How to Make a Product Hunt Launch Video (Length, Script, Specs)

A Product Hunt launch video is the one piece of your launch page that shows the product working. Visitors scan the tagline, glance at the gallery and decide in seconds whether to upvote, try it or move on. This guide covers how long a Product Hunt video should be, a script structure you can copy, what to show, the specs to check, how to record and zoom so the interface is readable, and how to export it. It works with any screen recorder.

TL;DR

• Length: 45–60 seconds. The product appears in the first five.
• Watchable on mute: burned-in captions and on-screen text carry the story; the voiceover is a bonus.
• Structure: hook, outcome, three steps, proof, call to action.
• Hosting: the gallery takes a link to a hosted video, not a file. Check Product Hunt's current guidelines for which hosts it accepts.
• Export: a 1080p (or 1440p) H.264 MP4 master, 16:9, then a square copy for X and LinkedIn.
• Record readable: a smaller window, a bigger cursor, and a zoom on every action.

How long should a Product Hunt video be?

Between 45 and 60 seconds for the gallery video. Shorter than 30 seconds rarely has room to show a workflow from start to finish; longer than 90 seconds and most viewers drop off before the call to action. A good test: if you cannot show the core workflow in 60 seconds, the video is trying to cover too many features, not running short of time.

The number that matters more than total length is how soon the product appears. Aim for real interface on screen inside the first five seconds. No logo animation, no “Hi, I'm the founder” opening, no slow title card.

How people actually watch it

Plan for three kinds of viewer. Some click play in the gallery with the sound on. Many watch with the sound off, at work or on a phone. And the same file ends up on X, LinkedIn and your own landing page, where video autoplays muted in the feed. So the video has to make sense with the sound off. That means:

• Burned-in captions for every spoken line, not only a subtitle track, so they show wherever the file is posted.
• Short on-screen text for the hook and the call to action: six to ten words, large enough to read on a phone.
• Visible cause and effect. Every click should produce a change the viewer can see without narration: a list fills, a chart moves, a status turns green.

The first frame also matters. On YouTube and in social feeds it doubles as the thumbnail, so start on the product (or the finished result), not a black frame or a logo.

The 60-second structure

Five beats. The workflow gets most of the time; the intro gets almost none.

This is a compressed version of the 60–90 second structure in our guide to recording a product demo. For Product Hunt, trim the steps rather than the hook or the call to action.

A copy-paste script template

Write the script in two columns, screen and words, then read it aloud with a timer. If it runs past 60 seconds at a relaxed pace, cut words, don't talk faster.

PRODUCT HUNT VIDEO: [Product], target 50-60 s

One-line pitch: [the tagline you're launching with]
Viewer:         [who it's for, e.g. "solo developers shipping side projects"]
CTA:            [e.g. "Try it free at example.com, launch discount today"]

[0:00] HOOK            (on-screen text, 6-10 words)
  Screen:  [the pain, or the finished result]
  Caption: "[problem, in your users' words]"

[0:05] OUTCOME
  Screen:  [end state]
  Caption: "[Product] [does X] so you [benefit]."

[0:10] STEP 1  Screen: [action]   Zoom: [target]
  Caption: "[why this step matters]"

[0:22] STEP 2  Screen: [action]   Zoom: [target]
  Caption: "[...]"

[0:34] STEP 3  Screen: [action]   Zoom: [target]
  Caption: "[...]"

