The live feed puts moving footage in the preview while you work: a YouTube video, a live web page, a shared screen or window, or your camera. Use it to judge an ad against the content it will sit next to, to match motion to a reference clip, or to capture real footage straight into a scene with Live Frame. The feed belongs to you: it is saved to your account, only you see it, and it is never exported. What ends up in a render is only the media you capture with Live Frame.
#Sources
Open the feed with the Live feed icon in the top-right corner of the preview. The menu that drops down holds every feed control, from the source at the top to the Frame section at the bottom. Press Escape or click outside the menu to close it.
There are four sources, plus Off. The two that take a link, YouTube and Web page, share one link section: a YouTube | Web page toggle at its top shows one link row at a time, each row a single line with the field and its button side by side. Each source keeps its own link. Flip the toggle to a source that already has a saved link and it starts playing; with no link yet, the toggle only shows its row.
- YouTube. Paste a link into the Paste a YouTube link field and press Play. Watch links, share links, Shorts, live streams and embed links all work. There is no search: find the video on YouTube first and copy its address. The feed is video only: it plays muted and loops on its own, with no player controls, no title strip and no captions, and the video never takes your clicks. A Shorts link is treated as 9:16. YouTube's player still shows its own pause icon in the middle for about five seconds when the video starts and after each loop; that comes from inside the player and cannot be turned off from outside it. Some videos refuse to be embedded; the menu then says so and suggests trying another link or sharing your screen instead.
- Web page. Paste an https link into the Paste an https link field and press Show. The page appears live when the site allows it, and as a snapshot when it does not (see below).
- Share screen. Your browser asks which screen, window or tab to share. Video only: no sound is captured.
- Camera. Your browser asks for camera permission. Video only.
Press Off to stop the feed. Ending a share from the browser's own bar also stops it, and so does leaving the page.
Web pages: live or a snapshot
Many sites refuse to be shown inside another site, so Wildfield checks first.
- When the site allows it, the page runs live in the preview, with Over or Behind, Fit or Cover and Opacity like any feed. Its clicks belong to the editor until you turn on Interact; then you can click and scroll the page itself. Interact starts off every time and is never saved, so a stray click never lands in someone else's site. While Live Frame is launched, Interact is off so the frame keeps your clicks.
- When the site refuses, the feed shows a still snapshot of the page instead, with the note "This site blocks embedding. Showing a snapshot." To see it live, open the site in a browser tab and use Share screen, which the menu points to. Refresh snapshot takes a new still when the page has changed; nothing refreshes by itself.
Only https pages are accepted. A snapshot is a picture, so there is nothing to click in it.
Record Wildfield's own interface
Wildfield allows itself to be shown as a web page, which makes tutorials and product videos easy:
- Flip the link toggle to Web page, paste the address of the editor, and press Show. Wildfield's own pages always show live.
- Turn on Interact and use the embedded app as normal.
- Launch Live Frame and press REC to record the interface.
When the embedded copy opens the project you already have open, signed in as you, it opens in capture mode instead of asking who is editing. Capture mode is read only: you can click, open panels, play and drag as much as the take needs, and nothing is saved, not to the cloud and not in this browser, so the project you are working on is never touched. A small note in the corner says "Capture mode, changes are not saved"; press its × to hide it for a clean take.
The embedded copy shows the project as last saved. When you save in the editor, an untouched copy updates by itself; once you have played with it, the note says the editor saved newer changes and Refresh from editor loads them. Other projects opened inside the embedded copy are read only too. A different project opened by its own link, or a different person signed in, is an ordinary second editor and meets the usual one-editor-at-a-time rule.
Inside the embedded copy the Web page source is off, so the app never nests more than one level deep.
Saved per person, per project
Your feed is saved for you on each project: the YouTube or web page link, the source, the opacity, Over or Behind, Fit or Cover, and the mouse effect. Sign in on a saved project and it follows you to other devices. A teammate opening the same project sees their own feed, or none. Each project keeps its own feed, so a reference video for one client does not appear on another client's work.
