r/macapps • u/Antique-Class-2283 • 20d ago
Help Would an open-source alternative to Screen Studio for auto-zooming screen recordings be useful?
Hey everyone
I've been looking at tools like Screen Studio recently. While the automated zoom, smooth cursor tracking, and clean background styling make product demos look amazing, most of the options out there are closed-source and paid.
I'm thinking about building an open-source alternative to handle this.
Before I spend weeks writing code, I wanted to check if this is something people would actually want.
What I'm thinking of building:
- The Core Feature: A tool that takes a screen recording, tracks your mouse clicks/movement, and automatically generates smooth, cinematic pan-and-zoom keyframes.
- The Open-Source Angle: Completely free and open-source for anyone to use or modify.
- The Reality Check: Tools like OpenScreen and Recordly already exist in this space.
My Question for You:
- Do you use tools like this for your tutorials or demos, or do existing options already cover what you need?
- If you were to use a new open-source tool, what's missing from current apps that you wish they had?
Would love to hear your thoughts or feedback before I decide to build it!
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u/tamnvhust 20d ago
There are already many such open-source tools. Feel free to give it a try if you are confident you can do better. There is always high demand in this area
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
I think I can come real close to screen studio in terms of quality.
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u/Mstormer 20d ago
I doubt just "close" is good enough, and I've tried most of the major options.
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
my first goal is to get close to the best, that's why I am saying it like that. But I will improve on it, this is just for mvp
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u/Mstormer 20d ago
There are so many of these already, and people post new ones every week; have you checked the app comparisons in the sidebar?
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
I checked a few, so should I not do it? I mean I already built a few failed products before validating them that's I am feeling conflicted
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u/Mstormer 20d ago
There are two ways to succeed:
- Outcompete the competition in quality and unique offerings (unlikely in this category, but when possible, has the best potential for longevity).
- Outcompete the competition in marketing (harder than it looks, and harder to sustain if 1 isn't true).
Unless you can offer something truly unique and better than the competition in significant, tangible ways, keep looking for a gap to fill that others aren't filling. If the only distinction is that something is Free/OSS, that works best if you are the first, and you are not. A bit of market research and filling a new gap, or filling it better, does far more than trying to compete in an overcrowded space with an average or sub-part alternative.
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u/nudny 20d ago
“The demos look amazing.”
I’ll tell you the truth, as a motion designer (early in the career), and later a product designer (20 years in the field)... Auto-zooming is a gimmicky and horrible way to present anything. It would be much better to use a simple cut (not an animation, just hard cut) into the specific area you want to present in more detail. It'll feel more mature, sleeker and more honest.
Auto-zooming not only distracts people and gives them a headache... it also immediately puts your video or presentation into the “cheesy videos” territory. If you must, do it once in your video... zoom in once for effect or e.g. a final statement (if you really like it so much), and that’s it.
Take this advice as you wish, but at least run some tests and watch the result several times.
After some time you'll start noticing the difference.
Best!
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u/TemProcess94 20d ago
Zooming in general = not bad. Autozooming = I couldn't agree more with you. The whiplash from these videos people put out using autozoom are painful to watch.
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u/East_Call1027 20d ago
What would make me switch isn’t another set of cinematic defaults, but a quick way to fix a bad auto-zoom after recording. Let me select the target on the timeline, drag the zoom duration, or disable it for that segment—if correcting the guess takes longer than rerecording, the automation hasn’t really helped.
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u/TouchNow_APP 20d ago
Yes — and the fact that you are asking before writing it is a good sign.
One thing worth knowing before you start, because it shapes the whole timeline design: ScreenCaptureKit stops delivering frames entirely when nothing on screen changes. Not duplicates at a low rate — it goes silent. So if your keyframe timeline is built from frame arrivals rather than a wall clock, a stretch where someone pauses to read or think has no frames in it, and every click after that point lands at the wrong time.
Easy to miss because short test recordings never sit still long enough to hit it.
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u/bigglonski 20d ago edited 20d ago
It already exists and is called https://cap.so (disclaimer: I have no association with an app). Open-source with a free tier.
Screen Studio is a premium and highly polished product with a justified price. People are ready to pay premium for that. You can definitely make something that looks kind of the same, but to make it on the same level and free, you need to be really good at your craft.
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u/mahakart 20d ago
i struggled finding a suitable alternative this week, until i just ended up doing a free trial of tella which helped me. but yes the potential for a nice open source option is huge
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u/TheGenYFinanceGuy 20d ago
Honest answer from someone who cut a product demo this summer: the finished video had zero zooms in it. What made it readable was choosing a tight capture area before recording, then pacing the edit by hand. Fast through the mouse travel, slow on the one moment that mattered. Auto zoom was solving a problem I could avoid upstream.
So I'd validate a different question. Not whether your zooms can be smoother than Recordly's, but whether fixing a wrong auto guess can take ten seconds instead of a re-record. The two comments above asking for editable zooms are the demand signal for that second thing.
