The frame & webcam

Playback’s most recognizable trait is that your recording floats — inset from the edges, on a soft backdrop, with rounded corners and a gentle shadow. It looks like a product shot rather than a raw screen grab, and you get it for free.

The floating frame

Every take is composited onto Playback’s signature look automatically:

• A soft gradient backdrop behind your recording — an understated warm-gray by default, so your content stays the focus.
• Rounded corners and a drop shadow that lift the recording off the background.
• Clean window edges — when you record a single window, Playback masks the app’s own rounded corners so the backdrop shows through neatly instead of leaving dark wedges.

You don’t have to set any of this up; it’s applied the moment your take opens in the editor.

Webcam overlay

If you recorded with the camera on, your webcam appears as a picture-in-picture overlay floating in a corner of the frame.

Its starting position is set while you record: the round self-view you drag during capture snaps to a corner, and wherever you leave it is where the picture-in-picture lands in the finished video. So you frame yourself once, live, and it carries through to the edit. See the self-view.

You can refine the overlay afterward from the Webcam tab in the inspector (visible when nothing is selected on the timeline):

• Show webcam — toggle the overlay on or off in the finished video.
• Shape — Bubble (a circle), Wide (a rounded rectangle), or Rect (a clean rectangle).
• Size — scale the overlay between about 12% and 45% of the frame.
• Mirror — flip it horizontally, so it reads like a mirror rather than a camera.

To reposition it, just drag the webcam on the preview — it hops to whichever corner the pointer is over as you drag.

Tips

• Frame your self-view deliberately. Because its recording-time position becomes the final overlay spot, take a second to drag it to a corner that won’t cover your UI before you start.
• Let the default look do the work. The floating frame is tuned to look good out of the box — you rarely need to touch it to get a polished result.