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Home Teleprompter

James Moore

A few weeks ago, I discovered that I was in need of a home teleprompter. A friend had asked me to record some talking head commentary for a course he was building. I was able to put something together by scrolling a Word document and reading off the top of the screen as I looked at the camera. The results were not great.

I now have something that works well.

I went with the Glide Gear TMP 50 Adjustable Smartphone Mini Teleprompter. The TMP 50 is a small and lightweight teleprompter designed for smartphone use (it includes a clamp that can be used to hold an iPhone for recording). However, it works really well with a webcam (and a tripod extender rod, to raise the webcam up a few inches). The mounting hardware is designed for viewing tablets up to 6.7 inches in width, but removing one of the clamps allows me to safely use my 9.7-inch iPad Pro as the display.

Home Teleprompter Setup

My webcam of choice typically is the Mevo Start, which connects via a USB-C cable to my MacBook Air. The Mevo Start can also wirelessly stream to Zoom, Screenflow, and Microsoft Teams, but this introduces a slight lag. Logitech webcams work equally well, so I placed a C930e behind the mirror. The LED activity light on the C930e could be seen through the mirror, so I permanently turned that off in preferences. I could also use an HDMI to USB capture card to use a regular camera (like my Sony RX100 III) and connect this like a regular webcam.

Which brings me to software. My ideal use case was to be able to record commentary for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations, reading off the presenter notes. Apple’s Sidecar helpfully sends presenter notes to the iPad screen, but I needed some way to reverse the iPad display to be able to read the mirrored image on the teleprompter. The free Mirror Flip Mac Utility looked like it might do the job, and during testing switched the image for most applications. However, as soon as I stated presenting in Keynote the switched image reverted to normal.

Using Presenter Notes

Luckily, I had a Luna Display at home. The Luna Display is small hardware device that connect to either the Mini DisplayPort or USB-C port on a Mac laptop and turns an iPad into a wireless second display. The Luna Display has a teleprompter mode that reverses the image on the iPad. This works perfectly for my use case – I can present and record from Keynote, reading the presenter notes as I look directly to camera. I could also use the teleprompter for more engaging videoconference sessions, where eye contact would be improved.

Here is what you need to replicate my setup:

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