How to Record Vertical Video on a Mac
Recording 9:16 natively beats cropping a widescreen take afterwards. Here is what you lose by cropping late and how to capture vertical on a Mac properly.
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Make better video on Mac and iPhone.
Practical guides for recording, editing and shipping - straight from the team building Zella.
How to Resize and Shape Callouts in a Video
Eight handles, thin shapes that stay thin, and the controls most people never find. A practical guide to making annotation shapes fit what they point at.
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How to Highlight On-Screen Text Already in a Video
Marking up a book page, a document or a screen you filmed needs an annotation, not a title. Here is the difference and how to sweep a marker over footage.
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How to Animate a Text Highlight in a Video
Marker sweeps, underline draws and box traces explained: what each shape says, the timing that makes them read, and how to add one without keyframes.
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Video Editing Jargon, Translated for Beginners
Retime, duck, punch-in, callout, mask, LUT: what the words on your editor really mean, and why Zella replaced them with plain English on iPhone.
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How to Record a Voiceover on iPhone While the Video Plays
Narrating to a stopwatch is why voiceovers sound off. Here is how to record while the video plays, and what to do with the take afterwards.
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What Music and Sound Effects Come Built Into a Video Editor
Every editor advertises the size of its audio library. Size is the wrong number. Here is what actually ships inside one, and what you still have to go and get.
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How to Zoom In While Recording Video on iPhone Without It Jumping
The 0.5x, 1x and 2x buttons are not a zoom control. They switch physical lenses, which is exactly why the picture jumps when you tap one.
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How to Add Transitions Between Clips on iPhone
Tapping the icon between two clips is the easy part. Picking one that does not look cheap, and a length that does not eat your words, is not.
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How Fast Should a Teleprompter Scroll? Set It in Words Per Minute
Prompter apps give you a speed dial from 1 to 10 and no way to know what to pick. Here is the conversion from your own speaking rate.
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How to Move Captions So They Do Not Cover Your Face
Captions sit where the app puts them, which is often over your chin or under the platform UI. How to move, resize and restyle them by touching them directly.
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How to Change the Caption Font on iPhone Video
Picking a caption font on a phone is limited by what the phone already has. What is genuinely available, how to set an exact brand colour, and one script trap.
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How to Animate a Zoom Without Using Keyframes
Keyframes are the standard way to animate a zoom and the reason most people never try. The set-the-start-point method gets the same result with two taps.
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How to Censor Swear Words in Video Captions
Auto captions transcribe what you said, swearing included. How to mask specific words in the caption track automatically, and what censoring text does not do.
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How to Blur Just One Object in a Video on iPhone
Blurring a whole background is easy. Blurring one thing, and only that thing, needs object selection. How tap-to-pick works and where it stops working.
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Why Does My Video Look Dull After Adding a Filter?
Filters that flatten the midtones and grey out the picture are usually a colour-space bug, not your footage. How to tell, and what the fix looks like.
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Make a Label Follow a Moving Object in Your Video
Pin an arrow or a label to something that moves through the shot, on iPhone, without keyframing it by hand and without sending the footage anywhere.
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The Three Edits That Fix a Weak Video Opening
A punch-in that settles, a hook title from your own first line, and a gentle drift every few seconds. Why each one works, and the traps that make them backfire.
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Add English Subtitles to a Video in Another Language
Speak Hindi, Tamil, Arabic or any of 27 languages and get English captions on your iPhone, with the audio never leaving the phone. What that costs elsewhere.
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TikTok Video Size: 1080x1920 and the Safe Zones
Export at 1080x1920. The harder part is that TikTok publishes no specs at all, and its own buttons cover the edges where most people put their captions.
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Facebook Video Size: One File for Feed, Reels, Stories
One upload can appear in feed, Reels and Stories, each cropping differently. The ratios Meta documents, and how to compose one file that survives all three.
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Instagram Video Size: Why 4:5 Beats 1:1 in the Feed
Reels, feed and Stories dimensions in one place, plus why 4:5 takes more feed than square and where Instagram covers your captions with its buttons.
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YouTube Video Size: 1080p, 1440p or 4K for Upload?
Should you upload 1080p, 1440p or 4K? What YouTube documents about resolution, ratio and encoding, and the one quirk that makes bigger look better.
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LinkedIn Video Size: 1080x1080 or 1920x1080?
Square or landscape for LinkedIn? The dimensions LinkedIn documents itself, and why the answer changes depending on whether people watch at a desk.
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How to make videos faster when you have no time to edit
Batch, template, one-click: the three levers that turn a week of content into two focused hours, plus a table of where the hours leak and how to plug each one.
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How to make your first viral video (a beginner's checklist)
The pre-post checklist for your first viral video: hook, captions, pacing, safe area and length - written for beginners with no followers and no editing skills.
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How to make a video with AI from start to finish (2026)
The end-to-end AI video workflow in 2026: record, one-tap cleanup, review, export - plus an honest split of what AI does well and where you still think.
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How to Make a Talking-Head Video Without a Script or Retakes
A word-for-word script makes most people sound stiff. Use a 5 to 7 line bullet outline instead, memorise only the hook, and fix the rambling in the edit.
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How to Add a Call to Action to Your Videos That Actually Works
Like and subscribe does not convert. Here are the six CTA types, where the ask goes, and word-for-word phrasing that turns a view into a comment or click.
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How to Make a Day in the Life Video People Actually Watch
The alarm-clock opening is why these get skipped. Here is the 7-beat structure, the cut rhythm and the edit that hold a viewer to the last frame.
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