Documentation

#What Swamp Dragon is

Swamp Dragon is a desktop screen recorder and video editor for people who teach with their screens: tutorials, product demos, onboarding videos, bug reports and course lessons. It records your screen, webcam, microphone and system audio as separate tracks, then gives you an editor built for screen content — cursor-aware zooms, webcam layouts, animated titles, motion graphics, transitions and reusable editing skills.

Three ideas shape how it works:

• Local-first. Recordings, projects and exports stay on your computer. Nothing is uploaded, and the app works fully offline. See the privacy policy.
• Non-destructive. Your original tracks are never changed. Every edit is stored as instructions in the project file, so any cut, zoom or effect can be changed or undone later.
• What you see is what you export. The preview and the exporter draw every frame with the same compositor, so the exported video matches the editor frame for frame.

#How the app is organized

#System requirements

#Install

#Permissions

Swamp Dragon only asks for what recording needs. On macOS you can see the current status at any time in Settings → Recording → Permissions.

#Record your first video

1. Choose what to record

   On Home, pick Display, Window or Region. Click Change display / Choose window to open the picker, which shows live thumbnails, app icons and a search box.

2. Pick your inputs

   Toggle Camera, Microphone, System audio and Cursor metadata, and choose devices from the dropdowns. A level meter shows your mic is working.

3. Style the camera (optional)

   Open Camera style to set the shape, size, corner, border and background. These become the defaults for the new recording and can be changed later in the editor.

4. Start

   Click Start recording or press ⌘⇧R (CtrlShiftR on Windows). After the countdown, the main window minimizes and the recording bar appears at the top of the screen.

5. Stop

   Click the stop button on the bar or press the same shortcut again. The recording is saved and opens in the editor.

#Capture modes

#Inputs

• Camera — recorded to its own track at its native resolution. The overlay you see in videos is applied when previewing and exporting, so you can restyle or hide it later.
• Microphone — recorded to its own track. Noise reduction (Home → quick options) applies the system's noise suppression while recording.
• System audio — the sound your computer plays (app audio, browser videos), on its own track. On macOS this uses the system audio capture permission.
• Cursor metadata — the cursor path, clicks and shortcuts, stored next to the video in cursor.json. It powers Zoom to click and Show shortcuts. The cursor itself is always visible in the screen recording.

#Camera style

The camera style sheet sets how the webcam bubble looks in new recordings. Everything here can be changed per project in the editor's Webcam inspector.

#Quick options

• Frame rate — 30 or 60 fps. 60 fps gives smoother scrolling and cursor movement at the cost of larger files.
• Countdown — Off, 3 s or 5 s before recording starts.
• Noise reduction — on by default for the microphone.
• Save folder — the folder button next to Camera style shows and changes where recordings are saved.

#The recording bar

While recording, Swamp Dragon hides itself and shows a slim bar at the top edge of the screen with the elapsed time, a mic level meter, mic mute, camera on/off, pause and stop. Click the arrow on the bar to open a small panel with more controls. The bar is excluded from capture on systems that support window exclusion, so it doesn't appear in your video.

#Clip limits and crash safety

Each plan has a maximum length per recording (see clip limits). Thirty seconds before the limit the bar shows a warning; at the limit the recording stops by itself and is saved — nothing is discarded.

Recordings are written to disk every second while you record. If your computer or the app crashes, the next launch rebuilds the project from everything that reached the disk and tells you which recordings were recovered.

#Projects and files

Each recording is a project: a folder inside your recordings folder (by default ~/Movies/Swamp Dragon on macOS and Videos\Swamp Dragon on Windows). Change it in Settings → Save recordings to.

#The editor

The editor opens automatically when you stop recording. It has five areas:

• Header — project name (click to rename), save status, undo/redo, the MCP status pill, Record and Export.
• Left panel — tabs for Media, Titles, Graphics, Zoom, Effects, Skills and Plugins. Click the active tab again to collapse it on small windows.
• Preview — the composed frame at the playhead. Click to play or pause. With an item selected, you can drag it here.
• Inspector — every setting of the selected item. With nothing selected it shows the webcam (or frame) settings.
• Timeline — layers, zoom, effects, blur, screen, webcam and audio lanes, with a toolbar above.

#Playback and navigation

• Space plays and pauses. Clicking the preview does the same.
• ← / → step one frame; Shift + arrow jumps 5 seconds; Home / End go to the start or end.
• Click or drag on the ruler or any empty lane to scrub. With snapping on, the playhead snaps to cuts, markers and item edges.

#The timeline

#Toolbar

#Lanes

• Layers — text, image and graphics layers. Layers higher in the list draw on top. Each layer has hide (eye) and lock buttons; double-click a name to rename it; right-click for move up/down, delete and more.
• Zoom — cursor zooms.
• Effects — timed video effects (appears when you add one).
• Blur — privacy blurs (appears when you add one).
• Screen and Webcam — the clips of the main track. Speed, reverse and freeze badges show on each clip; transitions show at the cuts.
• Mic and System — waveforms that follow your cuts, speed and reverse.

