X'S O'S
CHALKBOARD

1. What this is

X's O's Chalkboard is a football telestrator that runs in your browser. You load footage or capture it live, draw on it, record the result, and send it out — without switching between Photoshop, OBS and a video editor to get there.

Your footage never leaves your machine. Nothing is uploaded.

2. Getting started

The whole loop, in five steps:

1. Load a clip — Load Media, or capture a tab or capture card in Broadcast.
2. Pick a tool from the Tools tab or the icon bar.
3. Click the field to place a marker, or click-drag for routes and zones.
4. Press Space to play. Your drawings appear as you placed them.
5. Save your setup with Workspace ▸ Save to Browser so it's there next time.

That's it. Everything else in this manual makes that loop faster or the result better — none of it is required to get a clip drawn on and recorded.

If the interface looks busy, two things fix that immediately. Focus Mode hides everything but the footage. And Tools ▸ System ▸ Visible Tabs & Sections lets you switch off any tab or section you don't use, so you only ever see the parts you want.

3. The tabs

17 tabs, 74 sections. Every section collapses, and you can hide any of them in Tools ▸ System ▸ Visible Tabs & Sections.

Tools

Your drawing kit — how markers look, the hotkey slots you fire them from, and the app's own settings.

• 🎨 Drawing — Line style, thickness, colour and the drawing mode — pro-point, freehand or static.
• 🖌 Style Control — Fine styling of what you draw: fills, outlines, shadows and opacity.
• ⚡ Hotkey Slots — Nine slots you assign tools to, fired with the number keys. The fastest way to work mid-clip.
• ⚙ System — Clear Screen, Remove a Drawing, the 🩹 Erase Brush (Circle or Square, with a Size slider), keyboard shortcuts and the reset options.
• 🎤 AI Command — Voice control settings — latch mode, auto-off, and whether the mic stays live while a clip plays.

Learn

In-app tutorials and searchable help. The fastest way to find out what a tool does without leaving the app.

• Search Tutorials — Type what you're trying to do and it finds the matching tutorial.
• Smart Suggestions — Suggested tools based on what you're working on.
• Getting Started — First steps: loading a clip and drawing your first marker.
• Offense — Offensive tools — routes, protections, motion and reads.
• Defense — Defensive tools — coverages, zones, blitzes and assignments.
• Tools & Stamps — Every marker and stamp, and what each is for.
• Broadcast & Output — Getting your work out: recording, live output and overlays.

Graphics

Broadcast graphics: formations, coverage templates, play diagrams, playbook cards and your watermark.

• ✥ Formation Creator — Build a formation diagram from scratch and drop it on the field.
• 🎮 Controllers — Controller graphics for showing which buttons a play calls for.
• 🛡 Coverage Templates — Ready-made coverage shells you can place in one click.
• ⬛ Play Diagrams — Load an offensive and a defensive play diagram and show or hide each independently.
• Playbook List — Paste team names and get a colour-coded card showing which playbooks carry a play.
• ✦ Global Fades — Default fade-in and fade-out timing for everything you draw.
• 🎮 Icon Bar Mode — How the icon bar is laid out and labelled.
• 💧 Watermark — Your watermark — image, position and opacity.

Overlays

Broadcast furniture — down and distance, lower thirds, score bug, subscribe bug and top plays.

• DOWN & DISTANCE — Down and distance graphic.
• LOWER THIRD — Lower third for names and titles.
• SCORE BUG — Score bug with teams, score and clock.
• SUBSCRIBE BUG — An animated subscribe prompt.
• TOP PLAYS — A top plays countdown card.

Camera

Picture controls — brightness and colour, zoom, your face cam, and field tilt.

• 🎨 Image Adjust — Brightness, contrast, gamma and sharpness for the incoming picture, with savable presets.
• ⊕ PIP Zoom — A picture-in-picture zoom window on part of the field.
• 📷 Face Cam — Your webcam on screen, positioned and sized how you like.
• 📐 Field Tilt — Tilt the field image to match your camera's angle.

