A Mac video editor that opens on your recording
A video editor for Mac normally opens empty and waits for an import. This one opens on the take you just stopped — already on the timeline, its tools down one side, and nothing you do written back into the original file.
Smart Zoom is part of Pro, a one-time $39 purchase. Everything else on this page is free.
The half nobody budgets for
Recording a five-minute walkthrough takes five minutes. Editing that screen recording is the part that eats the afternoon: trimming the false start, pushing in on the field you are pointing at, captioning the narration, marking the thing you meant. Most of that work happens in a second application nobody on the team has opened this year.
A simple video editor for macOS only has to do those four things well. Keeping them in the same window as the recorder changes what gets made — a take stops being a file you will deal with later and becomes something you finish while you still remember what you were trying to show.
The take is already loaded.
Stop the recording and the editor already has it: the clips laid out as a filmstrip, the text and style controls open, the timeline ready to cut. There is nothing to export first and nowhere else to open it.
- Filmstrip
- Text and style controls
- Non-destructive
The tools down the side
The panel is grouped the way the work happens. Edit covers trim, cut, silence removal, speed and chapters. Enhance covers zoom, camera layout, audio polish, the mixer, Remove Logo and Redact. Add covers captions, on-frame text, annotations and inline image or video blocks. Smart Zoom is the only one of them that needs Pro.
Trim, cut, speed, chapters
Drag the ends in, lift out the dead middle, drop the silences, and run the slow parts faster.
Zoom where the work isPro
Cinematic Zoom takes the keyframes you place, on every tier. Smart Zoom builds the moves from the cursor activity in the take, and needs Pro.
Captions under the narration
Timestamped, correctable, burned in at export — or written out as an SRT or WebVTT file instead.
A transcript you can cut from
Speech becomes editable text on your Mac in 20 languages, and deleting a sentence deletes that stretch of video.
Marks on the frame
Arrows, boxes, highlighter, freehand pen, numbered step badges and emoji stickers, each on its own stretch of timeline.
Out in the format you need
MP4, HEVC, MOV, ProRes 422 or 4444, and GIF. ProRes is there on the free tier too.
Fix the sound on its own.
A take that caught your microphone and the computer at once opens with the two as separate tracks. Silence a stretch of one and the other keeps playing, which is how a cough comes out without losing what was on screen.
- Two tracks
- Mute a time range
- Non-destructive
From stopped take to finished file
- 1It opens where you stoppedThe recording is on the timeline with its clips and its audio, ready to work on.
- 2Cut it down firstTrim the ends, lift the false start, drop the silences. Length is the edit that matters most.
- 3Make it legibleZoom into the part you are talking about, caption the narration, mark what you are pointing at.
- 4Export as often as you likeThe edit lives in a project beside the file, so a change next quarter is a re-export rather than a re-record.
Marks that come and go.
An arrow appears while you are talking about the thing it points at, then leaves when you move on. Every mark has its own stretch of the timeline, and none of them touch the frames until you export.
Nothing is baked in
Every edit lives in a project file beside the recording, and the original take is never rewritten. A cut you regret is an undo, not a re-record, and a video you exported last month can be reopened, adjusted and sent out again from the same source.
Exports carry the tier you are on. The free tier comes out at 720p with a small watermark; Pro is $39 once and lifts that to 4K at 60fps with no mark on it. Smart Zoom is the only tool on this page that Pro gates — the rest of the editor is free.
Questions people ask
Stop the recording and it opens in the OwnClip editor: clips on a timeline, audio on the tracks below, tools down one side. Trim it, zoom into what matters, caption the narration and mark the frame, then export. There is no import step and no second application.
OwnClip needs macOS 26 or later on an Apple silicon Mac. It is a native Mac app — there is no Windows or web version.
Free includes the whole editor — timeline, camera effects, audio cleanup, captions, annotations, and the screenshot and PDF editors. What it caps is the take itself: three minutes, recorded at 720p, with a small watermark composited into the frames as they are written. You can keep 25 recordings. A few tools are paid rather than capped — Smart Zoom and Scroll Capture are Pro; Brand Studio, Go Live and Step Movie are Studio. Pro is $39 once and lifts every cap.
No. Edits live in a project file beside the recording and the original is never rewritten, so you can reopen a finished video months later, change one thing and export it again.
No. Smart Zoom, which turns the cursor activity from your recording into zoom moves on its own, needs Pro at $39 once. Free users can see it in the editor but cannot apply it. Cinematic Zoom, where you place the keyframes yourself, is free on every tier.
MP4 (H.264), HEVC, MOV, ProRes 422 and 4444, and GIF — all of them on every tier, including free. Free exports are capped at 720p and carry a small watermark; Pro and Studio export up to 4K at 60fps with no watermark.
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A Mac video editor that opens on your recording
Free to start. macOS 26 or later, Apple silicon.