User Guide

Everything you need to know to record, polish, and export professional screen recordings with SimaRecord Pro.

Getting Started

Your First Recording

Permissions

SimaRecord Pro needs the following macOS permissions to function. You'll be prompted to grant these on first launch:

• Screen Recording — to capture your screen content
• Camera — for the webcam overlay (optional, but recommended)
• Microphone — to record your narration audio

The Sidebar

The sidebar is your control center. It's organized into tabs that group related settings together.

Recording

• Recording Area — choose Full Screen or Select Region
• Output — where your recordings are saved
• Quality — High, Medium, or Low (affects file size and export speed)
• Frame Rate — 30 or 60 FPS

Audio

• Microphone — select your audio input device
• System Audio — capture sounds from your Mac (requires permission)
• Noise Reduction — reduces background noise using spectral subtraction. Adjust the strength slider to balance clarity and naturalness.

Webcam

• Camera — select which camera to use
• Shape — circle, rounded square, or square
• Background — none, blur, or custom image behind you
• Blur Intensity — how strongly the background is blurred

Scene Layouts

Scene layouts control where your webcam appears on screen. You can switch between layouts instantly during recording using keyboard shortcuts.

Available Layouts

Switching Scenes During Recording

Press Option + a number key (1 through 0) to switch scene layouts while recording. A brief toast notification confirms the switch. The webcam window animates to its new position.

Content Cards

Content cards are full-screen presentation slides that you can insert into your recording. Instead of switching to Keynote or Google Slides, you create cards directly in SimaRecord Pro and toggle them with a hotkey.

Creating Cards

Open the Content Cards tab in the sidebar. You can create five types of cards:

• Title Card — a large heading with an optional subtitle. Use for intros and section breaks.
• Bullet Card — a heading with a list of bullet points. Use to outline steps or features.
• Highlight Card — a single large statement centered on screen. Use for key takeaways or quotes.
• Stats Card — multiple columns of numbers with labels. Use for metrics, comparisons, or data points.
• CTA Card — a call-to-action with a URL and/or email. Use at the end of your recording.

Each card inherits the visual style of your selected template — colors, fonts, and layout are applied automatically.

Using Cards During Recording

Once you've created your cards and arranged them in a sequence, use these hotkeys during recording:

Press Option+Cmd+T to switch from your demo to content cards. Use Option+Cmd+N to cycle through slides. Press Option+Cmd+T again to return to your screen demo.

Your webcam overlay is composited onto card backgrounds in the final polished video, so you stay visible even during card segments.

Callouts & Overlays

Callout Markers

Callout markers are numbered badges that appear at your cursor position in the polished video. They're perfect for step-by-step tutorials — "Step 1: Click here, Step 2: Select this option."

Press Cmd + Shift + C during recording to place a callout marker at your current cursor position. Each marker is automatically numbered in sequence (1, 2, 3, ...).

Keystroke Overlay

When you press keyboard shortcuts during recording, they can appear as floating pills on screen (e.g., a rounded badge showing "Cmd+S"). This helps viewers follow along with keyboard-driven workflows.

Enable or disable this in the sidebar under the Callouts tab.

Cursor Effects

SimaRecord Pro can enhance your cursor in the polished video:

• Cursor Highlight — a colored dot follows your cursor, making it easy to spot
• Click Rings — an expanding ring animation appears whenever you click, drawing attention to the click location

Both effects are applied during post-processing and are configurable in the sidebar: color, size, and duration.

Branding

Make every recording look on-brand without any post-production work.

• Logo — place your logo in any corner of the video. Adjust opacity and scale.
• Lower Third — display your name and title at the beginning of the video. Set how long it appears.
• Background Style — choose none, blur, gradient, or solid color for padded areas.

Branding settings are saved and applied to all future recordings until you change them.