Mask

Field grading and masking, so drawings can sit under players instead of over them.

• 🎨 Field Grading — Sample the field colour so the app can tell grass from players.
• ⬛ Mask Generation — Generate the mask that lets drawings sit under players.

Tracker

Following a player through a clip — by colour, by hand, or with AI.

• 🎬 Manual Keyframe Track — Track a player by hand, setting a position every few frames.
• 🎨 Color Track — Track a player automatically by jersey colour.
• ⚙ Advanced Tuning — Sensitivity and smoothing for colour tracking.
• 🏈 Route from Track — Turn a tracked path into a drawn route.
• AI Spotlight — Click a player and let the AI follow them, silhouette and all.
• Advanced Tuning — Reach, strictness and smoothing for AI Spotlight.

Grid

The perspective grid — calibrate it to your camera angle so zones, routes and lines sit flat on the field.

• 🎥 Camera Preset — Preset calibrations for common camera angles — broadcast, Madden cam, sideline.
• ◈ 3D & Perspective — Whether drawings lie flat on the field in 3D or sit flat on the screen in 2D.
• ⊞ Snap to Grid — Snap drawings to the grid so lines stay square to the field.
• ⊟ Guide Lines — On-screen guide lines for alignment. They don't record.

Roster

Your players, their colours, and how nameplates are built.

• Global Unit Styles — Colours and text styling applied to a whole unit at once.
• Team Plate — Pick the team whose colours and name the plates use — pro or college.
• Plate Style — Full or plain nameplates, and the colours of each part of the plate.
• Roster List — Your offense and defense rosters. Type them, paste them, or import a file.
• Plate Fields — Which fields appear on a nameplate and in what order.

Macros

Timed playback. Set when a drawing appears and disappears so a breakdown plays itself back.

• ⏱ Timing — When each drawing appears and disappears, set against the clip's timeline.
• ⚡ Slow Mo — Slow a stretch of the clip so a detail has time to land.
• Drawing — Entrance and exit animations for drawings — how they arrive and how they leave.
• ✂ Player Cutout — Lift a player out of the frame so he can be moved or ride along a route. (For one-click copies and vanishing players, use the Clone Player and Ghost tiles in the Marker Suite.)

Playtag

Mark plays as you watch and build a list you can jump between.

• 🏷 Mark Play — Mark the current moment as a play, with in and out points.
• 🎬 Play List 0 — Every play you've marked. Jump between them, filter them, or play them all in sequence.

Vertical

9:16 output for phones. Set crop keyframes so the frame follows the action.

• 9:16 Crop Keyframes — Set crop keyframes so the 9:16 frame follows the ball down the field.
• Manual Keyframe Overrides — Override the automatic crop at specific moments.
• Auto-Pan Return — How the crop returns to centre after a pan.

Audio

Your microphone, the game's audio, and voice activation.

• 🎛 Microphone EQ — Shape your mic — bass, mids, treble and compression.
• 🎙 Mic Status — Input device, level meter and monitoring.
• 🎮 Game Audio — Bring your capture card's game audio in, and choose whether to hear it through your speakers.
• ⚡ Voice Activation — Voice activation settings for the mic.

Sfx

Sound effects — a library you can fire manually or attach to individual tools.

• Sound Effects — Trigger sound effects manually.
• Sound Library — Your sound library — what's loaded and available.
• Per-Tool Overrides — Attach a specific sound to a specific tool, so placing it plays that sound.

Record

How your recordings are encoded — format, frame rate, bitrate and aspect.

• 🎞 Output Format — Output container and codec — MP4 or WebM.
• ⚡ Frame Rate & Bitrate — Frame rate and bitrate for your recordings.
• ⬜ Aspect Ratio — Recording aspect ratio — 16:9 or 9:16.

Broadcast

Live capture, instant replay, and getting the picture out to OBS or a second screen.