#Moving, trimming and ripple

• Move an item by dragging it. Drag it up or down onto another layer of the same kind to move it there.
• Trim or extend an item by dragging its left or right edge.
• Trim or extend a clip by dragging its edge on the Screen lane. Dragging outward brings back footage you cut earlier. Everything after the clip moves with it (ripple), so titles stay in sync with the video.
• Locked layers can't be moved or trimmed.

#Right-click menus

#Clips: speed, reverse and freeze frames

• Speed from 0.25× to 4×. Audio keeps its pitch.
• Reverse plays the clip backwards. Reversed clips play silently.
• Freeze frame holds one frame for 0.1–60 seconds (2 s by default). Set the hold time in the inspector.
• Duplicate places a copy right after the clip; Delete removes it and closes the gap; Restore all cuts brings back the full recording.

#Markers and In/Out

Press M to add a marker at the playhead. Markers are used by the Chapter card skill and by assistants as chapter points. I and O set an In/Out range; choose In → Out in the export dialog to export just that part.

#Text, graphics and images

Add titles from the Titles tab (20 presets with live previews, plus SRT/WebVTT caption import), motion graphics from the Graphics tab, and images or logos from Media → Add image or logo. Select any item to style it in the inspector. Full details are on the Features page.

#Animating with keyframes

1. Select the item

   Click a text, image, graphic, or the webcam on the timeline.

2. Add the first keyframe

   Move the playhead and press K (or Add key in the inspector's Transform section).

3. Move and change

   Move the playhead again, then drag the item on the preview or change Move X/Y, Scale, Rotate or Opacity. A new keyframe is created at the playhead automatically.

4. Choose the easing

   Each keyframe has an easing: ease in-out, ease in, ease out, linear, overshoot, bounce or elastic. Keyframes appear as diamonds on the selected item.

#Zoom and privacy blur

Add a zoom from the Zoom tab, then click the preview where it should zoom in. Each zoom has a scale (1.1×–4×), easing, ramp time (how long it takes to zoom in and out) and start/end. Or run Zoom to click to place zooms on every click automatically.

Blur region (Effects → Privacy & markers) hides emails, keys and names. Drag the dashed box on the preview to place it; the blur follows zooms because it's anchored to the recording.

#Webcam

With nothing selected, the inspector shows the webcam: show/hide, shape, size, position, border, shadow, mirror, fade-in, background (original, blur, image) and a Transform section for keyframed position, scale, rotation and opacity — for example to move the camera aside when a menu opens.

#Audio

In Media, each audio track has a mute switch and a volume from 0 to 200%. Cuts, speed changes and freeze frames apply to audio automatically. To remove pauses, use the Trim silence skill.

#Frame, look and effects

The Effects tab styles the whole video:

• Frame — padding around the recording, corner radius, shadow (on/off, strength, softness, offset), border, and a background (color, gradient, image or a blurred copy of the video).
• Look — 10 presets and sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, temperature, hue, sharpen, vignette, film grain, black & white, sepia and soften.
• Effects at the playhead — 12 timed effects such as camera shake, zoom punch, glitch and old film.
• Transitions — choose one and apply it to every cut.
• Defaults — save the current frame, look and transition for new recordings.

Every option is listed on the Features page.

#Export

Click Export (or press ⌘E), choose a format and settings, and pick where to save.

• Resolution — 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4K or Source. Video is 16:9; "Source" keeps the recording's own size.
• Frame rate — 24, 30 or 60 fps.
• Quality — High, Standard or Small (file size vs. detail).
• Range — Whole video, or In → Out.

Exporting renders every frame with the same compositor as the preview, using your Mac's or PC's hardware encoder when available. It takes roughly as long as the video plays, longer with camera background effects. The dialog shows the current step, frame count and estimated time left, and you can cancel at any time. Every export is listed on the Exports page.

#Premiere Pro package Pro

Choose Premiere package in the export dialog and pick a folder. Swamp Dragon creates a folder with an XML timeline (FCP 7 XML, which Premiere imports), your tracks converted to edit-friendly MP4 and WAV files, and a Compatibility report.txt. Your cuts land on separate tracks (V1 screen, V2 camera, A1 mic, A2 system). Effects that Premiere can't represent — zooms, titles, graphics, blurs, the webcam layout — are listed in the report so nothing is lost. In Premiere, choose File → Import… and select the XML.

#Settings

#Keyboard shortcuts

On Windows, use Ctrl wherever you see ⌘.

#Where Swamp Dragon keeps its data

Besides your recordings folder, the app keeps a small data folder:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Swamp Dragon
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Swamp Dragon

#Update and uninstall

Update: download the latest version and install it over the old one. Your projects and settings are kept.

Uninstall: on macOS, drag Swamp Dragon from Applications to the Trash; on Windows, use Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Swamp Dragon → Uninstall. Your recordings folder and data folder are not deleted — remove them yourself if you no longer need them.

#Next steps