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Control How Long a Cast Segment Plays

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

A deployment can take thirty seconds to finish even when a demo only needs four seconds to show its progress. Speeding up the entire recording also rushes the commands and the pauses that help viewers follow along. Atmos now supports playback groups to set the recorded duration of just the steps you choose.

The Problem​

Real infrastructure demos include time spent waiting for providers and services. Those waits belong in the execution, but they can dominate a short recording. Removing frames loses the progress that explains what happened.

The Fix​

A playback group preserves every captured event and scales its timestamps to fit an exact duration. Typing and reading pauses outside the group retain their original timing. The command still runs normally, with real timeouts and live output during recording.

How to Use It​

Inside a cast session, wrap Enter and the completion wait in a group:

- type: write
  text: atmos terraform deploy --stack dev --all
- type: playback
  duration: 4s
  steps:
    - type: key
      key: enter
    - type: wait
      regex: '(?s)Apply .*completed.*> '
      timeout: 90s
- type: pause
  duration: 3s

The four seconds begin before Enter and end when the completion wait matches. The following three-second pause gives viewers time to read the result at the returned prompt. Elapsed times printed by the command still show the actual execution time; they are part of the preserved output.

The duration must be positive. Shorter segments stretch to fit, and playback groups cannot nest. Groups also work around ordinary steps in a steps-mode cast.

Get Involved​

See the cast documentation for recording options, and share feedback in GitHub Discussions.