• ⛶ Focus & Live — Capture a tab, window or capture card as your live source. Focus Mode hides the interface.
• ⏪ Instant Replay (DVR) — A rolling buffer you can arm, then pull the last few seconds back for an instant replay.
• 📡 OBS Output — Open the clean OBS Live output window — just the picture — and capture it in OBS with a Window Capture source. Broadcast plan.
• ⧉ Projector — Open a clean output window for a second screen or projector — no interface, just the picture.

Studio

The writing and production tools: scripts, prompts, thumbnails, and the Cut Room editor.

• 📝 Coach Pad — A notepad for your breakdown, with AI polish available on Coach and Broadcast.
• 🎯 Coaching Prompts — Prompt ideas to structure a coaching session.
• 🖥️ Teleprompter — Scroll your script on screen while you record.
• 🖼 Thumbnail Creator — Build a thumbnail from a frame of your clip.
• Cut Room — Open the Cut Room editor, or send the loaded clip straight to it for trimming.

4. Keyboard shortcuts

The defaults below are every one reassignable in Tools ▸ System ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts. Shortcuts stay on your machine and are never sent to anyone you share a workspace with.

Broadcast

Camera

Drawing

Files

Graphics

Hotkey Slots

Macros

Mask

Overlays

Play Tag

Playback

System

Tools

View

5. Voice commands

Tap AI COMMAND — or the ` ` or /` key — to latch the mic on; tap again to stop. Hold either instead to talk only while held.

Commands run locally and instantly. Only a phrase the app doesn't recognise reaches the AI, and that fallback is Coach and Broadcast only.

Placing a marker

Say the marker name plus where it goes:

• At your cursor — "cross here" (also there · right here · this spot · my mouse)
• On a player — "spotlight 74" or "target Jefferson", if they're tagged on the field

44 markers place by name:

Every other command

292 commands. The first phrase is the primary; the rest do the same thing.

Opening panels by voice

Say any section name to jump to it — "field grading", "roster list", "coach pad". Add a verb to be explicit: open · show · expand · close · collapse · hide. The app switches to the right tab first, so it works from anywhere.

6. Behaviour worth knowing

The things that look like bugs but aren't.

Play and pause are directional. Saying "play" while it's already playing does nothing, rather than pausing. Same for "pause" when already paused.

Pause rewinds slightly. Speech recognition takes a moment, so the clip keeps rolling while you talk. Voice pause jumps back to where you started speaking. For frame-exact work, the spacebar is still better — it's instant.

Loading media by voice needs a click first. Browsers only open a file picker straight after a real click or key press. If the picker doesn't appear, click anywhere in the app and say it again.

While a clip is playing, only pause and stop are heard. That stops the clip's own audio — a commentator saying "blitz" — from dropping markers on your field.

Workspace and Session are different things.

• Workspace is your setup: tools, colours, layout, rosters, presets, shortcuts.
• Session is your work: drawings, macros, keyframes, timeline marks.
• Export Everything is both in one file.

Sharing a workspace is safe. Your keyboard shortcuts are never included, and preset libraries merge with the recipient's rather than replacing them — nothing of theirs is lost.

Some imported settings need a reload. A few values are read once at startup, so they land correctly but only take effect next time the app loads. Rosters especially.

Drawing tools worth knowing

Save Settings makes a look stick. Set a tool the way you like it in the Edit Suite, press Save Settings, and every new one places that way — colour, size, text, and whether it draws on. Reset ▸ Factory Default puts a tool back.

Draw-in is one tickbox. Ticked, a line draws itself on and gets a yellow tick on the timeline marking when it finishes. Unticked, it just appears — no yellow tick. Save Settings keeps your choice for that tool.

Duplicate copies anything. Select a drawing (click it with Edit or Move) and press DUPLICATE in the top bar or Ctrl+D. An exact copy — text, colour, size — lands just to the right with Move already on. Three hook zones take five seconds. Undo removes a copy.

