What you see is what gets recorded
The preview, the file, every stream destination and the guest view all show the same finished scene. There is no second output configuration to keep in sync, and no surprises on playback.
A whole studio
in one desktop app.
Layouts, backgrounds, multiple cameras, remote guests, overlays, a teleprompter, intros, music and shortcuts, going straight to a file on your disk or live to four platforms at once.
macOS, Windows and Linux. No account, no cloud, no subscription.
Supports
- YouTube
- Twitch
- Kick
- X
- Vimeo
- Custom RTMP
- predefined scene layouts
- 8 predefined scene layouts
- cameras at once
- 4 cameras at once
- remote guests
- 4 remote guests
- output sizes
- 6 output sizes
A production studio, not a screen recorder
Most tools capture a window. This one builds the whole show: who is on screen, where they
sit, what is behind them, what plays over them, and where it all goes.
Everything runs on your machine
Compositing, background replacement, audio mixing and encoding all happen locally. Guest video travels directly between their machine and yours. No cloud, no account, no upload queue.
Guests, properly produced
Up to four remote guests, with a green room, per guest mute and disconnect, echo-free audio between guests, and screen sharing that rearranges the cameras rather than hiding them.
A phone becomes a second camera
Scan a QR code and a phone on the same wifi joins the scene, which for most people is the best camera they own. No app to install and nothing leaves the network.
The presenting tools are already here
Teleprompter, intro and outro clips, backstage chat with your guests, and a music library, all inside the studio rather than a second app on another monitor.
The take survives your decisions
Save scenes and switch mid-take, mark moments with a key press, and optionally record the camera as its own clean file so a wrong call during the take is recoverable afterwards.
Eight layouts, and you can move everything
Pick how the screen and the cameras sit together, then drag either one to reposition it
directly on the preview. Whatever you build is exactly what lands in the recording and in the
stream.
Layout
Drag the camera and the screen to reposition them, directly on the preview.
Sam Rivera
Sam Rivera
Sam Rivera
Sam Rivera
Sam Rivera
Sam Rivera
Marcus
Priya
Daniel
Output
720p 1080p 4K Square Portrait Match shared screen 30 / 60 fps
Match shared screen sizes the output to the exact dimensions of the screen you are sharing, so text stays pin sharp. Square and portrait are there for social.
It looks like your show, not like a webcam call
Backgrounds, a watermark, a lower-third ticker and name badges, all drawn into the frame
before it reaches the file or the encoder.
Backgrounds
Sixteen gradients and solids, sixteen built-in images, eight gradient directions, or drag in your own picture.
Logo watermark
The Watercourse mark, or drop in your own, drawn into every frame.
Scrolling ticker
Lower-third announcements that run under the scene, in a colour you choose.
New episode every Thursday · Subscribe for updates ·
New episode every Thursday · Subscribe for updates ·
Participant names
Drawn under each camera. Twelve badge colours or your own hex, rounded or square corners, and a choice of font.
Sam Rivera
Priya
Marcus
Look right before you hit record
Everything about how you appear is a control in the app, previewed live, and applied to what
gets recorded rather than bolted on afterwards.
- Four cameras, one scene
- Your main camera plus up to three more. They tile together in the gallery layout, or you cut between them, and each one gets a name so the scene captions people rather than hardware.
- Replace what is behind you
- Blur the room, swap in an image, or drop in a solid colour. The separation runs on device, so the frames never leave your machine.
- Six effect presets, or your own mix
- Bright, Warm, Cool, Vivid, Soft and Mono, previewed live, with brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth on sliders underneath.
- Fit and finish
- Crop a 4:3 webcam to fill a 16:9 scene instead of letterboxing it, scale it up, mirror it, add a drop shadow, and square off the small corner camera.
Camera effects
Live preview
Brightness
Contrast
Saturation
Warmth
Background
Replace camera background
Camera feed shadow
Crop camera to scene
Scale webcam up
Mirror camera
Square corner camera
Multi-camera without buying cameras
Scan a QR code and a phone on the same wifi becomes another camera in the scene, which for
most people is the best camera they own. It takes about ten seconds.
- Nothing to install on the phone. It opens a page the app is serving itself.
- The phone joins as another camera: tile it in the gallery, or cut to it with a key press.
- Everything stays on your wifi. The feed never touches the internet.
