Running a take
Press play from the top of a script and the prompter composes the cold open for you: a countdown, the recording rolling, and the scroll starting only once you have had a beat to settle.
The cold open
Zeroing at the countdown rather than at GO is deliberate. Starting at GO once put a whole episode's markers four and a half seconds ahead of the footage. Pressing play again during the countdown cancels it.
When GO clears, a take:go row lands in the log as a reference point, and the first section starts scrolling at your reading pace.
The take clock
Cue logging does not require OBS. This is the rule that costs the most to get wrong, so it is the one the design protects hardest.
Without OBS
The clock starts at the countdown and every token logs against it.
take:clock, internal clock, zero at countdown start
A take filmed on a camera the prompter cannot see still produces a usable marker list. Every timecode is offset by one constant.
With OBS
The log is rebased onto the recording’s own timecode, however that recording started.
take:clock, OBS record timecode
Markers import with no offset at all — including when you started the recording from a hotkey or the OBS window rather than from here.
The export explains itself
Three rows in the log are about the log rather than the show. They exist so that an import landing in the wrong place can be diagnosed from the file alone instead of guessed at.
- take:clock
- Which clock the take ran on. Always, as the first row.
- take:rebase
- How far everything logged so far was shifted. When a recording is adopted mid-take.
- take:drift
- The size of the jump, so a misaligned import can be explained. When the recording’s reported duration jumps past a quarter second.
The cue log
Every fired token is logged with a frame-accurate timecode at your project's frame rate. The log opens by itself when a take ends, and you can download it as CSV or copy it. Every write persists locally, so a refresh mid-take cannot destroy a take's markers.
Going again
← is shaped for redoing a section: the first press returns to the top of the section you are in, and only a second press steps back to the previous one. Clicking any section jumps straight to it.
The recording keeps rolling through all of that, which is the point. The tokens in the section you are redoing fire again and land in the log again, further down the take — and that second set of rows is what tells the edit which pass to keep.
If the script changes underneath you
The prompter re-reads its source periodically and before every cold open. If the script has been edited elsewhere, it raises a banner and refuses to start the countdown — but it never reloads on its own, which would end a recording. Adopting the change is a deliberate click, and it swaps the text in place without navigating.
Want to run your next take on this?
PteroPrompter is in early access. Leave an address and we'll be in touch when the first takes ship.