Style the recorded cursor

When a screen recording keeps its pointer out of the movie, Frame Job draws the pointer for you, so you can restyle it long after you stopped recording. The Cursor section makes it bigger, calms a shaky path, hides it when it rests and puts a ring on every click.

Where: Clip tab ▸ Picture ▸ Cursor
Needs: A screen recording made with Cursor set to Separate, the default, so its pointer isn't in the movie.
Agent tools: set_videopaste_attributesget_cursor_events

Find the Cursor section

Select a recording’s clip on the timeline.
Open the Clip tab’s Picture sub-tab.
Open the Cursor section, after Background. It starts shut.

The section’s header sums up what’s set: off, on or arrow, with + ripples when clicks ripple.

The section is there only when every selected clip comes from a movie with a cursor file that the picture doesn’t already show:

A recording made with Cursor: set to In the picture has no section, because the pointer is part of the movie and would otherwise be drawn twice. See The cursor in a recording.
A movie with no cursor file has no section. If the file exists but didn’t come along, attach it with Locate….
A selection that also holds any other kind of clip has no section.

A freeze frame of a recording has the section too, with the pointer held where it was on that frame.

Each row is its own undo step. If the selected clips disagree about a row, it shows as mixed.

Tidy the pointer in one click

Choose Polish at the bottom of the section. It sets Smoothing to Medium and Hide when idle to 3 s, as one undo step called “Polish Cursor”. Nothing else changes, and you can adjust either row afterwards.

The controls

Control	What it does	Default	Range
Show cursor	Draws the pointer.	On	On, off
Size	How big the pointer is drawn.	100 %	25–800 %
Style	Which pointer is drawn.	As recorded	As recorded, Arrow
Smoothing	Calms a shaky path.	Off	Off, Light, Medium, Strong
Hide when idle	Fades out a resting pointer.	Never	Never, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 s
Clicks	Draws a ring out of every click.	None	None, Ripple
Ripple color	The ring’s colour, with opacity.	White at 80 %	Any colour
Ripple size	How big the ring grows.	100 %	25–400 %

Show or resize the pointer

Untick Show cursor to draw no pointer on this clip. Click rings are separate, so with Clicks set to Ripple the rings still draw without a pointer. That’s useful when you want to show where someone clicked and nothing else.

Size has quick picks at 50, 100, 150, 200 and 400 %. Its slider runs to 400 %, and you can type up to 800 % in the field.

Choose the pointer’s style

Style offers As recorded and Arrow. Frame Job’s recordings don’t store pictures of the pointer, so both choices draw Frame Job’s arrow, and a pointer that was an I-beam or a hand on screen is drawn as the arrow too. The only difference you’ll see is that the section’s header reads arrow rather than on.

Frame Job’s arrow is a black arrow with a white outline, 14 by 21 points at 100 %. It’s drawn at the recording’s own pixel density and redrawn for each Size rather than stretched, so it stays crisp.

Calm a shaky path

Smoothing irons out the wobble in the pointer’s path, from Light through Medium to Strong. The pointer still reaches every click exactly, at the moment of the click, and a pause stays a pause.

Hide a resting pointer

Hide when idle fades the pointer out after the time you pick with no movement and no mouse press. Scrolling and typing don’t count as activity. The fade takes 0.2 s, and the pointer comes back 0.15 s before it next moves or clicks, so it’s already there when it sets off.

Show clicks

Set Clicks to Ripple to draw a ring growing out of every press of a mouse button. A ring lasts 0.45 s, growing quickly at first and fading as it goes, and up to four can show at once. At 100 % it reaches 24 points from the click.

Ripple color and Ripple size are live only while Clicks is Ripple. Ripple size has quick picks at 50, 100, 150 and 200 %.

Clicks starts at None, unless the recording was made with Show Clicks: on and Cursor: set to Separate. Those clips land with Ripple already set.

Put everything back

Reset in the section’s header appears once something differs from its default. It sets all eight rows back to the defaults in the table, as one undo step called “Reset Cursor”.

Change the pointer part-way through a clip

Select an action on the clip and the section edits that action instead of the whole clip:

Rows	With an action selected
Size, Ripple size	Animate across the action.
Show cursor, Style, Clicks, Ripple color	Switch at the action’s end. The row says at end.
Smoothing, Hide when idle	Always change the clip itself. Their rows show ⊘.

Polish also changes the clip itself, whatever is selected. Reset isn’t offered while an action is selected. Once the action holds a cursor change, the section’s header shows Clear in its place, which takes every cursor change out of that action as one undo step called “Clear”. Smoothing and Hide when idle stay as they are on the clip.

The first time you change one of the action rows on a clip with no cursor settings of its own, Frame Job stores the defaults on the clip in the same step. That’s what lets Size and Ripple size animate from 100 % instead of jumping.

Copy the settings to another clip

Edit ▸ Paste Attributes (⌥⌘V) carries a clip’s cursor settings to another clip, along with the rest of its picture settings. The settings are replaced as a whole, so pasting from a clip whose cursor you never changed puts the target’s back to the defaults. See Paste Attributes.

Streak a moving pointer

With the clip’s Motion Blur above 0, in the Transform section, a moving pointer is streaked along its path across the shutter. That happens even when the clip itself stands still. A still pointer and the click rings stay sharp.

The streak shows in the preview, in rendered frames and in every export. A clip that motion blur draws sharp keeps its pointer sharp, and so does a freeze frame.

How the pointer sits in the picture

The pointer is drawn inside its clip, as if it were part of the movie. So it follows the clip’s zooms, placement and crop, it takes the clip’s grade, and the preview, rendered frames and exports all agree. In an HLG project the pointer and its rings are lifted to match the picture.

It also follows the clip’s time. Change the clip’s speed and the pointer speeds up with it. Reverse the clip and the pointer plays backwards too.

Good to know

A cursor file loads in the background and never holds up the preview. Until it’s ready the frame draws without the pointer, then redraws with it. Changing Smoothing can do the same for a moment, because the new path has to be worked out. Rendered frames and exports wait for the file.
Hide when idle and the ring’s 0.45 s count in the recording’s own time, so on a clip at 2× they pass twice as fast.
Splitting a clip or making a freeze frame keeps the clip’s own Smoothing and Hide when idle, even from inside an action.
Paste onto a clip with no cursor file and the settings are kept but nothing is drawn.
If a cursor file is missing or can’t be read, the clip draws with no pointer. See When a cursor file has a problem.

With an agent

set_video‘s cursor key sets the same eight values, and it isn’t held to the pop-ups’ steps. Smoothing can be any value from 0 to 1, where Light is 0.25, Medium 0.5 and Strong 1, and Hide when idle anything from 0.5 to 30 seconds. Size is a scale from 0.25 to 8 and Ripple size one from 0.25 to 4.

{cursor: {}} stores all eight defaults on the clip and cursor: null clears them. Frame Job won’t accept a value outside its range, and it doesn’t round one to fit. See the cursor key for the full list.

To see what a recording’s pointer did before styling it, an agent reads the cursor file with get_cursor_events.