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Locked on Motion Tracking Effect Tutorial on Shotcut

One filter follows the basketball and records where it went. A second filter borrows those keyframes and pushes the whole picture the opposite way, so the ball stays put and the gym slides around behind it. A third zooms in far enough that you never see the edges.

Ben Espanto 17:32 runtime uploaded 30 Jun 2023 30,501 views 1,013 likes

Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut filter, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.

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second source clip
what you are building

A subject that will not move, on a background that will not stop

No preset and no plugin. One clip, on one track, carrying three filters — a tracker that watches a moving object, a filter that inherits the tracker’s keyframes and shifts the picture by the inverse of that movement, and a second copy of the same filter doing nothing but zooming in to cover the damage.

01

A tracker that follows one object

The Motion Tracker filter is given a rectangle to watch and an algorithm to watch it with. Pressing Analyze runs it over the clip as a background job.

02

Keyframes, not an effect

The tracker produces nothing you can see. What it produces is a keyframe per frame describing where the region went — data waiting for another filter to consume it.

03

A filter that moves instead

Size, Position & Rotate imports those keyframes with Adjust set to Offset Position, so the frame travels opposite the subject and the subject appears nailed down.

04

A zoom that pays for it

Shifting the picture drags its edges into shot. A second, un-keyframed copy of the same filter scales up until the black slabs are gone — here to 192.8%.

[ what it did was recorded the tracking on keyframes, and once you recorded the keyframes you then have the ability to share that keyframe information with another filter ]

Ben Espanto · 7:26

step by step

The whole tutorial, 30 stops

This video carries no chapter list of its own, so the sections below were worked out by reading the video’s frames end to end. Each stop is anchored to the exact second of the frame shown with it, which is why the timestamps land on ten-second marks. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from that second, right here in the card. Quotes are transcribed verbatim from the audio.

0:00
STEP 01

Intro — the locked-on tracking effect

“In this tutorial I want to show you how to do this locked on tracking effect on Shotcut using the new motion tracking filter.”

At 0:00 the video is still running the channel intro reel, so this frame shows clips from other tutorials rather than this one. No Shotcut window is on screen until 0:50.

0:50
STEP 02

The build this was recorded on

“This tutorial will be done on Shotcut version 23.05.14. You won’t see the motion tracking filter if you have an earlier version.”

The About Shotcut dialog confirms the build: version 23.05.14, “Copyright © 2011-2023 Meltytech, LLC”. The Motion Tracker filter is new in this release, which is the one hard prerequisite for everything below.

1:00
STEP 03

Where this follows on from

“In my previous tutorial I showed you how to use the motion tracker with the simple text filter.”

A clip of the earlier tutorial’s result — a text label pinned to a runner and moving with him. Same tracker, different destination filter. No interface is on screen in this stretch.

1:30
STEP 04

What locked-on tracking is

“This time we’re going to lock on to a moving subject and keep them relatively still while the background moves… This effect is called locked-on tracking.”

The title card names the technique. The subject stays where it is in the frame; everything behind it slides, because the whole picture is being pushed the opposite way on every frame.

1:40
STEP 05

The clip, and the plan

“…instead of tracking the female what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to track the basketball… and have the background move with respect to the movement of basketball.”

The source clip, untouched. The thing being tracked is the ball, not the person — that choice decides what ends up looking nailed to the centre of the frame.

2:30
STEP 06

The clip on the timeline

“…I’ve already taken the liberty of dragging the basketball file on my playlist and so from my playlist I’m going to go ahead and drag it into my timeline.”

One video track, V1, one clip: basketball.mp4, 00:00:08:19 long. This whole effect happens on a single track — nothing is stacked, nothing is duplicated.

2:50
STEP 07

Finding the Motion Tracker filter

“…I’m going into the filters tab right here and then I’m going to click the plus button to add a filter and I’m going to look for motion tracker and there it is.”

Typing motion into the filter search returns five results: Motion Tracker, Speed: Forward & Reverse, Speed: Forward Only, Time Remap and Trails. The first one is the one.

3:00
STEP 08

The green Region To Track box

“The minute you choose motion tracker you’re going to see this box here which is a rectangle with… a green border around it and so the green border represents what is being tracked.”

Straight out of the box the region is Position 864, 486 and Size 192 × 108 — a small rectangle dropped near the centre. It is nowhere near the ball yet.

3:30
STEP 09

Sizing the box around the ball

“…I want to encompass the basketball inside the green border and so you can grab the handles and you can make the rectangle or square as big or small as you want.”

