Set it from how fast you speak, not from a number on a dial. Almost every prompter app offers "speed" as an abstract 1 to 10 slider, which is why the usual experience is: start recording, discover the script is running away from you by the third sentence, stop, guess again.

The unit that actually works is words per minute, because it is a property of you rather than of the app.

What speaking rate to aim for

Rate depends on the format, and the ranges are well established:

  • Conversational, talking to a phone: 120 to 150 wpm. This is where most creator content sits.
  • Broadcast news reading: 150 to 160 wpm. Faster than it feels, because newsreaders are trained to be intelligible at speed.
  • Explaining something technical: 100 to 130 wpm. Complexity forces pauses, and your listener needs them.
  • Audiobook narration: 150 to 160 wpm, by convention rather than physics.

If you have never measured your own, 130 wpm is the safest starting point for a piece to camera. Read a paragraph aloud at the pace you would actually use, time it, and divide.

A scrolling script beside a camera lens, with the line being spoken lit up at eye level.

Film has done this arithmetic for a century in a different unit: the one page equals one minute rule for screenplays. It works for the same reason a wpm target works, and it fails in the same way - the rule breaks down on dialogue-heavy pages, because the unit was never words in the first place. Measuring your own read is the only reliable version of either.

The direction of error matters more than the number. Too slow is recoverable: you wait a beat, or you glance ahead. Too fast is not - once the line you were reading has left the screen, you have lost your place and the take is gone.

The conversion, in one line

A teleprompter has to move a fixed distance in a fixed time:

  • Total time = your word count divided by your words per minute, times 60. A 200-word script at 130 wpm is 200 / 130 x 60, or about 92 seconds.
  • Scroll rate = the total scroll distance divided by that time.

That second number is the one apps hide. If your script renders 900 pixels tall in a 200-pixel window, it has about 700 pixels to travel, and over 92 seconds that is roughly 7.6 pixels per second. Which is far slower than any default you have ever been given.

This is why the same "speed 5" behaves completely differently on two scripts. The distance changes with the text size, the panel width and the number of lines, so a fixed rate can only ever be right for one script.

If your app only has a 1 to 10 dial

You can still get there in one pass, without recording anything:

  1. Count the words. Paste the script into any word counter.
  2. Work out your target time at 130 wpm: words / 130 x 60 seconds.
  3. Start the scroll and read along silently at speaking pace, stopwatch running.
  4. If you finish the script early, the scroll is too slow. If the script beats you to the end, it is too fast.
  5. Adjust by about 20% each time. Two rounds usually lands it.

Write the setting down next to your typical script length. Once you know that "speed 3 for a 45-second script" works for you, it keeps working.

The two settings that cause runaway scripts

Reading speed instead of speaking speed. Silent reading runs 200 to 300 wpm. If a default was tuned by someone watching text go by rather than talking along with it, it will be roughly twice as fast as you need. This is the single most common cause of "the teleprompter is too fast".

The ending scrolling off the top. Many prompters scroll until the last line reaches the top of the window and disappears. If you are even slightly behind, your final sentence is gone before you say it. A prompter should stop with the last couple of lines still on screen - the closing line is the one you most need to see.

A third, smaller one: no lead-in. Nobody starts talking on the exact frame the countdown ends. A second or so of held script before the scroll begins removes a whole class of ruined first takes.

Eye-line: the thing the speed cannot fix

A prompter only helps if it does not make you look shifty.

  • Put the text as close to the lens as possible. On a phone that means the top of the screen when the front camera is at the top. The further from the lens the text sits, the more visibly your eyes track.
  • Keep the reading window narrow. Wide lines make your eyes sweep left to right, which reads on camera as scanning. Narrow, centred text keeps your gaze roughly still.
  • Bigger text, fewer lines. You want to catch the next few words in one glance, not read a paragraph.
  • Back off the arm's length. Further from the phone means smaller eye movement for the same text, at the cost of needing larger type.

Write the script for the mouth, not the page

Prompter scripts fail for writing reasons as often as speed reasons:

  • Short sentences. A sentence you cannot finish in one breath will beat you regardless of the scroll rate.
  • Contractions. Write "you'll" if you would say "you'll". Formal written text forces an unnatural read.
  • Mark your pauses. A line break where you intend to breathe is worth more than punctuation, because you can see it coming.
  • Never split a phrase across the fold. If the last three words of a sentence are about to scroll out of view, the pause you take is in the wrong place.

How Zella does it

Zella's teleprompter runs over the camera preview on iPhone, and the pace control is words per minute - it defaults to 130, and the scroll rate is derived from your script's real rendered height, so it finishes exactly when you do rather than at a rate that happened to suit a different script.

It waits about a second after the countdown before it starts moving, and it holds the last couple of lines on screen instead of scrolling them away. It pauses when you pause, rewinds between takes, and the panel starts collapsed because most takes are unscripted.

It is camera-only on purpose. On a screen recording, anything on your screen is in the recording, and a prompter overlay would be part of the video. See the recording guide for the full walkthrough, and the editor guide for what happens after the take.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good teleprompter speed for a 60-second video? Count the words first - a 60-second piece to camera is usually 120 to 150 words. Set your pace to 130 wpm and the timing takes care of itself. If your app only has a 1 to 10 dial, aim for the setting where the script ends as you say your last word.

Why does my teleprompter feel too fast even on the slowest setting? Either the rate was tuned for silent reading, which is roughly twice speaking speed, or your script is long relative to the window so it has a lot of distance to cover. Increase the text size: fewer words per line means more scroll distance, which forces a slower rate for the same script.

Will the teleprompter show up in my recording? Not when you are recording with the camera - the camera records the sensor, not your screen. It absolutely will on a screen recording or a broadcast, because those capture everything displayed. That is why a well-built prompter is limited to the camera path.

Should I memorise instead of using a prompter? For anything under about 30 seconds, memorising usually reads better. Past that, a prompter beats the retakes, as long as the text sits close enough to the lens that your eyes are not visibly travelling.

How many words is a 30-second script? About 60 to 75 at a conversational pace. The arithmetic is the same in reverse: 30 seconds at 130 wpm is 30 / 60 x 130, which is 65 words.