[0:45] PROOF
  Screen:  [the moment it works]
  Caption: "[before vs after / time saved]"

[0:52] CTA             (on-screen text)
  Screen:  [logo + URL]
  Caption: "[one next step]"

Worked example (a made-up product)

Parcelnote is fictional: it turns a pile of shipping emails into one delivery timeline. Filled in, the template looks like this:

[0:00] HOOK     Screen: inbox with 23 "Your order has shipped" emails
                Text:   "Where is everything I ordered?"
[0:05] OUTCOME  Screen: one clean timeline, 6 parcels, arrival dates
                Text:   "Parcelnote turns shipping emails into one timeline."
[0:10] STEP 1   Screen: click "Connect inbox", approve    Zoom: the button
                Text:   "Connect your inbox once."
[0:22] STEP 2   Screen: parcels appear, grouped by day   Zoom: the list
                Text:   "Every tracking number, found for you."
[0:34] STEP 3   Screen: toggle "Notify me on delivery day"   Zoom: toggle
                Text:   "Get one ping, on the day it arrives."
[0:45] PROOF    Screen: phone notification "Arriving today: desk lamp"
                Text:   "23 emails → 1 timeline."
[0:52] CTA      Screen: logo + parcelnote.example
                Text:   "Free on launch day. parcelnote.example"

What to show, and what to leave out

Show:

• One workflow, start to finish. The one that best explains why the product exists. Other features can go in gallery images.
• Realistic data. Seed a demo account with believable names, numbers and dates. “Test 1” and “asdf” make a product look unfinished; real customer data is a privacy leak waiting for one missed frame.
• The result held on screen for a second or two, so it registers.
• Speed, if it is part of the pitch. If something is fast, show it happening in real time instead of saying so.

Leave out:

• Sign-up and login screens, loading spinners and settings pages.
• A tour of every menu. Nobody remembers feature seven.
• Logo stings, stock footage and long animated intros.
• Narration of clicks (“now I click Settings”). The screen already shows the click; say why it matters instead.
• Anything that will change before launch day, such as a placeholder price.

Specs and hosting

We are not going to list exact Product Hunt video specs here, because Product Hunt changes its launch form and we would rather you read the current rules than an out-of-date copy of them. What has held true for a long time, and what to check:

• The gallery video is a link, not an upload. Product Hunt's launch guide names YouTube for this: a public or unlisted YouTube link, not a shortened one. Check Product Hunt's current guidelines before you upload in case that has changed.
• The video must be viewable. On YouTube, use Public or Unlisted; a Private video won't play for visitors. Paste the full URL, not a shortened link.
• Gallery images and the thumbnail have their own size rules. Look them up in the launch form or Product Hunt's help pages when you build the page.
• Upload days early. Give the host time to process higher resolutions, and check the link in a private browser window while signed out.

For the file you upload to YouTube, YouTube's own recommended upload settings call for an MP4 container with H.264 video and AAC audio, which is what every recorder in this post exports.

Recording tips

Most of what makes a launch video look professional happens before you press record.

1. Record a window, not a huge display. A full 4K or 5K screen shrunk into a gallery player turns interface text into noise. Size the browser or app window to roughly 1280×800 to 1440×900, or raise the browser zoom to 110–125%. The details are in why screen recordings look blurry.
2. Use a clean browser profile. No bookmarks bar, no extension icons, no personal autocomplete, no other tabs.
3. Turn on Do Not Disturb and quit chat and mail apps. A notification banner in a launch video is both distracting and a privacy risk.
4. Make the cursor bigger if your recorder shows the system pointer, or use a recorder that redraws the cursor so you can resize it later.
5. Redo a fumbled step straight away and cut the mistake later. You don't need a perfect single take, and one continuous recording is easier to edit than several files.
6. Record at 60 fps if you scroll a lot; 30 fps is fine for clicks and forms.
7. For voiceover, use a USB or headset mic close to your mouth. Check the level first; our free webcam and mic test shows a live level meter in the browser without recording anything.

Zoom, captions and music

Zoom on every action

Zooming is the edit that most changes how a launch video reads. Zoom in when something happens, hold while the viewer reads, pull back when they need context. Two or three zoom levels are enough; zooming on every tiny movement makes people seasick. ZoomCap's CLI places these zooms from your clicks and typing as you record, so you only re-aim or delete the odd one; in any editor with keyframes you can place them by hand. Our guide on how to zoom in on a screen recording covers both ways.

