Reframing a zoom

The fastest way to point a zoom at exactly the right spot isn’t the inspector — it’s the stage itself. Reframing lets you grab the zoom’s frame directly over the preview and drag it to aim, with the recording’s own clicks and gestures acting as magnets.

Opening the reframe surface

Select a zoom on the timeline and pause playback. A purple frame appears over the preview showing what that zoom sees; everything outside it dims. A hint reads:

Drag to reframe · scroll to resize · ⌥ no snap

Aiming and sizing

• Drag the purple frame to change where the zoom looks.
• Scroll over it to change the scale — it settles onto natural stops as you go, and the current scale shows as a badge (like 2.0×).
• Arrow keys nudge the frame a pixel at a time; hold Shift for bigger steps.
• Hold ⌥ Option while dragging to move freely, ignoring the snap points.

Snapping to what you did

The clicks and gestures you recorded inside the zoom’s span show up as anchors on the stage — points of light over each click, right-click, double-click, dwell, and drag-select. As you drag near one, the frame magnetizes onto it, so your zoom lands on the thing you actually interacted with rather than a rough guess.

Hover an anchor and it tells you what it is and when it happened — “Click · 1:23 · double-click to frame.”

Tips

• Aim on the stage, fine-tune in the inspector. Drag to the right spot here, then use Scale and easing in the inspector if you want to adjust the push-in.
• Trust the anchors. They mark real moments from your recording, so snapping to one keeps the zoom honest to what the viewer is watching you do.
• Reach for ⌥ only when you mean to. The snapping is usually what you want; free-drag is there for the rare framing that doesn’t sit on a gesture.