Core concepts

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A Rapidemo project contains Scenes, Scenes contain Clips, and effects sit on top of Clips. Learn the mental model behind the editor in two minutes.

Every video you make in Rapidemo follows the same structure. Once you know it, the whole editor makes sense.

Projects, scenes, clips and elements

A project is the whole document you edit. It is saved as one portable file that contains everything, including your recordings.

A Scene is one recording: its screen capture plus the camera and microphone audio you recorded with it. A normal project has a single Scene. You can also combine several recordings into one project as multiple Scenes that play back-to-back.

A Clip is a window into a Scene’s recording. Clips are the base video layer on the timeline, and each Clip has its own layout, volume and playback speed.

Elements are everything layered on top of Clips: Zooms, Clicks, cursor effects, Subtitles and Masks. Rapidemo generates most of them automatically from your recording, and you can edit all of them on the timeline.

Five rules that explain the timeline

A Clip is a window, not a copy. Dragging a Clip changes which part of the recording plays. It never duplicates media, and nothing is deleted from the recording itself.

Gaps between Clips are cuts. Rapidemo removes any time not covered by a Clip. There are no black gaps; playback and export skip straight to the next Clip.

Elements on the same track never overlap. Two Clips, or two zoom animations, can’t occupy the same moment. Elements on different tracks overlap freely, which is why an automatic zoom over a Clip is normal.

Cropping cuts away picture, not time.Crop video removes parts of the image, for example a taskbar. To remove time, resize or split Clips on the timeline instead.

Scenes play back-to-back. Multiple Scenes form one continuous video, optionally joined by a dip-to-black transition.

Where a setting lands: project, scene or element

Rapidemo has three editing scopes.

Project-wide settings apply to the entire video. These are the aspect ratio and Loop cursor, both on the transport bar next to the playback controls, plus the project’s name.

Scene settings apply to the active Scene only. All appearance sections in the properties (Screen Recording, Camera, Background, Cursor, Transcript) target the Scene you’ve selected on the timeline. In multi-scene projects, a numbered header at the top of the properties names the Scene you’re editing, and the Apply to other Scenes button copies the current Scene’s settings to Scenes you choose from a checklist.

Element settings apply to the selected element: a Clip’s layout, a zoom’s level, a mask’s region, a subtitle’s text. Select several elements of the same type to bulk-edit them.

Defaults and presets

Most properties sections have a Set as default button that saves its current styling as the project’s default, so new items of that type start from it. To reuse a look across projects and teammates, save your defaults as a preset.