The countdown & recording controls
What happens when you press record — the countdown, and pausing, restarting, or discarding a take.
Once your source is set, press the red Record button. This page covers what happens next.
The countdown
By default, hitting record gives you a breath before frame one: the bar swaps to a 3-second countdown — a number inside a sweeping red ring — showing the source you’re about to capture, with a Cancel button if you change your mind. When it reaches zero, recording begins.
Prefer to start instantly? Open the recording bar’s gear menu and turn off 3-second countdown. Playback remembers the setting.
The recording HUD
While you’re recording, the bar becomes a compact HUD with a running timer and a small cluster of controls:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pause / resume | Freezes the take without ending it. The timer counts only captured time, and the paused stretch is excised — the final clip plays as one continuous recording. |
| Restart | Discards everything captured so far and immediately begins a fresh take with the same source and settings. The timer starts over. |
| Trash | Discards the take entirely and returns you to the recording bar. Nothing is saved. |
| Stop | Ends the recording, keeps the take, and opens it in the editor. Stop is kept separate from the others — it’s the one that keeps your work. |
Pausing, in practice
Pause is perfect for skipping a setup step, waiting for something to load, or collecting your thoughts. When you resume, Playback stitches the recording back together seamlessly — the pause simply doesn’t exist in the finished take. Your narration, cursor, and camera all stay in sync across the gap.
After you stop
Stopping drops you into the editor, where your take is ready to polish. From here, nothing you do touches the original recording — every edit is reversible.