Auto-Polish

What It Does

Auto-Polish is the core of SimaRecord Pro. It takes your raw recording and applies a chain of enhancements in one pass:

1. Silence Removal — detects and cuts silent pauses, tightening your recording without jump cuts
2. Auto-Zoom — smoothly zooms into click locations, making small UI elements visible. Uses Catmull-Rom interpolation for natural camera movement.
3. Cursor Highlights — renders a colored dot that follows your cursor throughout the video
4. Click Rings — renders expanding ring animations at every click point
5. Keystroke Overlays — renders keyboard shortcut pills at the moments you pressed them
6. Callout Badges — renders numbered or text markers at the positions you placed them
7. Content Card Compositing — inserts your content cards at the timestamps where you triggered them, with your webcam overlay composited on top
8. Logo & Lower Third — applies your branding configuration
9. Noise Reduction — reduces background audio noise using spectral subtraction
10. 16:9 Frame Padding — pads non-standard aspect ratios into a 16:9 frame for universal compatibility

Settings

You can toggle individual effects on or off before polishing:

• Auto-Zoom — enable/disable zoom-to-click
• Silence Removal — enable/disable automatic silence cuts. Adjust the silence threshold and minimum duration.
• Cursor Effects — enable/disable cursor dot and click rings independently
• Noise Reduction — enable/disable audio cleanup. Adjust reduction strength.
• Motion Blur — adds a subtle radial blur during zoom transitions for a cinematic feel

Post-Recording Editor

After recording, the post-editor opens with your raw video loaded. This is where you review and polish before exporting.

Timeline

The timeline at the bottom shows your full recording with visual markers:

• Zoom groups — blue regions where auto-zoom will be applied. Click to disable individual zoom regions you don't want.
• Silence regions — gray regions that will be removed. Click to protect specific silences from being cut.
• Callout markers — gold diamonds showing where your callout badges will appear
• Scene changes — markers showing where you switched scene layouts

Preview

Use the preview to scrub through your recording and see effects applied in real time before committing to a full export. The preview renders at reduced quality for speed — the final export is full resolution.

Re-Editing a Recording

Every recording you make is saved as a complete project that you can re-open later to change settings, try different effects, or export with new branding — without re-recording.

.simarecord Bundles

When you record, SimaRecord Pro saves everything as a single .simarecord file. This is a macOS package — Finder shows it as one file, but inside it contains:

• The raw screen capture
• The webcam recording
• Cursor, click, keystroke, and callout metadata
• Your most recent polished export

Bundles are saved by default to ~/Movies/SimaRecordPro/. The polished video is also exported alongside the bundle as a regular .mp4 for easy sharing.

Re-open and Re-polish

To re-edit a previous recording with different settings:

1. From the menu bar, choose Pro → Auto-Polish Recording... (Cmd + Shift + P)
2. In the file picker, navigate to ~/Movies/SimaRecordPro/ (or your custom output folder)
3. Select the .simarecord project you want to re-edit and click Open
4. SimaRecord Studio opens with the original recording loaded — all your cursor data, scene changes, callouts, and keystrokes are preserved
5. Adjust effect toggles, change the export preset, edit the timeline, or update branding settings
6. Click Auto-Polish to generate a new polished version

The new polished video replaces the previous one inside the bundle, and a fresh copy is exported alongside the bundle. Your raw recording, webcam, and metadata are never touched — you can re-polish as many times as you like.

All Keyboard Shortcuts

Known Limitations

• Keynote presentation mode — when Keynote is in full-screen presentation mode, it captures all keyboard input. SimaRecord Pro hotkeys (scene switching, content cards) will not work. Workaround: use Keynote in windowed mode, or pre-record your Keynote segments separately.
• Webcam shape changes with scenes — the webcam shape is tied to the scene layout. PiP uses a circle, while split-screen layouts use a rounded rectangle. This is by design — each layout uses the shape that looks best for that composition.
• Long recordings — for recordings over 30 minutes, export times increase significantly. Consider recording in shorter segments if possible.
• External displays — recording works on any connected display, but the webcam overlay position is relative to the primary display. If you switch displays during recording, webcam positioning may shift.

Still have questions? Visit our support page or email support@simarecord.pro.