Your first recording, end to end

Do this once with something unimportant. It is the fastest way to understand what the rest of the guide is talking about.

1. Start the app

A narrow toolbar appears. From left to right it holds what you are recording, the size, the microphone, the camera, a settings button and a red record button.

2. Choose what to record

Click the first pill and pick Display if you only have one screen. Pick Window to click on a single window, or Region to drag a box. A panel appears over the screen showing what will be captured, and it stays out of the recording.

3. Record

Press the red button, or F9 from anywhere, even with Cilevi behind another window. Do something for twenty or thirty seconds: click a few things, scroll, type into a box. Clicks matter here, because they are what the zooms are built from.

Press F9 again to stop.

4. Look at what happened

The Creator Studio opens with your take already on the timeline. Press Space to play it.

Notice three things you did not do. The recording is sitting on a background inside a rounded frame. The picture pushes in around each of your clicks and comes back out afterwards. The pointer is smooth, and it changed shape over a text box.

5. Change one thing

Click the Background tab on the right and pick a different wallpaper. The preview changes as you click.

6. Export

Press the blue Export button on the top bar, or Ctrl+E. Leave everything as it is, choose where to save, and let it run. When it finishes you are asked whether to open the file.

That is the whole loop. Everything else in this guide is a refinement of one of those six steps.