Zone Fill. Type the label in Rename Tag first, then click the corners. After the third corner, point where the fourth should go and press Enter (or double-click) — it drops the corner and locks the zone. Zone Fill appears instantly, with no draw-in. Once a zone is locked it stays as it is: a new colour or name sets up the next zone. To change a finished one, click it with Move, then Edit.

Trace follows a receiver click by click. Pick Trace in the Marker Suite, pause on the snap and click the receiver, step the video forward and click where he is now, and keep going through his route. Enter or double-click finishes. The clicks become a smooth route line — colour, weight, dotted, stroke and arrowhead from Style Control — that draws on right behind him on playback. Dragging the mouse doesn't draw with this tool; it's clicks only.

Clone and Ghost. Both work best with Field Samples set in the Mask tab. Clone Player ▸ Clone Mask: click a player and he lifts off in his real colours; Esc finishes, then Move drags the copy — a dotted line runs from where he started and grows with every drag. Ghost ▸ Ghost Mask: click a player and he vanishes, grass filled in from beside him and his shadow removed (Remove Shadow, Vanish Size and Show Guide are in Specific Tool Properties — untick Show Guide when you go live).

The Erase Brush cleans up. Tools ▸ System ▸ 🩹 Erase Brush (Shift+Alt+E) rubs out part of a Player Mask, a clone or a ghost. Circle has a soft edge; Square has a hard straight edge — the one for a hash mark or yard line caught on a clone. [ and ] resize it. Each Undo brings back one stroke.

Slide Protect is a blocking shield with animated chevrons. Block Direction (left, right, ▲ run block, ▼ pass block), arrow speed, size and colour, and Text Override are in Specific Tool Properties; Width and Height Factor go up to 10.

QB Spy places a circle on the defender with a line back to the quarterback. Untick Line to QB for circle-only spies — to set up the next one before placing, click Deselect, click the QB Spy tile, then Edit.

Segment Dots mark the bends in a line, so the controls only appear on tools you click out point by point — Route, Block, Delay, QB Drop, QB Roll, Line, Link Chain and Man.

Moving many ticks. Hold Ctrl and drag across the timeline to select ticks, then keep holding Ctrl and drag inside the band to slide them together. Alt+drag opens the range bar — In, Out, Match, Space, Apart and more.

7. Tiers — what each plan includes

Three plans. Everything a lower plan gets, the higher plans get too.

Content Creator — $19.99

The full drawing and production core:

• Tools · Learn · Vertical · Graphics · Tracker · Record · Grid · Audio · Broadcast · Studio

That's telestrating, the perspective grid, tracking, 9:16 vertical, broadcast graphics, recording, live capture, the Projector window, and the Studio tools including Cut Room, Coach Pad and the Thumbnail Creator.

Also includes Focus Mode and the Subscribe Bug (in the Overlays tab — the other overlays are Broadcast).

Voice commands work on every plan. Only the AI interpretation of a phrase the app doesn't recognise is Coach and above — all several hundred built-in commands are yours.

Coach — $39.99

Adds the tools for working with real personnel:

• Camera · Macros · Mask · Play Tag · Roster

Rosters and nameplates, player masking so drawings sit under players, macros for self-playing breakdowns, Play Tag for marking up a full game, and the camera controls.

Also unlocks OBS Output, Frame Rate & Bitrate control for recordings, team themes and custom colours, and the AI fallback for voice.

Broadcast — $59.99

Adds the on-air furniture:

• SFX · Overlays (all of them)

Everything for producing a live game: Instant Replay (DVR), the Teleprompter, sound effects with per-tool triggers, and the full overlay set — title card, score bug, down and distance, lower third, top plays and custom image.

Also unlocks the custom logo upload.

8. Broadcast output

Three ways to get the picture out of the app. On every plan, the Projector window is also a clean window any capture software can pick up.