Dragged and stretched over the ball: Position 890, 619, Size 351 × 369. The box wants to contain the subject fully, with as little background inside it as you can manage.

4:00
STEP 10

The tracking algorithm

“…I just skipped over the algorithm dropdown and I’m just choosing the default which is the CSRT algorithm but if you find that… it’s not tracking your object as closely as you want it to be go ahead and choose one of the other algorithms here and then click analyze again.”

Algorithm is left on the default, CSRT: Channel and Spatial Reliability. The region reads 890, 619 · 357 × 369 at this point. Swapping algorithms and re-analysing is the fix when a track drifts, not nudging the box.

4:50
STEP 11

Naming the tracker before you analyse

“…before I allow the motion tracker to analyze the movement of the basketball… I want to name this… I’m just going to name it basketball… so that it’s explicit and I know what to look for when I begin utilizing it with other filters.”

The Name field is typed as Basketball. Left empty, Shotcut assigns its own name — Tracker 1 — and that is the label you will have to recognise later in the Load Keyframes from Motion Tracker dialog.

5:20
STEP 12

Analyze runs as a background job

“…now I’m going to click analyze and now a new line item in the jobs window is going to show up and so there’s going to be here a little status bar…”

The Jobs panel takes over the left of the window: Analyze basketball.mp4 at 13% (00:01:01), with the tooltip explaining the figure is estimated hours, minutes and seconds. The green box sits on the ball in the player while it runs.

6:00
STEP 13

Analysis complete — check the track

“…once the filter finishes analyzing you can test how well the tracker track your subject… by just pressing play and you’re going to see how well the green border… tracks the basketball.”

The label beside Analyze changes from “Click “Analyze” to use this filter.” to “Analysis complete.”. Playing the clip back with the preview still on is the only check worth doing before moving on. The region reads 883, 619 · 358 × 353 on this pass.

7:00
STEP 14

Uncheck Show preview before you export

“…if you leave this preview checked this green box is going to show up after you’ve rendered your video… ultimately you’re going to need to uncheck that.”

Show preview is a diagnostic, not a display option — it burns the green rectangle into the render. Toggle it on while you are judging the track, then off. The green swatch beside it sets the box colour and changes nothing about the tracking.

7:30
STEP 15

What the analysis actually produced

“…what it did was recorded the tracking on keyframes and once you recorded the keyframes you then have the ability to share that keyframe information with another filter.”

The output of Analyze is not a visible effect — it is a stored set of keyframes, one per frame, describing where the region went. Note that the Name box reads the default Tracker 1 through this stretch and the region reads 890, 619 · 357 × 369: the video is cut together from more than one recording pass, so the panel values step between takes.

8:20
STEP 16

Adding Size, Position & Rotate

“…I want to share the keyframe information from the motion tracker filter with the size position and rotate filter… I’m going to go ahead and click the plus button again and I’m going to choose size position and rotate.”

Second filter on the same clip, stacked under the tracker, and left entirely alone: Position 0, 34, Size 1,920 × 1,013, Zoom 100.0%, Size mode Fill, Horizontal fit Center, Vertical fit Middle, Rotation 0.0°. The button at the bottom of the panel is the bridge: Load Keyframes from Motion Tracker.

8:40
STEP 17

Load Keyframes from Motion Tracker

“…you go to this button here that says load keyframes from motion tracker, a new window pops up and it’s going to ask you which motion tracker do you want to use…”

The dialog has two dropdowns and one pair of radio buttons. Motion tracker lists every analysed tracker in the project — here a single entry, Basketball, which is exactly why naming it earlier was worth the ten seconds.

9:00
STEP 18

From start, not Current position

“…it’s going to ask you whether or not you want the keyframes… from the beginning of the file or just where your current position is… I typically usually select from the start so that I have all the motion tracking keyframes and I can always edit that later.”

The two radio buttons decide where the imported keyframes begin. From start takes the lot; Current position starts them at the playhead. Taking everything and trimming later is the cheaper mistake.

9:20
STEP 19

AdjustOffset Position

“…lastly for the effect that we’re going for I want to choose offset position.”

The Adjust dropdown offers Relative Position, Offset Position, Absolute Position and Size And Position. Offset Position is the one that produces the locked-on look: the frame is shifted by the inverse of the tracked movement instead of an element being placed on top of it.

