Record a camera beside the screen

Tick one box and Frame Job records your camera or webcam at the same time as the screen, for a talking head over a screencast. The camera lands as an ordinary clip on a track of its own, already laid out over the screen.

Menu: File ▸ New Recording…
Keys: ⌥⌘N
Where: New Recording panel ▸ Record the camera tooNew Recording panel ▸ LayoutNew Recording panel ▸ Remove the camera's background when it lands
Needs: The Screen Recording and Camera permissions, and the Microphone permission when you choose a microphone.
Agent tools: record_screen

Record the screen and the camera

Choose File ▸ New Recording…, and set Source to a display or Window….
Tick Record the camera too. Camera, Format, Layout and Remove the camera’s background when it lands go live, and a live preview of the camera appears under Format.
Choose the camera in Camera, and its size and frame rate in Format. Record a camera explains both lists.
Choose a layout.
Choose a Microphone if you want your voice. The camera’s movie has no sound of its own.
Press Record. Frame Job checks its permissions, then counts down from 3.
The panel leaves the screen. Pause and stop from the menu-bar item or the File menu.

Record the camera too is off until you tick it, and Frame Job remembers it between launches. It’s live only with a display or Window… as the source. Camera and Microphone Only grey it out, keeping its value.

System Audio, Show Clicks, Size, Include Frame Job windows and Rate stay live and apply to the screen, and the note under Size describes the screen. The camera records at the frame rate of its Format.

What Record checks

Pressing Record stops at the first thing missing, in this order:

A window, when Source reads Window… with none picked. The panel says “Choose a window with Window… first, or pick a display.”
A camera. With none connected, the panel says “No camera is connected.”
The Screen Recording permission.
The Input Monitoring permission, only with Record shortcuts ticked.
The Camera permission.
The Microphone permission, only with a microphone chosen.

Recording permissions says what each one asks of you.

The preview

The camera starts as soon as you tick the box, so it has usually settled at its frame rate by the time recording begins. Unticking the box, choosing Microphone Only or closing the panel turns it off.

The preview shows the chosen camera at the chosen format. When it can’t, it says why:

The preview says	What it means
“No camera is connected.”	There’s no camera to show.
“The preview shows once Frame Job may use the camera.”	You haven’t allowed the Camera permission yet. Showing the panel never asks for it. Pressing Record does, or opens System Settings if you’ve turned it down.
“The camera is recording.”	An agent is recording a camera right now. The picture comes back when it ends.
Another sentence	The reason the camera couldn’t start. Untick and tick the box, or reopen the panel, to try again.

Choose a layout

Layout sets how the camera sits with the screen when the recording lands.

Layout	What it does
Corner	The default. The camera sits in the bottom-right corner, scaled to fit a box a quarter of the canvas wide and a third of it tall, inside the 90 % guide of View ▸ Safe Areas.
Rounded Corner	The same corner with rounded edges.
Circle	The same corner as a circle.
Side by Side	The screen and the camera next to each other.
Camera Full	The camera fills the canvas.

Layout is live only with Record the camera too ticked. Otherwise, and while a recording is under way, it’s greyed out and keeps its value. Frame Job remembers it between launches.

The panel offers no other corner, and no Stacked or Screen Only. Clip ▸ Camera Layout ▸ has those once the clip has landed. Neither offers a scale or an inset, but you can resize the camera once it’s landed. Any crop the panel’s layout makes centres on the camera’s picture, not on the person.

The Camera track

When the recording lands, each stretch’s camera movie goes on one new track named Camera, in front of everything, lined up with that stretch’s screen clip. A recording you never paused has one stretch. A paused one has several.

Frame Job measures how far apart the camera and the screen started, for each stretch. The camera usually starts a moment first, so the clip’s first frames are trimmed off rather than the clip starting early. A camera clip never starts before its screen clip, and never overlaps the camera clip before it.

The camera files land in the same undo step as the screen:

Recording into	The undo step
An open project	Add Recording, for the screen, the camera and any microphone
A new project, one stretch	Add Camera, or Add Camera and Microphone with a microphone. The screen movie is the project itself.
A new project, several stretches	Add Recording Segments

Where a recording lands covers the rest of the landing. Each camera file is named after its screen movie with (Camera) added, for example Screen Recording 2026-10-26 at 17.14.33 (Camera).mov.

How far the layout reaches

The layout is one layout switch at the camera clip’s first frame, the same kind Clip ▸ Camera Layout ▸ makes, so the screen keeps its full picture until the camera arrives. It ends with that stretch’s screen clip or its camera clip, whichever is later.

That keeps it to this recording. A clip that was already in the project never moves, and another stretch’s screen with no camera of its own stays full.

If a stretch’s screen clip is missing, or isn’t playing where its camera starts, that camera goes in the bottom-right corner instead, whichever layout you chose.

Remove the camera’s background

Tick Remove the camera’s background when it lands and Frame Job runs Clip ▸ Remove Background on the camera’s clips as soon as they land. It works on your Mac, with no key.

The box is off until you tick it, and Frame Job remembers it. It’s greyed out, keeping its value, whenever Layout is.

It’s its own undo step, Remove Background, after the landing’s and before any Enhance the microphone when it lands and the When it lands: boxes. Edit ▸ Undo takes it off and keeps the recording. If no camera clip landed, it does nothing and says nothing.

Change a camera clip afterwards

Each camera clip stays an ordinary clip. You can give it another layout from Clip ▸ Camera Layout ▸ or the Layout section.

A camera clip that landed with the recording moves on every frame when you select it on its own and drag it on the canvas. For a resize, or a layout given later in the clip, see Resize or move a laid-out camera.

Good to know

If the camera stops on its own during the recording, for example because it’s unplugged, the screen keeps recording. What the camera wrote lands, later stretches have no camera, and the panel’s note gives the reason. If it stops while the recording is starting, the recording doesn’t start.
A camera file that would keep less than a frame after its trim stays in the Media tab without a clip, and a note says so. If no camera clip can be placed, no Camera track is added.
If a stretch is left out because its movie can’t be read, its camera file stays on disk and the note names it, but it isn’t added to the project.

With an agent

record_screen makes the same recording when it names a camera, and it can choose any of the five layouts and remove the camera’s background. If no camera clip landed, the agent is told so. Landing in an open project, an agent can also leave the recording’s files in the Media tab with no clips, which the panel doesn’t offer. In that case no Camera track is added, and it can’t ask for a layout or a removed background. See Record with record_screen.