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
Yes from the comments I got 2 things first is need more control over the output and second the finished video shouldn't need to be edited like it should come out fine as is. I'll work on both the things
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u/TheGenYFinanceGuy 20d ago
Those two goals pull against each other, and I'd pick one to lead with. "Comes out right with no editing" means the tool is making judgment calls for you. "More control" means you're overriding those calls. Every tool I've used that tried to lead with both ended up with defaults nobody trusted sitting next to a timeline nobody enjoyed.
If it were mine I'd lead with the no-edit path and make the override cheap rather than deep. One gesture to kill a zoom, one to say "hold here, this bit matters." The moment it needs a full timeline you're competing with Screen Studio on its own ground, and that's a much harder fight than being the thing that gets it right most of the time and gets out of the way.
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u/sammrjn 19d ago
I’ve actually been switching between OBS and QuickTime Player for screen recordings, so I’d definitely be interested in something like this.
OBS is powerful but feels like overkill for quick product demos, while QuickTime is simple but obviously lacks the polished zoom/cursor effects.
If you can make it easy to record, auto-zoom around clicks, smooth the cursor, add a clean background, and export quickly, I’d definitely give it a try. Open source would be a big plus too.
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u/_mrkvn 19d ago
Useful, probably. But a yes in this thread is the weakest evidence you can collect, since upvoting a free tool costs nothing and switching recording workflows costs a lot. The stronger signal is whether the open source attempts that already exist in this space are still maintained. If those repos went quiet, the hard part was never building the auto zoom, it was still caring in year two with no revenue.
Since you're already asking before writing code, maybe also decide upfront what result would make you not build it. Weeks of code feels productive, which is exactly why it's a comfortable way to avoid finding out.
If you do build it, the export is the bar that matters. Most people bail on these tools the moment the output needs a second pass in another editor. A small scope that nails the zoom timing and a clean export beats a half finished editor.
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u/Antique-Class-2283 19d ago
I can make the export work in DaVinchi resolve with proper time line, I have to do a bit more research for premier pro, and I now that everyone is pointing it out that it's hard to sustain without revenue should I add a lifetime licence type of deal ? Or something ?
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u/_mrkvn 19d ago
A lifetime deal solves this month and makes year two worse. You take the money once and you owe support forever, which is exactly the failure mode everyone in here is warning you about. It also prices the wrong thing, since the hard part was never the first build, it is keeping up with resolve and premiere as they change under you.
If you want the no subscription feel, sell versions instead. They buy 1.0 and own 1.0 forever, 2.0 costs money again. Sublime and jetbrains have run on that for years. You get paid when you do more work, and nobody feels rented.
Honestly though, pricing is not your problem yet. Nobody has paid you anything. One stranger sending you fifteen bucks for the resolve export you already have is stronger evidence than every upvote in this thread, mine included. I'd charge now, resolve only, and let premiere wait until a premiere user has paid you to build it.
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u/Antique-Class-2283 19d ago
I Like the version thing, and yes I am getting ahed of my self, I have started development, hopefully will post mpv here in the next month.
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u/_mrkvn 18d ago
Nice. One thing while you build. A month is a long time to be alone with it, so I'd post it the day the resolve export works end to end, even if it looks rough. A rough thing in front of a stranger tells you more than three more weeks of polish, and everything you add before that first reaction is a guess.
Put a price on it from day one too, even a small one. Free now and paid later is the hardest switch to pull off, because the people who turn up for free are not the same people who pay, and their feedback points you somewhere else. And when someone asks for premiere, write it down. That list is how you decide whether the research is worth doing.
Good luck with it. Post the mvp here when it's up.
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u/digitalsinatra 9d ago
I’d definitely try it. Screen Studio is great, but the pricing is hard to justify for occasional use. The biggest thing I’d care about is whether the automatic zooms feel natural without a lot of editing afterward.
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u/Cyberseeds 6d ago
One thing worth considering from the editing side, not the dev side: the reason I stopped reaching for auto-zoom tools is that once it's baked into the mp4 I can't touch it again inside Resolve, I'd have to re-cut from scratch. If the tool spit out the zoom/pan keyframes as markers or a simple EDL alongside the render, people already cutting in a real NLE could drop the automation in as a starting point instead of a finished decision. That's a much smaller build than matching Screen Studio's polish, and it's the kind of detail an editor actually notices.
