Inky ClipsWatching a teacher write on a board does something a slide doesn’t: the words arrive at the speed of the hand, so the class reads them as they appear instead of all at once. Writing-on text brings that pacing to recorded lessons, flipped-classroom videos and explainers. It focuses attention, gives students a moment to take in each term, and makes a recording feel less like a screen grab.
This guide shows how to use Inky Clips for that: labelling diagrams, building up key terms, and captioning a lesson recording. It also says plainly what the tool doesn’t do, so you can plan around it.
The clip shows “photosynthesis” written in Readable.
Ink: White
Choose a readable hand
For teaching, legibility beats charm. The Clean group is made for labels and notes: Readable has plain, open letter shapes that young readers recognise easily, Sans looks like neat board writing, and Tech suits science and maths. Keep the joined-up scripts in Handwriting for titles. For captions on a lesson, the Subtitles group includes Atkinson, a typeface designed for low-vision readers. More on this in choosing a handwriting font for video.
Labelling a diagram
Take a picture of the diagram: a photo of the board, a scan from a textbook you’re allowed to use, or a screenshot of your own slide. In the editor, click Photo to video, pick the image, set Length to how long the video should be (up to 60 seconds) and click Create. The photo becomes a silent video in its own shape.
Add the first label
With the playhead near the start, click Add text and type the label. Lower Size to around 5–7% so it fits next to the part it names, and drag it into place on the preview.
Make the rest from it
Select the label and press Cmd/Ctrl + D (or click Duplicate text). The copy keeps the font, colour and size. Change its words, drag it to the next part, and move its Start a few seconds later.
Pace it
Give each label a Draw time of one to two seconds and leave a gap between them, enough time for you to say what each part does when you narrate over it.
Show the pen
Set Pointer to Pencil or Glowing dot. Students’ eyes follow the tip, which is exactly where you want them looking.
Building up key terms
For vocabulary, definitions or the steps of a method, start with New blank video, choose Landscape 16:9 to match a classroom screen, and set the length. Add one text per term, each starting when the previous one has finished writing. Stack them down the frame. With Hold until the end on, each term stays so the full list is on screen at the end, which is a natural place to pause the video and discuss.
Draw set to One by one writes letters in order, like a hand. Easing on Linear keeps an even pace that’s easy to read along with.
Captioning a recorded lesson
If you record yourself explaining something, with a screen recording or a phone on a tripod, open that video and click Auto captions. Choose the language you speak; there are 99. The speech model runs on your own computer, so a recording with students’ voices or faces isn’t uploaded to a captioning service, which may make it easier to fit within your school’s data rules. The first time, the model downloads once (about 1.1–1.6 GB).
Captions help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, students learning in a second language, and anyone watching on a bus with the sound off. Check subject terms carefully: speech recognition knows “mitochondria” but may stumble on a local place name. See How to add subtitles to a video for the details.
What it doesn’t do
- No drawing tools. It writes text only, with no arrows, circles, underlines or freehand sketching. Draw those on the image before you bring it in.
- No voice recording. Blank and photo videos are silent. Record narration in another app and combine them there, or record yourself first and add the writing on top of that video.
- One video at a time. There’s no joining clips or adding slides; make each segment here and assemble them in your usual editor or LMS.
- Up to 60 seconds for blank and photo videos. Your own recordings can be any length.
Sharing it
Export gives a standard MP4 that plays in Google Classroom, Teams, Moodle, YouTube or a slide deck. Your projects stay in the browser on your computer, so you can come back next year, change a label and export again. If you want to try the effect before signing in, the handwriting animation generator is a quick place to start.