OBS Output

Broadcast ▸ OBS Output ▸ OBS Live opens a clean output window with the finished picture — footage plus your drawings, no panels or menus. In OBS, add a Window Capture source and pick that window. No plugin, no network setup. To send it to another computer, capture it in OBS and use the free DistroAV (obs-ndi) plugin. Coach and Broadcast plans.

Shortcut: Shift+N. Shift+X stops it.

Projector window

Opens a clean window with just the picture — no panels, no buttons. Drag it to a second monitor or a projector and you have a presentation display while you keep working on the main screen.

Shortcut: Shift+P. Voice: "projector window".

Focus Mode

Hides the interface on your own screen so the footage fills it. Useful for capturing the window directly, or just for working without distraction.

Live capture

Broadcast ▸ Focus & Live takes a capture card, a browser tab or a window as your live source. Press Scan Devices if your capture card doesn't appear.

9. Cut Room

Cut Room is the video editor built into ProPlayVision. It opens in its own window alongside X's O's Chalkboard, so you can trim, arrange and finish a piece without leaving for another program.

It is a real timeline editor: multiple clips, transitions, keyframes, voiceover, and offline rendering to MP4 or WebM.

Getting a clip in

Get takes pulls in anything the Chalkboard has sent over. This is the usual route — record in the Chalkboard, then press Get takes here.

Import media loads a file from your computer.

From the Chalkboard side, three doors send a clip across: Send Loaded Clip To Cut Room in the Studio tab, the 🎬 button on any DVR vault clip, and automatic hand-off after a recording.

A live feed cannot be sent. A live feed is a stream of frames, not a file. Arm the DVR, capture what you want, and send the DVR clip instead.

The tools

Six tools sit above the timeline. Each has a single-key shortcut.

Ripple is the one worth learning first. Ordinary trimming leaves a hole where the footage was. Ripple closes it for you, which is what you want nine times out of ten when cutting dead air out of a play.

Slip is the one people miss. If a clip is in the right place but showing the wrong three seconds, slip moves the footage inside the clip without disturbing anything around it.

Playback and navigation

Marks and markers

In and out define the range you care about. I sets in, O sets out. Clear range removes them.

Markers are notes on the timeline. M drops one at the playhead, or double-click the ruler. , and . jump between them. Clear marks removes them all.

Use in/out for what you're going to export or send back. Use markers for the moments you want to find again.

Snapping

N toggles snapping. With it on, clip edges pull to other clip edges, markers, the playhead and your in/out marks.

Leave it on for assembling. Turn it off when you need a cut at an exact frame and the snap keeps pulling you a few frames away.

Transitions

Cut Room has 30 transitions, dragged from the bin onto the cut you want.

The drop target is the leading third of the incoming clip, not the whole clip. A transition belongs to the head of the clip coming in, so dropping it anywhere would be ambiguous once two clips touch.

The ones you'll actually use:

Cross Dissolve — both clips play at once, one fading down as the other comes up. The workhorse. Softens a cut without drawing attention. Best between two shots of the same play or subject.

Fade — the incoming clip fades up from nothing. Use it at the very start of a piece.

Dip to Black — down to black at the midpoint, then up. The classic scene break; reads as time passing or a change of subject.

Dip to White and Flash — sharper, more energetic. Suits a highlight package more than a breakdown.

Push, Slide, Cover, Reveal — one clip moves the other off screen. Good for comparing two things.

Punch In, Pop, Camera Shake, 3D Flip — attention-grabbers. Effective once, tiring if repeated.

There are also wipes (Circle, Clock, Radial, Diamond, Rectangle) and a set of title and graphic transitions — Lower Third, Score Bug, Roster Plate, Number Badge, Corner Tag, Big Card, Flag, Boxed, Plain.

Each transition carries its own description in the interface. Hover to read what it's for before you drop it.

Escape cancels an armed transition.

Titles

Add title puts a text card on the timeline. Titles behave like clips — trim them, move them, and give them transitions.

Keyframes

Three properties can be keyframed over time: opacity, scale, and volume.

Click the keyframe button on the lane to add one at the playhead; click again to remove it. Clear removes every keyframe on that lane.

