Webcam overlay

The webcam track is recorded as a separate file, which lets you reposition, resize, and keyframe its appearance without re-recording.

Position & size

• Drag the webcam in the preview to reposition.
• Drag a corner handle to resize. Aspect ratio is locked by default; hold Shift to free-form.
• Defaults: 200 pt circle in the lower-right corner with a subtle border.

Style

• Corner radius — from rectangle (0) all the way to a full circle (50%).
• Opacity — the webcam can sit semi-transparently over your recording if you want it less prominent.
• Aspect — aspect-fill rendering crops the camera feed to fit the chosen frame.

Keyframed position & opacity

Webcam position and opacity can be keyframed across the timeline. Useful patterns:

• Webcam fades to 0% while you demo something on screen, then fades back in for narration.
• Webcam moves between corners if it’s about to obscure something important.
• Webcam grows from a small circle to a centered "talking head" shot at the end of the video.

Add a keyframe by parking the playhead at the moment you want the change and clicking the diamond in the inspector. Drag the keyframe’s diamond on the timeline to retime it.

Smart masking & background filters

Screen Cut Pro can isolate you from whatever’s behind you using an on-device person-segmentation model, then style the background independently. Pick one of the following filters from the webcam inspector:

• None — the original camera feed, untouched.
• Background blur — subject stays sharp, the room behind you is gaussian-blurred. Adjustable radius from a subtle defocus to a heavy bokeh. Good when your room is fine but you don’t want the viewer reading the books on the shelf.
• Background removal — replaces the background with transparency. Useful when you’re placing the webcam over a wallpaper background — the wallpaper now reads as your backdrop instead of a frame around your room.
• Background replacement — substitute any image (a still photo, a brand graphic, a virtual scene) for the original background. Pick from the bundled options or upload your own PNG/JPEG.

All three filters use a Core ML segmentation model that runs locally — nothing about your room or face is sent off the Mac. Processing happens once after recording, then the filtered camera track is cached inside the .screencut bundle, so playback and export are as fast as the unfiltered version.

How smart masking handles edges

The segmentation model produces a soft alpha matte rather than a hard cutout, so flyaway hair and glasses frames stay believable instead of looking knife-edged. If something does go wrong (e.g. a held object gets rejected as background), back off to the blur preset — it uses the same matte but is more forgiving because the rejected region is just slightly more in focus, not missing entirely.

Tips

• Front-light yourself. The model leans on contrast between you and the background; a window behind you (silhouette light) is the worst case. A lamp or window in front of you is best.
• Plain backgrounds work better than busy ones for hard removal/replacement. Background blur is more forgiving of clutter.
• Pair with rounded corners. Background removal + a high corner radius gives you a clean “floating head” look that pairs well with the wallpaper backgrounds in Look & feel.

Hiding the webcam

To exclude the webcam from a specific section, drop opacity to 0% via a keyframe. To exclude it from the export entirely, untick Include webcam in the export dialog.