours in your product brain. Click Brand & player settings to change them.
- Detected from the recording: no brand colour is set, so the colours are taken from your product as it appears in the recording.
- Neutral: no usable colour was found, so the frame uses a neutral grey.
A recording of another company's app, for example a how-to of a public tool, never uses your workspace colours. The panel says so, and the video uses that app's own colours when they can be found in the recording, or the neutral grey.
Translations and formats
Translated versions use the same style as the main video. Their narration has its own length, so the pacing is worked out again for each language. The social cuts follow the video as rendered, including the sped-up and cut stretches, so make the formats again after a new render.