Two keyframes at different values make a change over time — that's how you fade a clip, push in slowly, or duck audio under a voiceover.

Speed

Clips can be sped up or slowed down. Slowing a clip is the standard move for showing a read develop or a block spring.

Bear in mind slow motion is only as smooth as the source frame rate. Footage shot at 60fps slows better than 30.

Tracks

Each track has lock and mute.

Lock prevents any edits on that track — worth setting on a track you've finished so a stray drag can't disturb it.

Mute silences the track without deleting anything.

Voiceover

Record VO records narration straight onto the timeline while the video plays. Use the volume keyframes to duck the clip's own audio underneath it.

Grabbing a still

Grab frame saves the current frame as a PNG. Useful for a thumbnail source or a diagram still.

Sending back to the Chalkboard

Two routes, and the difference matters.

Send back to Chalkboard is instant. It copies the cut directly without re-encoding, so a long clip returns in about a second.

The trade-off: it can only cut on the clip's existing keyframes, so the start of your cut may land a beat away from your mark. Fine for trimming dead air before a snap.

Send back (exact) re-renders the range. Frame-accurate, and it handles multi-clip ranges, transitions and speed changes — but it takes roughly as long as the clip runs.

Rule of thumb: trimming one clip, use the instant route. Anything assembled from multiple clips or with effects on it, use exact.

How precisely the instant route can cut depends on how the footage was encoded. Clips recorded in the app cut cleanly; footage from elsewhere may cut less precisely.

Exporting

Export MP4 renders frame by frame to H.264. No dropped frames, ready for YouTube.

Export WebM produces a true 30fps VP9/Opus file, also YouTube-ready.

Both are offline renders — the app builds the file frame by frame rather than capturing playback, so nothing is dropped if your machine stutters.

Project shape sets the aspect ratio, and the preview and every export follow it. Set this before you start rather than after.

Frame rate — 30 is the usual choice. 60 doubles the render time.

S / M / L set the export resolution.

Interface

Match the Chalkboard theme keeps Cut Room in step with whatever theme you've chosen in the main app.

Clear empties the timeline and starts again.

Worth knowing

Voice commands don't work in Cut Room. The microphone and the command vocabulary live in the Chalkboard. Once you're in Cut Room, everything is mouse and keyboard.

Cut Room is its own window. You can leave it open on a second monitor while you keep working in the Chalkboard.

Ripple and roll behave differently than they look. If a trim isn't doing what you expect, check which tool is active — most confusion with a timeline editor comes from being in the wrong mode rather than the edit being wrong.

10. Thumbnail Creator

The Thumbnail Creator builds finished thumbnails and social graphics without leaving ProPlayVision. It opens in its own window, works from a frame of your footage or any image you drop in, and exports at the size each platform expects.

The Thumbnail Creator builds finished thumbnails and social graphics without leaving ProPlayVision. It opens in its own window, works from a frame of your footage or any image you drop in, and exports at the exact size each platform expects.

It is a layout tool rather than a photo editor: you position and style pieces — title, badge, callout, logo, bottom bar — over a background, and the app handles the sizing.

Starting a thumbnail

Drop an image on the canvas, or click to browse. A frame grabbed from Cut Room works well, as does anything from your desktop.

Quick Presets give you a finished layout in one click, then you change the words:

• Play Breakdown — for a play or scheme video
• Blitz Defense — defensive pressure look
• Player Ratings — the Madden rating card style
• News Article — a headline treatment

Starting from a preset and editing it is almost always faster than building from nothing.

Canvas format

Set this first, because every element positions itself relative to the canvas.

Changing format after you've laid everything out means repositioning. Pick the shape you're publishing to before you start.

The background

Zoom, Pan X and Pan Y frame the image. FILL, H-FIT and V-FIT are one-click fits — fill covers the canvas, and the two fits match width or height.

Reframe on Main Canvas lets you drag the image directly rather than working the sliders.

