Mirrored Teleprompter

If you read your script off a sheet of glass in front of the lens, the text on the screen has to be backwards. This is a free mirrored teleprompter that flips it for you, left to right or top to bottom, with no account and nothing to install.

Open the teleprompter

Why the Text Has to Be Mirrored

In a beamsplitter rig the screen sits under, or above, a sheet of half-silvered glass angled at 45°, and you read its reflection in that glass while the camera shoots straight through it. The camera sees you looking down the lens; you see the script.

A reflection reverses left and right. So the text that is correct on the screen reads backwards in the glass, and the fix is to reverse it on the screen first: two reversals cancel out, and what you read through the glass is the right way round.

Mirroring is only for rigs where you read a reflection. If the screen is a monitor or a tablet you look at directly, leave it off.

Which Way to Flip

Which axis you need depends on how the screen is mounted.

• Screen flat, facing up, glass above it: flip left to right. The usual tablet-in-a-hood setup.
• Screen above the glass, facing down: flip left to right and top to bottom. Hanging the screen upside down has already reversed the vertical, so the vertical flip puts it back.
• Screen rotated 90° in the hood: try one axis, look through the glass, try the other.

Turn mirroring on and look through the glass from where you will be standing, then keep whichever setting reads correctly.

Mirroring on This Teleprompter

Two buttons under Mirror on the setup screen: one flips left to right, one flips top to bottom. They are independent, so you can use either or both, and the setting is remembered for next time along with the rest of your settings.

The flip is applied to the text and to nothing else. The controls (play, pause, restart, the time remaining) sit on top of the screen and are left alone, so the clock still reads forwards and the buttons are still where you put your hand.

Setting Up the Rig

1. Mount the glass in front of the lens at 45°, with the hood blocking stray light from behind it.
2. Position the screen so the glass picks it up: flat under the glass, or inverted above it.
3. Turn the screen's brightness up. Beamsplitter glass passes most of the light to the camera and reflects only a fraction back to you, so a dim screen is unreadable in the glass.
4. Paste the script, set the pace in words per minute or as a total duration, and turn on mirroring.
5. Check through the glass from where you will actually be standing, and set the font size and text width from there, not from the desk.

Once the screen is under the glass the keyboard is usually out of reach. A presentation clicker works as a remote: its back and forward buttons send Page Up and Page Down, and the prompter moves the script by a line for each press.

For pacing and delivery, the guide to using a teleprompter covers what speed to scroll at and how to write a script that reads out loud.

Frequently Asked Questions

Open the teleprompter