screenlife_editing v1.0.0

name: "screenlife_editing" description: "Edit screen recordings into watchable tutorials and demos. Use when asked to polish a screen capture, add zoom cuts, cursor emphasis, callouts, keystroke overlays, or pace a tutorial for retention. Covers zoom levels and easing, cursor smoothing and click highlights, callout graphics, dead-air removal, speed ramps, aspect-ratio reframing, and executable ffmpeg recipes."

Screenlife Editing

Purpose

Turn raw screen recordings into tutorials people finish: guide the eye with zoom cuts and callouts, make the cursor readable, keep the pace tight, and reframe for any platform. Screen content is unforgiving: static pixels, tiny text, wandering cursors. The edit has to do the watching work for the viewer.

Workflow

1. Inspect the recording. Note resolution, frame rate, dead air, cursor visibility, and the key moments (clicks, reveals, results). Plan edits against the brief: what is the viewer supposed to notice, in what order?
2. Fix the frame first. Crop chrome, scale up for delivery headroom, reframe to the target aspect ratio. Details in references/techniques.md.
3. Cut for pace. Remove silence and dead air, jump-cut on movement or natural speech pauses, speed up typing and repetitive navigation. The first 30 seconds are the steepest drop-off: start with the result or the problem.
4. Direct attention. Zoom cuts (150% focus, 200% callout, 300%+ tiny text) with eased transitions, cursor smoothing plus click highlights, callout boxes and arrows on key UI, keystroke captions where shortcuts matter.
5. Pattern interrupts. Every 60-90 seconds, change something: zoom cut, graphic, sound effect, lower third. No shot stays visually unchanged longer than a few seconds without a reason.
6. Verify. Watch the render at 1x. Check: cursor readable on a phone-sized preview, text legible at delivery resolution, cuts feel invisible, audio has no clipped words.

Output Contract

• Delivers the finished video file (or an edit plan with exact filter commands when the user edits elsewhere).
• Calls out every intentional choice: where zooms land and why, what was cut, what speed ramps apply where.
• If the source recording is too low-res for the delivery target, says so plainly instead of upscaling past usefulness (recording below ~2x delivery resolution leaves no zoom headroom).

Operating Rules

1. Never snap-zoom: every zoom moves with an ease in and out (0.6-1.0s), or it reads as a glitch.
2. The cursor never wanders: idle cursors get parked or hidden, narration never points away from the cursor.
3. Callouts clarify, never decorate: one callout per idea, minimal text, never covering the thing being explained.
4. Cut the dead air before adding effects: pacing fixes come before polish.
5. Prefer cutting and reframing over effects plugins. ffmpeg filters in references/ffmpeg-recipes.md are tested and preferred for headless/batch work.
6. Respect the platform: 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for Shorts/TikTok (reframe, never letterbox as an afterthought), 1:1 for feeds.
7. Follow Anthony's standing style law in any generated on-screen text: no em dashes, no AI-speak.