Background Settings hold the picture controls:

Brightness, Blur, Sharpen and Vignette Intensity — blur is more useful than it sounds. A slightly blurred background makes overlaid text far easier to read.

Dark Overlay and Gradient Overlay dim the image so text stands out. Gradient Top and Gradient Bottom set the colours, and Direction controls which way it runs.

Fallback Color shows through where no image covers the canvas.

Overlay patterns

A texture laid over the background: Carbon, Circuit, Corners, Curve, Diagonal, Dots, Grid, Halftone, Hex, Loop, Noise, Rays, Slash, Spotlight, Triangle — or None.

Pattern Opacity controls how strongly it reads. Kept subtle, a pattern adds depth; at full strength it competes with your subject.

Text

Title Lines hold your main text — one line per entry, so you control exactly where it breaks rather than letting it wrap on its own.

Line Colors can differ per line. Colouring one word differently is the simplest way to make a title read as a headline rather than a sentence.

Typography controls the rest:

Font — 14 display faces including Anton, Bebas Neue, Oswald, Russo One, Teko and Orbitron. These are heavy condensed faces chosen because thumbnails are viewed small.

Base Size, Line Spacing, Alignment, X Position, Y Position, Rotation.

Stroke Color and Stroke Width put an outline around letters. On a busy football image, a stroke is often what makes text legible at all.

Effects add Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Glow, Inner Glow and Gradient Fill, with Depth, Distance, Strength and Opacity for each.

Badge, callout and card

Three separate elements, each with its own text, colour, size and X/Y position.

Badge — a short tag. A rating, a number, a word like NEW.

Callout / Arrow Badge — points at something in the image. Shape offers Arrow Right, Arrow Left, Chevron, Burst, Pill and Block.

Tag / Category Badge — labels the video's category.

Madden Rating Card builds the familiar ratings-card look, with Player Name and Player Ratings.

Icons and stamps

A set of shapes and symbols — arrows, stars, hearts, lightning, circles, triangles, music notes and more — with Icon Color, Size and Icon Alignment.

Logos

Logo Library holds your saved logos, and Logo Upload adds new ones. Quick Logos has ProPlayVision, MaddenGuides and EA Sports ready to place.

Logo Position places it; Size and Opacity finish it.

Bottom info bar

A strip across the base of the thumbnail, useful for branding a series so every episode looks related.

Bar Text, Bar Color, Website URL, and Social Icons in Bottom Bar — YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

Subscribe Button adds a call-to-action graphic.

Colour templates

Primary Accent, Secondary Accent and Accent Color drive the palette across elements, so you can restyle a whole thumbnail without touching each piece.

Setting a pair of accents once and reusing them is what makes a channel's thumbnails look like a set rather than a collection.

Guides and handles

Guides show alignment lines. Handles let you drag elements directly on the canvas instead of using position sliders.

Neither appears in the export.

The Gemini Image Processor

Auto-sizes and sharpens an image for you. Useful when a source frame is smaller than the canvas or slightly soft — it's doing a better job than a plain upscale would.

Magenta Tolerance handles images with a magenta key colour, removing that background so a cutout sits cleanly over your own.

Exporting

Download saves the finished thumbnail. WebP and Transparent are available alongside the standard export, and Output Size sets the resolution.

Transparent export matters when you're producing an overlay to sit on top of something else rather than a standalone image.

Undo and reset

Undo and Redo cover your edits. Reset clears the section you're working in; Reset All starts the whole thumbnail again.

Worth knowing

Set the canvas format before anything else. It's the one change that forces you to redo work.

Thumbnails are judged small. Whatever you build, shrink the preview to roughly the size it appears in a feed and check the title is still readable. Most thumbnails fail on text size, not on design.

Grab your source frame in Cut Room. The Grab frame button saves the current frame as a PNG, which drops straight in here.

Voice commands don't reach this window. The microphone lives in the Chalkboard; the Thumbnail Creator is mouse and keyboard.

