Teleprompter size and speed that match a real talking-head

People ask for “the right teleprompter speed” as if it were a universal number. It is not. It depends on how far you sit, how large the type is, and whether you are talking to a meeting or a camera.

This is the chart I actually use on CuePrompter before a take. Treat every number as a start, then run the 20-second test at the end.

Start here, then move one notch

Setup	Size (approx.)	Speed (approx.)	Script length
Laptop webcam, arm’s length	40	8–10	60–90 seconds
Phone held beside the lens	36–40	6–8	45–75 seconds
Zoom / Meet on the same monitor	44–48	6–8	45–90 seconds
Tablet in hardware glass, farther away	48–56	8–12	90–180 seconds

Size 40 and speed 10 on a laptop is the default I open with. If I finish a line before it hits the highlight, I slow down. If I wait with a frozen smile, I speed up one step. I do not drag speed while a sentence is landing.

Why size comes before speed

If the type is too small, you lean in. On camera that looks like a frown. Bigger type lets you sit still and keep the highlight near the lens.

Two or three lines in the reading band is enough. More than that and your eyes hunt. Less than that and you panic when a name is long.

On a phone, drop size only if the highlight band already shows two lines. Vertical video does not need a desktop-sized paragraph.

Speed is a mouth setting, not a production value

A 90-second talking-head is roughly 220–260 spoken words if you leave room to breathe. If your draft is 400 words, the slider will not save you. Cut the draft first, then match speed.

Smart follow (after login) moves with your voice instead of a constant scroll. Free runs last three minutes. It still needs short lines. A 40-word sentence will stall the matcher the same way it stalls a human.

Three rooms, three mistakes

Zoom. People share the teleprompter window. Don’t. Keep the reader on your monitor, font large, speed slower than YouTube. Meetings tolerate pauses. Mute notifications or the next Slack ping will live in the recording.

OBS / YouTube. Put the highlight at camera height. Write “take 2” on the first line so edits are obvious. If you use a beamsplitter, turn on horizontal flip. If you read from the same laptop screen as the webcam, leave flip off.

Phone. Lock rotation if you shoot vertical. Hold the device just off-lens. Shorter script. If you need camera and prompt together, use Record Video instead of juggling two apps.

The 20-second test

Paste ten lines you can actually say. Not a title placeholder.
Set size so you can read without leaning.
Press Play at speed 8.
If you race the highlight, slow down. If you wait, speed up.
Record that twenty seconds. Listen only for rush or freeze.

Do not skip the recording. Your face will tell you the truth before your ears do.

When the text still sounds like a memo, stop touching the slider and rewrite. I wrote the method in why talking-heads sound like reading. Finished spoken examples live in script templates.

What I do not do

I do not leave speed on a lucky number from last week’s video. Lighting changes, coffee changes, and a denser paragraph changes.

I do not flip the script “to look professional” on a normal laptop. Mirrored English on a regular display only slows reading.

I do not put a full essay on a phone and hope size 56 will make it cinematic.

Set size for your eyes. Set speed for your mouth. Then leave the controls alone for the take.

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