When you reopen a project, a saved YouTube or web page feed starts on its own. A screen share or camera does not: browsers only allow capture after a click, so a Resume screen share or Resume camera pill appears next to the icon. Click it to pick up where you left off. A LIVE badge shows whenever a feed is running.
Ideas
- Play the client's last campaign video beside the new ad to check the brand still reads the same.
- Share the window of a social feed mock-up to see how the ad holds up between real posts.
- Point a camera at a printed poster or a product on your desk and design the ad around it.
- Play a slow reference clip and time your keyframes to its cuts.
- Show the client's landing page Behind the ad to check the colours sit well together.
- Record a 20-second walkthrough of building a particle headline in an embedded Wildfield for a tutorial.
#Cover or fit
The Fit and Cover pair sets how the feed fills the preview. Cover is the default: the footage fills the whole preview and the edges are cropped. Fit shows the whole video, leaving empty bars where its shape does not match the preview.
Use Cover when the feed is atmosphere and Fit when the edges matter, such as a screen share with a toolbar you need to see. Behind a 9:16 ad, a 16:9 video under Cover keeps only a tall slice from the middle; under Fit it shows the whole frame small, with bars above and below.
Ideas
- Share a landscape product demo with Fit to check the ad's crop does not cut the product.
- Use Cover on a slow-moving texture video to fill the whole preview with mood while you type.
#Over or behind
The Over and Behind pair decides which side of the ad the feed sits on, and the Opacity slider (0 to 100%, default 30%) decides how strong it is.
- Over lays the feed on top of the ad. At a low opacity it is a ghost you can trace against.
- Behind puts the feed under the ad. The ad keeps an opaque backing, so the feed shows only in the margins around it, which is how the ad will look in a busy page.
To see the feed through the ad itself, turn off the eye on the Background layer while the feed is Behind. The backing drops away and you can design on top of the live footage: useful for text and particles that will later sit over video. See Background for the layer itself.
There are no blend modes on the feed: the only settings are its side and its strength.
Ideas
- Set Over at 20% and trace a competitor's end card to compare layout, then turn it off.
- Hide the Background, put the feed Behind, and judge whether white type stays readable over bright footage.
#Live Frame
Live Frame turns the feed into footage for the ad. It lives in the Frame section at the bottom of the Live feed menu. Start a feed first, then press Launch Frame. The ad and the preview chrome step aside and a frame the exact size and shape of the current format sits over the feed, with the area outside it dimmed. Whatever is inside the frame is what you capture.
Aim the frame
- Drag the frame from anywhere inside it, or nudge it with the arrow keys (hold Shift for bigger steps).
- Rotate it with the Angle field, the rotate knob (Shift snaps to 15 degrees), or the
[and]keys. - The frame never changes size. The readout under it gives the output size and how much the source is being scaled, with a warning when the capture is being enlarged and will look soft.
Capture
- SNAP saves a still PNG at the format's exact size.
- REC records video at 30 fps. It stops by itself after 8 seconds, and the button shows STOP with the time so you can end sooner.
- Animate moves the frame across the feed while you record. Set Start and End positions and pick an Ease. The other position shows as a dashed outline: press inside either outline to pick that position and drag it. Where the two overlap, a press picks Start; the Start and End buttons choose which one your next drag moves. The play button plays the timeline from this scene, and the frame moves with the playhead over exactly the scene's length (Hold included). Stop either one and both stop; moving the frame stops playback too. Nothing is recorded. With Animate on, REC records exactly the length of the scene and stops on its own.
Every capture goes into the Library: stills with your uploads, clips with your video. With Autolayer on (the default) it also lands on the current scene as a full-bleed layer named Frame 1, Frame 2 and so on, directly above the Background. That is one undo step and does not change the scene's length. If you later change the scene's length, the layer tells you the take no longer matches so you can record it again.