Captions that carry the story

Keep caption lines short (one line, around 40 characters where you can), high contrast, and away from the part of the interface you are showing. Proofread product names: speech-to-text models regularly mangle them. Burn the captions into the video so they appear on every platform, and optionally add a subtitle file on YouTube as well. ZoomCap generates captions in your browser with Whisper and burns them into the export, so the only manual step is the proofread.

Music and voice

A quiet music bed helps a muted-first video feel finished, but it should sit well under the voice. If you use a voiceover, record it in a quiet room, then cut breaths and restarts. Check the licence of any track: royalty-free libraries still have terms, and a claimed track on YouTube can cause trouble on launch day. ZoomCap's editor includes seven built-in tracks if you'd rather not go shopping for one.

Export settings

Export one master and cut every other version from it.

If your editor exports something unusual (a ProRes MOV, a very high bitrate), re-encode the master with ffmpeg before uploading:

ffmpeg -i launch-master.mov \
  -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow -pix_fmt yuv420p \
  -c:a aac -b:a 192k -movflags +faststart \
  launch-youtube.mp4

-crf 18 keeps text sharp at a sensible size, -pix_fmt yuv420p makes the file play everywhere, and +faststart lets it start before it fully downloads. More on codecs in our MP4 vs MOV vs WebM guide.

Tools to make it

What a dedicated demo recorder buys you is time saved on zooms, cursor, captions and framing, the parts that make a launch video readable. We recommend ZoomCap for this, and we make it.

Why ZoomCap

Record with npx zoomcap record on macOS or Linux X11 and the editor zooms where you clicked and typed; record in the browser recorder on any OS and you place zooms by hand. The editor adds a background, padding, rounded corners or a macOS window frame, captions generated on your machine with Whisper, a webcam bubble if you want a founder face in the corner, and one of seven music tracks. It exports an H.264 MP4 up to 4K in 16:9 for YouTube and 1:1 for X and LinkedIn (plus 9:16 and 4:3), or a GIF. It costs $29 once (or $12.49/month), which over three years is $295 less than Screen Studio's yearly plan; the free plan includes 2 watermarked exports a month. Its limits for launch videos: no motion blur, speed changes apply to the whole video, and it does not combine separate takes or a separately recorded voiceover, so a multi-take edit finishes in a general editor.

Prices below were checked on each vendor's site in September 2026. We did not hands-on test the paid Mac apps; their details come from the vendors' own pages.

If you need something ZoomCap doesn't do: if you need motion blur on a Mac and don't mind a subscription, Screen Studio has it according to its site. If your budget is $0, OpenScreen and Recordly are free with automatic zoom on every desktop OS. If you need automatic zoom on Windows, FocuSee has it. If you only need raw capture, OBS (which we have tested) is free and leaves zooms and captions to another editor. Our best screen recorder for product demos roundup goes through them by use case.

Recording an unreleased product raises a fair question about where the footage goes. ZoomCap records, edits and encodes in your browser and never uploads the video; the security page shows the data flow. Payments are handled by Dodo Payments, with a 14-day refund if it doesn't work for you (refund terms).

Launch-week checklist

1. Script written and read aloud under 60 seconds.
2. Demo account seeded; notifications off; clean browser profile.
3. Recorded, trimmed, zooms checked, captions proofread.
4. Master exported as 1080p H.264 MP4 with captions burned in.
5. Uploaded to the host Product Hunt currently accepts, as public or unlisted, at least two days early.
6. Link tested signed out, in a private window, on a phone.
7. Square copy exported for X and LinkedIn; a short loop for your landing page.
8. Longer walkthrough (if any) linked from your maker comment, not in the gallery.

Frequently asked questions

Setting up the recorder for the first time? The ZoomCap docs cover npx zoomcap doctor for permissions, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes.

Make your launch video

Record your launch video free in the browser, with nothing to install, and try the zooms, captions and background on your own product. For automatic zoom from your clicks and typing, unlimited exports and no watermark, it's $29 once on the pricing page.