11. Recording and instant replay

Recording

The record button captures the finished picture — footage, drawings and all.

Recording ▸ Output Format chooses MP4 or WebM. Frame Rate & Bitrate sets quality, and Aspect Ratio switches between 16:9 and 9:16.

Shortcut: R. Voice: "record video" and "stop recording".

Instant replay (DVR)

Arm the DVR buffer and the app keeps a rolling recording of the last stretch of live footage. When something happens, pull it back and replay it immediately.

Replay quality runs from Standard up to Max. You can optionally record your drawings and your mic into the replay.

The last five clips are kept automatically in the vault. Rename them by clicking the name, and export anything you want to keep — they don't survive closing the browser.

Shortcut: Shift+Alt+D to arm or disarm.

12. Rosters and nameplates

Building a roster

Roster ▸ Roster List holds an offense and a defense. Three ways to fill them:

• Type players in one at a time
• Paste a block — one player per line
• Import a .txt or .csv file

A line can be written several ways; number, position, name and rating are all picked out automatically. Madden's depth-chart export pastes in directly.

Importing adds to a roster rather than replacing it, and duplicates are skipped.

Saved rosters

Save a roster under a name and load it back later. Saved rosters travel with an exported workspace, and merge safely with anyone else's if you share one.

Nameplates

Team Plate picks the team whose colours and city name the plates use — 33 pro and 128 college teams. Plate Style chooses Full or Plain and colours each part of the plate. Plate Fields decides which details appear and in what order.

In Full style, team colours stay in step between the Roster tab and the Edit panel — change either and the other follows.

13. The perspective grid

The grid tells the app where the field is, so zones, routes and lines lie flat on the grass instead of sitting flat on the screen.

Calibrating

Grid ▸ Camera Preset has presets for common angles — broadcast, Madden cam, sideline. Start with the one closest to your footage, then drag the corner handles onto the field until the grid lines sit along the yard lines.

Get this right first. Most "the zone tool is broken" problems are a grid calibrated for a different camera angle. If a zone snaps to the wrong width, check the preset before anything else.

3D and snapping

3D & Perspective switches between drawings lying flat on the field and sitting flat on the screen. Snap to Grid keeps lines square to the field. Guide Lines adds on-screen alignment guides that never appear in a recording.

14. Macros — breakdowns that play themselves

A macro gives each drawing an in-point and an out-point on the clip's timeline. Play the clip and your drawings appear and disappear on cue, so you can talk over it instead of drawing while you talk.

Building one

1. Turn Timed Macros on 2. Place a drawing and set its in-point where it should appear 3. Set the out-point where it should go 4. Play the clip back

Shortcuts: I sets in, O sets out.

Polish

Slow Mo stretches a section so a detail has time to land. Drawing sets entrance and exit animations — by default a drawing leaves the way it arrived. Player Cutout lifts a player out of the frame so they can be moved or ridden along a route.

15. Troubleshooting

A voice command does nothing. No toast at all means it wasn't heard — usually the mic, sometimes just speaking softly. A toast naming the command means it was heard and something stopped it, and the toast says what.

The file picker won't open by voice. Browsers only allow it right after a real click or key press. Click anywhere in the app and say it again.

Game audio is silent. Check the monitor option in Audio ▸ Game Audio. Also worth knowing: capture card software like Elgato's 4K Capture Utility holds the card's audio exclusively, so close it first.

A zone snaps to the wrong place. The perspective grid is calibrated for a different camera angle. Switch presets.

Your live feed won't start. Something else may be holding the capture card — OBS, or your card's own software. The error toast names the cause.

Drawings appear over players instead of under. Nothing masks by default. Turn masking on per tool with Alt+click, or all at once with Global Mask.

A setting didn't come back after importing. A few are read once at startup. Reload and check again before assuming it failed.

You can't select a playback device like OBS does. Browsers genuinely can't do this. Use a virtual audio cable such as VB-Audio if you need to route audio.