How to reframe a screen recording to follow the action rather than the cursor
Tell Vizard Agent to follow what the user is doing rather than where the pointer is. It crops each section of the recording to the part of the screen where that step actually happens, changes the crop as the tutorial moves down the screen, and checks that the tap that starts each drag is still inside the frame.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say what the viewer needs to see. Asking Vizard Agent to keep the cursor centred is a precise instruction and the wrong one: it describes the mechanism rather than the goal, and the mechanism is what makes the result unwatchable. Rough times per section are enough for a first pass, and they get refined against what's actually there.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Centring on the cursor produces a video that swims. The pointer moves constantly and the action does not, so Vizard Agent uses a small number of deliberate crops, each held while a step happens and each tied to a step rather than to a movement of the pointer. In the session behind this article it:
- Built a first square version of a phone screen recording centred on the pointer, as asked, then reviewed it and found the framing swam with the cursor.
- Rebuilt the crop to follow the action, with one crop per section: the top, the lower half, the upper half.
- Checked the beginning of each section for a missing tap and extended the first section, where the opening tap had been cropped away.
- Found a transition that stuttered between two crops and smoothed the move, so the change reads as a camera move rather than a glitch.
- Re-checked each section against what the user was doing there, then rendered the final square and reviewed it end to end.
When does this not work well?
The steps have to be separable in space. An interface where the action happens across the whole screen at once, or a gesture that travels from top to bottom, can't be framed tightly without losing one end of it. Very small text may still be unreadable after cropping, fast interfaces outrun the crop, and low-resolution recordings lose sharpness.
Common questions
Can it follow the cursor if I want? Yes, and Vizard Agent will show you why it usually reads badly.
Will the taps be visible? Vizard Agent checks the start of each gesture specifically.
What if a step spans the whole screen? Vizard Agent will say so and leave that section wide.