Online teleprompter
Paste your script, pick a speed in words per minute, and press Start. It fills the screen and scrolls at that pace, so you know how long the take runs before you record: at 150 words a minute, a 300-word script runs 2 minutes. Turn on Mirror for teleprompter glass, or Follow my voice to have it keep up as you read.
138 words, about 55 sec at 150 words a minute
Talking
Still writing the script? Talk it out in AudioPen and get a clean draft back.
Picking a speed
How fast should a teleprompter scroll?
About 150 words a minute: the pace you talk, not the pace you read. Words on a screen pull you into reading them out, and adults read aloud at about 183 words a minute, the average across 77 studies. Talking runs nearer 150, the average for American English speakers according to the National Center for Voice and Speech. At 180 a take tends to sound read. At 150 it sounds like you.
Start there. If people find you hard to follow at that pace, go slower: Baruch College's guide to speaking rate suggests aiming for about 140, just under the average.
Then read the whole script once at that speed before you record. If you keep catching up to the line, or waiting for it, change the speed, not your voice. The arrow keys move it 10 words a minute at a time while it scrolls.
How it works
A speed you can plan with.
The scrolling
The words pass the line you read from, about a third of the way down the screen, at the speed you set. The run time shows under the box before you press Start, and while it scrolls, the bar at the bottom shows the time so far and the total.Follow my voice
The page listens with your browser's own speech recognition and keeps the word you just said on that line. Pause, and it waits for you. Skip a line, and it catches up.Your script and your voice
Your script is saved in this browser only, so it's still there next time. Neither your script nor your voice is sent to AudioPen.
Follow my voice works in Chrome, Edge and Safari. In Firefox, Arc, Dia and Brave, the page says it can't listen and scrolls at your speed instead. In Chrome, recognition runs on a web service, so it needs an internet connection.
A worked example
One video intro, three speeds.
The sample script in the box above is a baker's weekly video intro. It's 138 words.
At a talking pace of 150 it runs 55 seconds, about how long the baker would take to say it across the counter. Read straight through at 180, 46 seconds. Slow and clear at 120, 1 minute 9 seconds.
If the read-through feels rushed at 150, drop to 140. It runs 59 seconds. Slowing down costs 4 seconds.
Before you record
Setting it up on a laptop, tablet or phone.
Keep the words near the lens
Put the screen as close to the camera as you can, at the same height. On a laptop, shrink the text and read near the top of the screen, right under the webcam.Mirror only for glass
A teleprompter rig bounces the screen off angled glass, which flips the words. Turn on Mirror for that. Reading straight off a screen, leave it off.On a phone
It works in your phone's browser. On iPhone the reading view fills the browser window instead of the whole screen, because Safari on iPhone doesn't let web pages go full screen.
Before the teleprompter
A script that already sounds like you.
Talk it out first
A script you wrote by talking already sounds like you said it, because you did. Pick a YouTube script style, talk the idea through on a walk, and AudioPen turns the rambling into a clean video script. The AudioPen app does it right from your phone.Check the length
Need it to fit a time slot? Paste it into the speech time calculator to see how many words to cut or add.Hear it back
Read it into the online voice recorder and play it back before you film.