Because browsers only allow camera access on secure pages, the phone shows a certificate warning the first time. That is expected, and it only happens once per phone.
Use your phone as a camera
https://192.168.1.176:8789/camera
Scan this with your phone, on the same wifi.
Copy link Done
Change the whole look mid-sentence
Save the current layout, background, overlays, names and intro as a scene, then return to it
with one click or one key. Switching is instant, and the recording and the stream never see a
gap.
Scenes
1
Streaming
2
Intro
3
Interview
4
Outro
+
Pictures, not names
A strip of thumbnails sits under the preview, so mid-show you are choosing between pictures rather than reading a list.
Your camera settings stay put
Scenes deliberately leave the camera's own settings alone. Switching will not change your skin tone, and it will not turn off the backdrop hiding your room.
Bare keys, no modifiers to hunt for
- 1
- Jump to a saved scene
- C
- Cut to the next camera
- Shift 2
- Cut to a specific camera
- M
- Mute
- I
- Show the intro
- O
- Show the outro
- P
- Play music
- B
- Mark this moment
- ?
- The full list
Single keys, so they can be pressed without looking down mid-sentence.
Up to four guests, properly produced
Guests open the same app and enter a room code. You decide when they go on, and their video
travels directly between their machine and yours.
Room
K7F2QD
In scene
Marcus
In scene · 1080p
Green room
P
Add
Priya
Waiting · camera on
D
Add
Daniel
Waiting · muted
Nothing from the green room reaches the recording or the stream.
- A real green room
- Guests connect and wait. Nothing they send reaches the recording or the stream until you add them to the scene.
- Host controls
- Add to the scene or take them out, mute, or disconnect, per guest, at any time.
- Guests hear each other
- Not just you. Each person’s own audio is kept out of their return feed, so nobody hears themselves echo.
- Guests see the finished scene
- Exactly as you built it, with their own camera drawn locally so their self-view has no delay.
- Guests get their own controls
- Their camera, their microphone and their own camera effects, so you are not talking anybody through settings.
- Screen sharing coexists
- Share a screen and the cameras arrange themselves beneath it automatically.
The second monitor, folded into the app
A teleprompter, an intro and outro library, a private channel to your guests, and a music
player. Three of the four never appear in the recording, the stream or the guest view, so they
cannot leak.
Teleprompter
A floating script panel you drag anywhere over the app and resize. Auto-scroll with adjustable speed, manual scrolling when you want to take over, and adjustable text size.
Script
Speed
Welcome back to the show. Today we are walking through the whole recording pipeline, start to finish, and I will show you exactly where each frame goes…
…then we will bring Priya in to talk about the guest flow.
Intro and outro
Full-screen images or videos that cover the whole scene. Keep a library with previews; videos play from the start and hold on their final frame until you hide them.
Intro
0:06
Sponsor
Outro
A clip's own soundtrack is mixed into the recording and the stream, and can be muted.
Microphones mute automatically while it plays, so nobody talks over it.
Backstage chat
A private text channel between you and your guests, for cueing people without it reaching the audience. It works in the green room, before anyone is on scene.
You two minutes, then I bring you in 🙂
Priya ready when you are
You start with the pricing slide 👍
Emoji shortcodes and emoticons convert as you type, with a quick picker. Links are clickable. Nothing is stored: the log exists for the session only.
Music
A library of bundled royalty-free tracks plus your own audio files, mixed into recordings and streams while playing, with a volume control and optional fade in and out.
Ethereal Vistas
Included · 3:12
Slow Current
Included · 2:48
my-theme.mp3
Yours · 1:05
Microphones mute automatically while a track plays.
Live · 00:42:18
3 of 4 destinations
YouTube 6.0 Mbps
Encoder keeping up
Twitch 4.5 Mbps
Encoder keeping up
Facebook 4.0 Mbps
Reconnecting, attempt 2
Custom RTMP Off
Disabled
Twitch chat, on screen
kestrel_dev the corner cam crop is so clean
mira.builds what layout is this?
ottoline audio is perfect today 👌
Everywhere at once, and you can tell it is working
Push the same scene to YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and any custom RTMP target at the same
time, each one individually enabled or disabled, each one reporting for itself.
- Live health, per destination
- Bitrate and whether the encoder is keeping up, for every target, rather than one global green light that tells you nothing.