9:40
STEP 20

Apply, then wait it out

“…once you click apply Shotcut is going to think for a little bit, it’s going to seem like it crashed or it froze but really what it’s doing is it’s thinking… there really isn’t a timer or an indicator.”

Unlike Analyze, the keyframe import gives you nothing to watch — no job, no bar, no spinner. The window can look hung. The only honest signal that it worked is keyframes appearing where there were none.

10:10
STEP 21

The keyframes appear

“…the only indicator that you’re going to have is once you go to the keyframe all of a sudden keyframes are going to show up that didn’t used to be there.”

The Keyframes panel fills with dots from end to end of the clip, and the stopwatch button beside Size in the filter panel lights up. That is the whole confirmation that the import landed.

10:30
STEP 22

The effect — and the black bars

“…it tries to keep the basketball around the same place and to do that it’s moving the entire video around to compensate… you’re going to see a lot of black bars, a lot of black areas around.”

It works, and it immediately shows you the cost. Pushing the whole picture sideways drags its edges into frame, so black slabs appear wherever the source no longer covers the canvas. Every locked-on shot has this problem.

11:00
STEP 23

A second Size, Position & Rotate

“…I want to add another size and position and rotate filter. I’m not going to make these settings in the previous size position and rotate because that one is for the keyframes… the other… is meant to change the size of the video itself so that we can eliminate all the black bars.”

Two separate Size, Position & Rotate filters, deliberately. The first one carries the imported keyframes and must not be touched. The second is a plain, un-keyframed framing control that scales the shot up until the exposed edges are pushed off-canvas.

12:00
STEP 24

Zooming the black bars out of frame

“…I’m going to look for a part of the video that has the most black bars and… I’m going to try to zoom into this video to compensate for that… I’m just using the scroller on the mouse.”

First pass: Zoom 150.0%, which drives Position to −480, −219 and Size to 2,880 × 1,519. The method is play, find the worst exposure, zoom past it, play again.

14:00
STEP 25

Settling at 192.8%

“…hopefully that’s it because I’m kind of running out of real estate here… okay so there’s no more black bars.”

After several passes the zoom settles at 192.8%Position −1,041, −747, Size 3,702 × 1,952. Close to double, which is the real price of this technique: the more the subject moves, the more resolution you spend hiding the edges.

14:10
STEP 26

Preview Scaling for smoother playback

“…if you notice that my video is a little jittery that’s because I’m playing it at full resolution. Let me see if I can use preview scaling… a little bit more pixelated but at least it’s going to move a little bit smoother.”

Settings Preview Scaling. A playback-performance setting only — it changes nothing about the export. Behind the menu the full stack is visible: Motion Tracker, then two Size, Position & Rotate filters.

15:00
STEP 27

The grid, to centre the ball properly

“…if you really want to be OCD you can always activate the grids… so that you can ensure that the ball is centered exactly in the middle of your video, but then… I run the risk of exposing some black areas.”

The player’s grid overlay gives you a centre to aim at while you nudge the framing filter. The tension is constant: every pixel you move toward centre is a pixel of margin you lose at the edge.

15:20
STEP 28

Grid off, final framing

“…it seems like it did the job, so I am now going to uncheck the grids icon and I think it did a pretty good job.”

Final values on the framing filter: Position −1,122, −864, Size 3,702 × 1,952, Zoom 192.8%. The keyframed filter above it was never edited by hand at any point.

15:50
STEP 29

The exported result

“…so once it finishes exporting this is what this video looks like, and this technique is called locked on motion tracking.”

The finished shot, full screen. The ball barely moves; the gym, the bench and the woman all drift around it. Nothing in the frame is pinned in place except the thing the tracker was told to follow.

16:40
STEP 30

Outro — channel and playlist

“…visit my playlist of tips and tutorials all geared toward the beginner, visit my Shotcut tips and tricks playlist…”

End card — the channel and the Shotcut Tips and Tricks playlist that this tutorial sits in.

build it yourself

Nine steps, start to finish

Every number below was read off the screen in the video. Nothing here is a recommended-sounding guess — if a value is not stated, it is because it was never shown.

STEP 01

Check your version first

The Motion Tracker filter does not exist in older builds. Open Help → About Shotcut and confirm you are on a release that has it. The video was recorded on 23.05.14.

version 23.05.14 clip basketball.mp4 length 00:00:08:19 tracks V1 only

One clip, one video track. Nothing about this technique needs a second track — every filter goes on the same clip.

