Recast

Video editing, refined. The fast, minimal, and intentional editor built for the next generation of storytellers.

Recast is a high-performance open-source screen recording tool with integrated, cinematic editing capabilities. It aims to replace messy timeline-based tools with a "Smooth by Default" experience for startups and creators generating polished product demos.

✨ Key Features

• Cinematic Magic by Default: Perfect cursor motion smoothing, automatic zooming, and intelligent tracking.
• Zero-Lag Recording: Built natively with Tauri and Rust, offloading high-performance video encoding (FFmpeg) to the user's silicon.
• Privacy-First: Locally generated user profiles without invasive tracking.
• Sleek Interface: "Craft" design system featuring minimal glassmorphism, native blurs, and Svelte 5 reactivity.

🏗 Architecture (Monorepo)

Recast is structured as a pnpm workspace utilizing Turborepo for fast, cached builds.

Package	Path	Description
🏔 Recast Desktop	apps/desktop	The core product: A Tauri + Rust backend and a SvelteKit + Svelte 5 frontend editor pane.
🌐 Recast Web	apps/web	The marketing landing page and distribution site, built on SvelteKit.
🧩 UI Library	packages/ui	Headless, accessible internal Svelte UI component library.
🎨 Design Tokens	packages/design	Centralized Tailwind CSS v4 design scope and typographic assets.

📸 Screenshots

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• pnpm (v9+)
• Rust (v1.70+) & Cargo
• Tauri Dependencies for your specific OS (macOS/Windows/Linux).

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/kanakkholwal/recast.git
cd recast

2. Install workspace dependencies:

pnpm install

Developing

To run the desktop application in dev mode (spins up both the SvelteKit frontend and Tauri backend):

pnpm turbo run dev --filter=recast-desktop

To run the marketing website in dev mode:

pnpm turbo run dev --filter=recast-web

📦 Building for Production

To build the binaries for your current platform:

pnpm turbo run build --filter=recast-desktop

🖼 Wallpaper assets (external download)

No wallpaper imagery — neither full-res PNGs nor WebP thumbnails — ships with the installer. Everything is distributed via a separate GitHub Release (tagged like wallpapers-v1) and downloaded on first launch into the user's app data dir. Thumbs download first (a few KB each, seconds); full-res PNGs follow in the background. All files are SHA-256-verified against manifest.json before they're written to disk.

Release layout — two independent tags:

Tag	Assets uploaded
v0.0.1, v0.0.2, …	App installers (.msi, .dmg, .AppImage, latest.json)
wallpapers-v1, wallpapers-v2, …	*.png + *.webp + manifest.json

This keeps app updates small (no wallpaper re-downloads) and lets you refresh wallpapers without cutting a new app version.

Fallback behaviour:

• First-run online — picker shows a CSS gradient placeholder; thumbs land within seconds; full-res replaces the thumb once downloaded.
• First-run offline — CSS placeholder + "Offline" badge on every tile; no crash; downloader retries automatically when window.online fires.
• Subsequent runs offline — hydrates instantly from the on-disk manifest.lock.json, no network call needed.
• Corruption — mismatched SHA-256 triggers re-download on next install pass.

To add / update wallpapers:

1. Drop the PNG(s) into assets/backgrounds/wallpapers/ and commit.

2. Tag and push — the Release Wallpaper Assets workflow regenerates thumbs + manifest and publishes the release:

   git tag wallpapers-v2
   git push origin wallpapers-v2

   Or trigger it manually from the Actions tab with a tag input.

   To run locally instead:

   RELEASE_TAG=wallpapers-v2 pnpm prepare:assets-wallpapers
   gh release create wallpapers-v2 \
     ./assets/backgrounds/wallpapers/*.png \
     ./assets/backgrounds/thumbs/*.webp \
     ./assets/manifest.json

3. Point the app at the new release by setting PUBLIC_ASSETS_MANIFEST_URL at build time (or bumping the default in apps/desktop/src/lib/assets.ts).

4. If adding a new wallpaper id, extend WALLPAPERS in apps/desktop/src/lib/stores/editor-store.svelte.ts.

Cache location (delete to force a full re-download):

• Windows: %APPDATA%\com.nexonauts.recast\assets\
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.nexonauts.recast/assets/
• Linux: ~/.local/share/com.nexonauts.recast/assets/

The folder contains each downloaded file plus a manifest.lock.json — the persisted snapshot used for offline hydration.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome community contributions! Please read our Contributing Guide to learn about our development process, how to propose bugfixes and improvements, and how to submit pull requests.

⚖️ License

Recast is distributed under a Dual-Licensing model:

1. Open Source (GPLv3): Free for personal use, educational, and open-source projects. Because the GPLv3 is a strong copyleft license, any modifications or derived works must also be open-sourced under the exact same license.
2. Commercial License: Required for enterprise deployment, proprietary commercial use, and closed-source redistribution. If you want to keep your modifications private or sell a derived product, you must purchase a commercial license.

See LICENSE.md for full legal details.