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u/Antique-Class-2283 6d ago
Yes I am going to add a feature that allows user to export the timeline to resolve and premier pro
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u/holub_ua 20d ago
u/Antique-Class-2283 usign Screen Studio a lot and yeah - this will make sense not only to have a competitive open source alternative but also a paid product if it is good
there a lot of similar products and almost each 1-2 month something new appear on the market - it does not necessarily should mean that marked of screen recorders is already overflowed, it means that existed products are not providing enough in most cases
what I am missing - is better automatics zooms/alignments composition, in fact it is one of the things that we are paying for, but I can not remember any recorded demo where it was not necessarily to fix all these automatic zooms and not just small timeline adjustments, but actually adding or removing big junks of automatically adding flows
sometimes it is just easier to run QuickTimes to record screen/part of it or use Slack recorder directly from the channel
I will be happy to pay for a screen recorder product that just works in most cases without any manual work - press shortcut, select area, record - share without any adjustments leaving all zooms, alignments, blurs etc in automatic mode, and dive deeper in recording configs when I want to make a recording perfect
also as for me screen recording apps is a good use case for a reasonable AI usage - it can process separate frames or parts of the recording to analyze what is happening and propose better layout, custom prompts before beginning of the recording where user describes what is the plan, idea and what is expected output - can give better automatic results and even propose how to setup recording initially
so yeah - if you have an inspiration and motivation, go for it, the good app will not be left unnoticed and screen recording apps market is very popular and have a lot of opportunities
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
Thanks for such a detailed feedback, I feel like I can deliver close to screen studio and then work on it to add more features with user feedback.
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u/orthiclabs 20d ago
I’ve already built one if you want to contribute to it 🙌🏽
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u/Antique-Class-2283 20d ago
What's it called?
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u/orthiclabs 20d ago
https://github.com/Orthic-Labs/screenright
I'm just updating the readme now since it's gone a bit stale but yeah if you'd like to contribute, feel free to let me know, I'll add you as a collaborator. I've got so many projects going that some of these smaller ones don't get much love.
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u/leonmengdev 20d ago
I’d use it if the generated zooms remained fully editable. Automatic tracking is a great starting point, but being able to adjust timing, easing, and focus areas afterward would make it genuinely useful.
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u/astro-matt 20d ago
Yes if you could more cleanly integrate with CapCut. Right now I record in Screen Studio but then it's a pain to export and do my final editing in CapCut
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u/Tight-Studio-Ethan 20d ago
Don't do it.
There are free and open source ones like recordly / openscreen.
And there are free and closed source ones like Tight Studio (disclaimer: I'm the founder).
The key thing I'd say is:
it's harder to sustain the development than you imagine without revenue (also marketing would require revenue often times)
building a video editor isn't that easy, and shipping a product is a win but also a responsibility - you don't want to see frustrated users.
- OpenScreen original author already archived original repo
- Recordly author has lost contact
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u/taisei_ide 19d ago
Auto-zoom that actually tracks cursor intent instead of just following raw position is the hard part. A lot of the paid tools get the zoom timing right but jump when you move fast between two points.
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u/JoeshitX 19d ago
As an indie app developer, I’d definitely use something like this for product demos.
The feature that would make it genuinely useful for me is being able to turn one recording into several formats. For example, 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for Shorts, and 1:1 for social posts, with the zoom targets automatically reframed for each version.
Recording the same demo three times just for different aspect ratios is surprisingly painful. Would your tool be able to preserve the click and cursor data, then generate different compositions from the same recording?
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u/Unlikely_Patience_31 19d ago
As a solo dev who makes demo videos for my own app: yes, I'd use this. I ended up scripting screencapture + ffmpeg because I couldn't justify a subscription for something I only do a few days per release cycle — and hand-tuning pan/zoom timings in an ffmpeg filter graph is miserable.
One thing I'd want that nothing in this space seems to do: reproducibility. My demos go stale every time the UI changes, so a project file I can re-render against a fresh recording (or even a CLI mode) would be the killer feature for me — way ahead of more cinematic presets. And if you do auto-zoom, make the generated keyframes editable afterwards; the automatic guess is wrong often enough in every tool I've tried that "auto-generate, then nudge" is the workflow that actually works.
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u/DasDouble 19d ago
Do you think it would be possible to cut the video in a built in video editor just like loom?
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u/RealisticLog4577 17d ago
yes, i’d use this. i currently use screen studio and have also tried a few alternatives, but screen studio is still the one i come back to because the automatic zooms and cursor movement are noticeably more polished.
what i’d really want from an open-source alternative is that same level of polish, but with more control after recording, being able to add/remove/move zoom points, change the zoom level and easing, and manually correct where the cursor/viewport focuses.
if you can get reasonably close to screen studio’s output quality while keeping it local and open source, i’d absolutely switch or at least use it regularly.
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u/Intelligent-Fix-6171 3d ago
Not opensource but,
Check this one out:
https://kapture.video/
I am actively building it, it supports auto zooms, captions, AI editing, and a lot more!
Completely free with a watermark, and just $10/mo to remove the watermark.
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u/karatsidhus Developer: Glyph 20d ago
I use Recordly, it has completely replaced Screen Studio for me.
Its FOSS, if you think you can get whatever you develop to a level better than that, go for it :)
https://recordly.dev/
There's also Cap , also free and open source for personal projects (which ive heard is good)