STEP 02

Add Motion Tracker and put the box on your subject

Select the clip, open Filters, press + and search motion. The filter arrives with a small default region — Position 864, 486, Size 192 × 108 — which you drag and stretch onto the thing you want to follow.

The Motion Tracker panel with the green tracking region enlarged over the basketball
3:20 · the green border is what gets tracked; fit it to the subject with as little background inside as you can

Contain the subject fully, but do not be generous with the margin. Background caught inside the box is what the tracker will drift onto.

STEP 03

Leave Algorithm alone until it fails

The default is CSRT: Channel and Spatial Reliability and it is used unchanged in the video. If a track drifts, the fix is a different algorithm and a re-run of Analyze — not a smaller box.

STEP 04

Name the tracker before you press Analyze

Type something meaningful into Name — here Basketball. Left blank, Shotcut supplies Tracker 1, and that is the label you will be picking from a dropdown later with no other clue as to what it followed.

name Basketball default Tracker 1
STEP 05

Press Analyze and let the job finish

The analysis runs in the Jobs panel with a percentage and an estimated time, not inside the filter panel. When it is done the text beside the button changes from “Click “Analyze” to use this filter.” to “Analysis complete.

The Jobs panel showing the Analyze basketball.mp4 job running at 13 percent
5:20 · Analyze basketball.mp4 at 13% (00:01:01) in the Jobs panel

Play the clip back with Show preview still on and watch the green box. This is the only point where a bad track is cheap to fix.

STEP 06

Uncheck Show preview

That green rectangle is not an editor-only overlay. Leave it checked and it renders into the exported file. Toggle it while you are judging the track, then turn it off and leave it off.

The colour swatch next to the checkbox only sets the box colour. It has no effect on tracking.

STEP 07

Add Size, Position & Rotate and change nothing

Press + again on the same clip and add Size, Position & Rotate. Leave every field at its default. This filter exists purely to receive the tracker’s keyframes.

position 0, 34 size 1,920 × 1,013 zoom 100.0 % size mode Fill rotation 0.0 deg
The Filters panel with Motion Tracker and Size, Position and Rotate stacked, the Load Keyframes button at the bottom
8:20 · the button at the foot of the panel, Load Keyframes from Motion Tracker, is the bridge between the two filters
STEP 08

Load the keyframes with Adjust on Offset Position

Click Load Keyframes from Motion Tracker. Pick your tracker by name, choose From start so you get the whole run, set Adjust to Offset Position, and press Apply.

motion tracker Basketball range From start adjust Offset Position
The Adjust dropdown open, showing Relative Position, Offset Position, Absolute Position and Size And Position
9:20 · Adjust offers Relative Position, Offset Position, Absolute Position and Size And Position — the locked-on look needs Offset Position

After Apply there is no progress bar of any kind and the window can look frozen. The only signal it worked is keyframes appearing in the Keyframes panel and the stopwatch beside Size lighting up.

STEP 09

Add a second Size, Position & Rotate and zoom

Play it back and you will see black slabs at the edges wherever the source no longer covers the canvas. Add another Size, Position & Rotate — a separate one, so the keyframed filter above it stays untouched — and raise Zoom until the worst moment in the clip is clean.

final zoom 192.8 % position −1,122, −864 size 3,702 × 1,952
The second Size, Position and Rotate filter settled at 192.8 percent zoom
14:00 · zoom settled at 192.8% — roughly double, which is what this technique costs in resolution

The player’s grid overlay helps you nudge the subject toward centre; Settings → Preview Scaling makes the playback smooth enough to judge. Neither changes the export.

settings reference

Every verified value in one place

Read directly off the frames of the video. Where a value changed on screen, the tuning path is shown separately below.