- Automatic reconnection
- If a destination drops mid-stream, Watercourse reconnects with backoff. One flaky connection does not end the broadcast.
- Twitch chat overlay
- Read-only, no login, drawn straight into the scene so it reaches the recording and every destination at once.
It lands as a file you own
Recordings go straight to Videos/Watercourse, at anything from 720p to 4K. When you stop, the take opens for review.
Videos/Watercourse/episode-24.mp4
1080p · 60 fps Export MP4
00:00 18:42 37:24
Drag the handles to trim. Four moments marked during the take.
- Review, trim and export
- Scrub the take when you finish, cut the parts you do not want, and export to MP4, or keep the original untouched.
- Mark moments as they happen
- Press a key mid-take. The marks appear on the trim timeline and in a text file of timestamps beside the recording, so a long file stays searchable.
- Record the camera separately
- Optionally save your main camera as its own clean file, so the framing, the layout and any cuts you made live can be redone afterwards.
- Separate audio files
- Save microphone and system audio as standalone tracks, ready to hand to an editor.
- Crash recovery
- An interrupted recording is repaired into a playable file the next time the app starts, rather than being lost.
- It is just a file
- An MP4 in a folder you can open, move, or drop into any editor. No upload, no processing queue, no account holding it hostage.
The whole list, in one place
No add-ons, no plugin marketplace, no upgrade prompt halfway through a take. This is what the
app does.
The scene
- Eight layouts, from screen only to a full gallery
- Drag the camera and the screen to reposition them
- 720p, 1080p and 4K
- Square and portrait for social
- Match the shared screen exactly, so text stays sharp
- 30 or 60 fps
Cameras
- Up to four cameras at once
- A phone on your wifi as another camera
- Cut between angles with a key press
- Name each camera
- Blur, replace or recolour your background
- Six one-click effect presets
- Brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth
- Mirror, drop shadow and rounded corners
- Crop to scene, scale up, square corner crop
Branding
- Gradient and solid backgrounds
- Built-in background images
- Upload your own image
- Eight gradient directions
- Logo watermark, ours or yours
- Scrolling ticker in a colour you pick
- Name badges under every camera
- Badge colour, corners and font
Scenes and shortcuts
- Save the whole look as a scene
- A thumbnail strip under the preview
- Number keys to switch instantly
- C to cut to the next camera
- Shift and a number for a specific one
- M to mute, P for music
- I and O for the intro and outro
- B to mark this moment
- ? for the full list
Guests
- Up to four remote guests
- Join with a room code
- A green room they wait in
- Add to the scene or take them out
- Mute or disconnect any guest
- Guests hear each other without echo
- Guests see the finished scene
- Guests get their own camera controls and effects
- Screen sharing rearranges the cameras
- Media travels directly between machines
Recording
- Straight to a local file
- Review and trim when you stop
- Export MP4 or keep the original
- Mark moments while recording
- Timestamps saved beside the take
- Record the camera as its own file
- Separate microphone and system audio
- Crash recovery on the next launch
Streaming
- YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, custom RTMP
- Several destinations at the same time
- Enable or disable each one
- Bitrate per destination
- Encoder health per destination
- Automatic reconnection with backoff
- Twitch chat drawn into the scene
Audio and presenting
- Microphone and system audio
- Bundled royalty-free music
- Add your own audio files
- Fade in and out
- Mics mute while clips and music play
- Teleprompter with auto-scroll
- Drag and resize it anywhere
- Backstage chat with your guests
- Emoji shortcodes and clickable links
All of it runs on your machine. There is no cloud recording, no cloud storage and no account, and nothing is uploaded in order to produce the file.
Requirements, without the small print
macOS, Windows and Linux
One desktop app, the same studio on all three.
System audio capture
Requires macOS 13 or later, or Windows.
Camera and microphone permissions
Requested on first use, by your operating system.
A phone as a camera needs only wifi
The app serves the page itself, so the phone shows a certificate warning once and never again.
Be among the first
Watercourse is in development. Join the waitlist for early access and updates as it gets closer to release.
- No subscription: great features free, go pro with a one-time purchase
- No account, no cloud storage, no upload queue
- Your recordings stay in a folder you control
- macOS, Windows and Linux
By joining you agree to receive updates about Watercourse. Unsubscribe at any time.