The best teleprompter settings for webcam recording: font size, speed and position

A teleprompter only helps if your eyes look natural while you read. That depends less on the app than on a handful of settings: where the reading line sits, how big the text is, how wide the column is and how fast it moves. Here's how to set each one for a webcam, with starting values you can adjust.

Put the reading line near the top

The reading line is the spot where your eyes rest while the text moves past. No other setting matters as much. Your webcam sits above the screen, so the higher the reading line, the closer your eyes are to the lens.

Set the reading line in the top third of the prompter, ideally a line or two below the top edge. Text then scrolls up into the spot you're looking at, and you read each line at the point nearest the camera. If your prompter has a reading-line marker or a fade at the top and bottom, turn them on. The marker gives your eyes an anchor, and the fade stops you glancing at lines you haven't reached yet.

Choose a font size for your distance

The right teleprompter font size is the smallest one you can read comfortably from your normal position, without leaning forward or squinting. Bigger is not always better. Very large text fits only a few words per line, so it has to scroll faster and you lose the sense of what is coming next.

Use this table as a starting point, not a rule. Screens, eyesight and Windows display scaling all vary, so treat the numbers as rough guidance and adjust from there.

Weight matters as much as size. A medium or semibold weight stays crisp when it moves and when it is seen through glass. Pick a clean sans-serif such as Segoe UI Variable, Arial or Verdana. Their open letter shapes are easy to read at a glance.

Line spacing and margins

Tight lines blur together when they're moving. Very loose lines make you lose your place between them. Somewhere around 1.3 to 1.6 times the text size works for most people, which is a little looser than you'd use in a document.

Give the text side margins, too. Text that runs to the very edge of the prompter is harder to track, and the first and last words of each line end up farthest from the lens. Moderate margins pull the words toward the center, where the camera is. Left alignment is usually easiest to read, because every line starts in the same place. Center alignment looks tidy for short lines but makes your eyes hunt for the start of each one.

Use a narrow column

When you read a wide line, your eyes sweep left to right and snap back, like a typewriter. On camera, that sweep is the clearest sign that someone is reading. A narrow column keeps your eye movement small enough that viewers don't notice it.

As a rule of thumb, aim for roughly five to eight words per line. If you see whole sentences on one line, the column is too wide. If you see only two or three words, the text is too big or the column is too narrow.

This is the idea behind a notch prompter. Lenslines shows your script in a black notch at the top center of the screen, directly under the webcam, so the text sits as close to the lens as it can. You can resize it from its edges and corners to get the column width you want, and the settings include a live preview, so you see each change as you make it.

Text color on black

Light text on a black background is the standard for prompters, for good reasons. It's high contrast, it doesn't throw a bright glow onto your face, and it's less likely to reflect in glasses than a white page.

• White or warm white suits most people and most rooms. Warm white is a little softer in a dim room.
• Yellow is very easy to read and a good choice if your screen is dim or you sit farther back.
• Green, cyan, orange and purple work if you prefer them. Check that they stay bright enough at your chosen weight.
• Avoid dark shades such as navy, deep red or dark gray. They lose contrast against black and blur when moving.

Set the speed

Speed depends on you, not the camera. In Lenslines, speed is a multiplier from 0.2× to 4×, and 1× is about 180 words per minute. Most people read comfortably a bit below that, so start around 0.8× and adjust. If you're chasing the text, slow down. If you're waiting for the next line, speed up.

If your pace varies, try voice scrolling instead of a fixed speed: the text moves while you speak and pauses when you pause. A 3- or 5-second countdown before the text starts gives you time to settle. There is more on pacing in how to read a script without sounding robotic.

Mirror mode for glass rigs

If you use a beam-splitter teleprompter, the kind with angled glass in front of the camera, you read the text as a reflection of a screen underneath. A reflection reverses the image, so the text has to be mirrored on the screen to read the right way round.

Most rigs need a horizontal flip. Some, depending on how the display is mounted, need a vertical flip as well. In Lenslines, switch to floating mode with Ctrl+Alt+M, move the window onto the display under the glass, resize it to fill the screen, and turn on mirroring. Check by reading a line through the glass from where you will sit. Glass rigs put you farther from the text, so go up a size or two from your webcam settings. A normal webcam prompter on your own screen never needs mirroring.

A starting preset you can copy

Record a 30-second test with these settings and watch it back with the sound off. If your eyes look like they're tracking across the screen, narrow the column. If they look down, raise the reading line or move the prompter closer to the camera. For more on camera placement, see how to keep eye contact on video calls.