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An overlay is anything you layer on top of your recording without replacing what’s already on screen. Open Overlay in the editor sidebar and you’ll find them all in one place, each with its own section. This is different from media (B-roll), which swaps out a whole slot of your layout. An overlay floats above everything for the stretch of time you choose.

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What you can add

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How to add one

The flow is the same whichever you pick:
  1. Open your video in the editor.
  2. Move the playhead to where you want the overlay to appear.
  3. Open Overlay in the sidebar, or press V.
  4. Click a preset or library item to add it. Use Browse all to see more.
  5. Adjust it on the canvas, then set its timing on the timeline.
Use the search control in the Overlay header to find text styles, stickers, media, and sound effects without opening each library.
A selected time range wins over the playhead. If you have a range selected (on the timeline or in the transcript), the new overlay starts at the beginning of that range instead of at the playhead, and selecting several ranges adds one overlay to each. Clear the selection first if you want the playhead to decide.Text and images fill the whole range. A video or sound shorter than the range does not stretch to fill it. The card ends when the clip runs out.
You can also drag image, video, or audio files straight from your computer onto the timeline. Tella adds images and videos as media overlays and audio as sound effects, and adds them to the current video’s Video library. See Drop files onto the timeline.

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They all share one timeline

Every overlay is a card on the same timeline, and overlapping cards are stacked onto separate tracks automatically, so you can run a caption, sticker, and logo at the same moment without any of them hiding the others. Select a card on the timeline or an overlay on the canvas to open its detail view, which shows its time range, preview, and settings. Duplicate is in the menu in the detail header, and Delete sits below the settings. Selecting, moving, trimming, splitting, and copying work the same way for every type. Changing a card’s track order applies to visual overlays (media, text, and stickers) because that order controls how they stack on the canvas. See work with the multi-track timeline. Visual overlays can also sit behind you instead of in front. Set an overlay’s Depth to Behind presenter and Tella cuts you out of your camera recording so you appear in front of it. See Put overlays behind the presenter. To remove every overlay from the current clip, open More actions, choose Reset all overlays, then confirm Delete all. This removes text, media, sound effects, and motion graphics together. You can undo the change.

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What happens when you cut the clip

Video overlays, sound effects, and Lottie animated stickers keep their chosen playback duration when you cut the clip underneath them. They continue across the cut without skipping part of the overlay, unless the overlay reaches the end of its source media or the clip. Images and text stay attached to the underlying footage instead. This includes GIF, meme, and logo stickers, which behave like images even when animated. Cutting out footage covered by an image or text overlay shortens the time that overlay appears.
Blurs and highlights are screen effects rather than overlays. Open Effect to add them alongside zooms, or see blur or highlight part of the screen.

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Choosing between an overlay and a layout

Reach for an overlay when the recording should stay visible underneath. Reach for a layout with media when the visual should become the content. A full-frame screenshot or title card, with your camera in a bubble beside it.

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Other ways to put words on screen

Text overlays are written by you and placed wherever you like. If you want words driven by what you said instead, use:
  • Subtitles: captions generated from your transcript. See Style subtitles.
  • Chapters: section labels viewers can navigate by. See Chapters.
  • Your logo: a persistent mark on every video, set once with custom branding.