Track takes (Off, Face, Hand or Body) tracks each REC take that Autolayer adds, as soon as it lands: the face, hand or body becomes a track on the scene's Points layer, ready for Follow point or a particle Displace. Tracking runs on this computer and the take never leaves it; the first time downloads the model. It is one more undo step after the take's own.
While the frame is launched, the link section is hidden and the mouse effect pauses, so every SNAP and REC is the plain feed. A live web page keeps its Interact button in view, turned off and greyed out ("Off while the frame is live"), so the frame always takes your clicks. Press Disconnect Frame to return to the ad; the mouse effect and Interact come back as you had them. Only capture footage you have the rights to use.
Capturing YouTube or a live web page in Live Frame needs Chrome or Edge. Launching asks you to share, and you pick This tab. In other browsers, use Share screen instead. A web page snapshot captures in any browser.
Worked example
A 9:16 ad for a café, with a slow push across the counter as the background.
- Start a Camera feed pointed at the counter.
- Launch Frame and turn on Animate. With Start chosen, drag the frame to the left of the counter; press End and drag it to the right.
- Choose an ease and press play: the timeline plays and the frame moves with it.
- Press REC. The clip records for the length of the scene and appears as Frame 1 above the Background.
- Add the headline and logo on top, then Disconnect Frame.
Ideas
- SNAP a frame of a product unboxing from your camera and use it as the hero image.
- Record a slow Animate pan across a screen share of the client's website for a "new site" ad.
- Capture a clip of hands on a keyboard, then mask it with the logo.
- Record the same move in two formats so the 1:1 and 9:16 versions match.
#Mouse effects
The Mouse effect row adds a pointer interaction on top of the feed: Off, Water, Wind or Goo. They are for play and for capture. Nothing is written into the ad, and no effect ever draws over it: the ad stays clear while the effect plays around it, whether the feed is Over or Behind and whether the Background is on or off.
- Water. Ripples follow the pointer and bend the feed's picture, catching a highlight. Click to drop a ring of ripples. The ad's moving elements push the water too: with the feed Over, ripples rise from the motion; with it Behind, the ad acts as a solid body the waves bounce off. You see the ripples once they travel out past the ad's edge.
- Wind. A grid of tiny dots sits over the feed, and the pointer moves the air they ride on. A stroke sets the air near its path moving the same way; the air keeps flowing, spreads, swirls a little and slows, and the dots are carried along with a flutter of their own before drifting home as the air calms. Press and hold for a gust: it starts gentle, builds to full strength over about a second and a half, makes every stroke stronger and wider, and blows outward from the pointer like a fan. Let go and it eases off rather than stopping dead. Each dot inverts the colour of whatever is under it, so it reads on dark and light footage alike, on every source, YouTube included.
- Goo. The picture near the pointer stretches like thick jelly and slowly springs back. Press and drag to leave a trail that fades.
There are no strength or radius settings: each effect is tuned in the app, and a reduced-motion setting on your device calms them. The effect follows the feed's Opacity and Over or Behind setting. On a YouTube feed, Water and Goo can only add light and shade over the video, not bend it. The effects play over a live web page too. They need WebGL2; without it the buttons are disabled.
Mouse effects are never captured. Launching Live Frame pauses them: the row greys out, keeps your choice marked and says "Paused while the frame is live. Back on when you disconnect." Nothing runs while the frame is up, so SNAP and REC record the plain feed. Your saved effect is untouched, and it comes back as soon as the frame disconnects, whether you press Disconnect Frame, turn the feed Off, switch source or end a screen share.
Ideas
- Put Water over a slow product video in a client call and let them ripple it before you reveal the ad on top.
- Use Goo on a camera feed of a fabric swatch as a tactile warm-up while you pitch a fashion concept.
- Hide the Background, put a busy feed Behind, and blow Wind across it with a held gust: the dots clear around the ad and show exactly how much of the page it takes up.