Zella Glossary

Animated cards of Zella editing terms

Quick answer: Definitions of every Zella term — from anchor and auto-duck to ripple delete, scopes, and Vision auto-track — in plain language, each with a pointer to the chapter that covers it.

Plain-language definitions of the terms used throughout this guide.

Anchor — The pivot point a zoom or transform scales/rotates around, and the position a title/callout sticks to when you reframe. Setting the anchor on the right spot keeps emphasis and text where you want them. (Chapters 12, 18.)

Aspect ratio — The shape of the frame: 16:9 (landscape/YouTube), 9:16 (vertical/TikTok), 1:1 (square), 4:5 (Instagram feed). (Chapter 20.)

Auto-Duck — Automatically lowering background music while you speak and raising it in the gaps. (Chapter 14.)

Auto-Zoom — Automatic punch-in zooms generated from your recorded cursor clicks. (Chapter 12.)

Bubble (webcam bubble) — Your camera composited as a small overlay (circle/wide/portrait) over a screen recording. (Chapters 4–5.)

Callout — An on-screen annotation: arrow, box, ellipse, label, keystroke, spotlight, number, or blur. (Chapter 19.)

Caption preset — A visual style for subtitles (Word Pop, Hormozi, Karaoke, Pop Box, Neon, Clean). (Chapter 11.)

Color Board — Shadows/Midtones/Highlights controls with R/G/B/Luma for precise grading. (Chapter 17.)

Color Match — Shifting one clip’s color toward a reference frame’s look. (Chapter 17.)

Cut (B-cut) — Splitting the clip at the playhead to create an edit point (press B). (Chapter 9.)

Export — Rendering the project to a finished file (MP4/MOV/GIF/M4A) with all edits baked in. (Chapter 21.)

Fill / Fit — Reframe modes: Fill center-crops to fill the new aspect (edges may be cut); Fit letterboxes so nothing is cropped. (Chapter 20.)

Filler words — “um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” sentence-initial “so/OK,” etc., that Remove Fillers can cut. (Chapter 10.)

Graph editor — The bezier curve editor for shaping keyframe easing. (Chapter 12.)

J-cut / L-cut — Audio leads the picture (J) or lingers after it (L) at a cut, for smoother edits. (Chapter 14.)

Keyframe — A saved value (scale, position, opacity, rotation) at a point in time; Zella animates smoothly between keyframes. (Chapter 12.)

LUT / Look — A preset color grade (e.g. Teal & Orange, Kodachrome). Zella ships 18, with an intensity blend. (Chapter 17.)

Loudness (LUFS) — A perceptual loudness measure. Polish Voice targets ~−14 LUFS, the social/YouTube standard. (Chapter 14.)

Mask — A rectangle/ellipse (with feather) that confines an effect or grade to part of the frame. (Chapter 16.)

Motion blur — Natural smear on fast-moving zooms/transforms. (Chapter 12.)

Platform preset — A target (TikTok, YouTube, IG, etc.) that sets the output aspect and dimensions. (Chapters 20–21.)

Polish Voice — Offline voice cleanup: high-pass, de-ess, compression, loudness normalization. (Chapter 14.)

Region recording — Capturing a rectangle of the screen rather than the whole display. (Chapter 4.)

Reframe — Changing the project’s aspect ratio (e.g. 16:9 → 9:16) via crop/fit. (Chapter 20.)

Ripple delete — Removing a section and sliding later content up to close the gap. (Chapter 9.)

Scopes — A live luma histogram for objectively judging brightness/contrast while grading. (Chapter 17.)

Setup panel — The menu-bar recording window (“Ready to record”). (Chapter 3.)

Snapshot (versioned) — A saved earlier state of the project you can roll back to. (Chapter 22.)

Speed ramp — A smooth acceleration/deceleration across a segment (vs. a constant multiplier). (Chapter 13.)

Still clip — A short video segment made from an imported image. (Chapter 8.)

Studio (editor) — Zella’s editing window, opened after recording or when you open a file. (Chapter 7.)

Studio Settings — The camera/bubble/background configuration panel (Camera, Border, Zoom, Cursor, Export tabs). (Chapter 5.)

Transition — A blend between two segments at a cut (18 available). (Chapter 15.)

Transcript — The on-device speech-to-text Zella builds for captions and filler removal. (Chapters 10–11.)

Vision auto-track — Apple-Silicon face/saliency tracking that keeps a subject framed during a vertical crop. (Chapter 20.)

End of documentation. Return to the index.

Animated cards defining Zella editing terms

How to use the glossary

Terms are grouped by where you meet them — recording, timeline, audio, color, and export.
Each entry links to the full guide for that feature, so you can jump from “what is it” to “how do I do it.”
Unsure what a button does? Search this page for its label before hunting through menus.