Project, filters and final values
SettingValueWhere it lives
Shotcut version23.05.14Help → About Shotcut
Source clipbasketball.mp4Playlist, then Timeline
Clip duration00:00:08:19Player, Project tab
Track stackV1 only, one clip, no duplicatesTimeline
Filter 1Motion TrackerOn the clip
NameBasketball (blank gives Tracker 1)Motion Tracker
Region To Track, at Analyze883, 619 · 358 × 353Motion Tracker
AlgorithmCSRT: Channel and Spatial ReliabilityMotion Tracker
Show previewChecked while tuning, unchecked before exportMotion Tracker
Analysis jobAnalyze basketball.mp4 · 13% (00:01:01) mid-runJobs panel
Filter 2Size, Position & RotateSame clip, carries the keyframes
Filter 2 values0, 34 · 1,920 × 1,013 · 100.0% · Fill / Center / Middle · 0.0 degLeft at defaults, never edited
Load Keyframes from Motion TrackerMotion tracker Basketball · From start · Adjust Offset PositionDialog, from Filter 2
Filter 3Size, Position & RotateSame clip, framing only, no keyframes
Filter 3, final−1,122, −864 · 3,702 × 1,952 · 192.8%Size, Position & Rotate
Playback aidsGrid overlay · Settings → Preview ScalingPlayer, Settings menu
Region To Track — how the green box was placed
StagePositionSizeSeen at
Filter added, untouched864, 486192 × 1083:00
Dragged onto the ball948, 619192 × 1083:10
Handles pulled out903, 619339 × 3673:20
Fitted to the ball890, 619351 × 3693:30
Widened slightly890, 619357 × 3694:00
As it stood when Analyze was pressed883, 619358 × 3535:00

From 7:20 to 8:00 the same panel reads 890, 619 · 357 × 369 with the Name box back on the default Tracker 1. The video is assembled from more than one recording pass, so the panel values step between takes rather than progressing in one line. Both readings are shown here rather than picking the tidier one.

Second Size, Position & Rotate — the zoom path
StagePositionSizeZoomSeen at
Added, untouched0, 341,920 × 1,013100.0 %11:00
First zoom in−480, −2192,880 × 1,519150.0 %12:00
Backed off−372, −1622,665 × 1,405138.8 %12:20
Nudged back in−411, −1842,742 × 1,446142.8 %13:00
More bars found−603, −2853,126 × 1,648162.8 %13:20
Zoom settles−891, −4373,702 × 1,952192.8 %13:40
Final framing−1,122, −8643,702 × 1,952192.8 %15:20

Once the zoom reaches 192.8% the Size figures stop changing and only Position moves — that last stretch is recentring the ball, not scaling further. How far you have to zoom is set entirely by how much your subject travels: a calmer shot needs less, and keeps more of its resolution.

full transcript

Everything said, timestamped

Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product and filter names Whisper mangled have been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.

+ open the full transcript 161 lines · 17:32
0:00

In this tutorial I want to show you how to do this locked on tracking effect on

0:05

Shotcut using the new motion tracking filter. So stay tuned. I'm just a normal

0:11

person with no video editing background. I wanted to start making YouTube videos

0:15

and maybe cool transitions and effects. I don't really plan on being a

0:19

professional video editor so I was looking for a free easy-to-learn video

0:22

editing software. Luckily I stumbled on Shotcut, a free open-source video

0:27

editing program that can do many of the tricks you can do on more enterprise

0:31

video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, but with a much simpler

0:36

and leaner interface thus dramatically shortening the learning curve. It just

0:41

takes using your imagination. So let's learn together.

0:46

This tutorial will be done on Shotcut version 23.05.14. You won't see the

0:55

motion tracking filter if you have an earlier version. In my previous tutorial

1:01

I showed you how to use the motion tracker with the simple text filter. If you

1:07

didn't get a chance to see that I'll have a link in the description. This

1:11

time we're going to lock on to a moving subject and keep them relatively

1:16

still while the background moves. I'm sure you've seen this effect in music

1:21

videos and commercials for products like Beats by Dre. This effect is called

1:26

locked-on tracking. Because of this recent release you can now do it on Shotcut as

1:33

well and I'm going to show you how. Okay to execute the locked-on tracking

1:38

technique I'm going to use this video which is a video of a young woman playing

1:44

with a basketball but instead of tracking the female what I'm going to do

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is I'm actually going to track the basketball and so what's going to happen

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is I'm going to try to have the focus on the basketball and try to keep that

2:00

centered at all times and have the background move with respect to the

2:06

movement of basketball. So to get started I've already taken the liberty

2:10

of dragging the basketball file on my playlist and so from my playlist I'm

2:16

going to go ahead and drag it into my timeline. So let's just give it a minute

2:22

for it to think and there it is. As you can see it's on the timeline. I'm just

2:30

going to expand it a little bit make it bigger so that you can see. So once

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again this is the video so I'm going to go to the very beginning of this

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video and then I'm going to go into the filters tab right here and then I'm going

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to click the plus button to add a filter and I'm going to look for motion

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tracker and there it is. The minute you choose motion tracker you're going to

3:05

see this box here which is a rectangle with green background around it a green

3:14

border around it and so the green border represents what is being tracked and so in

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this instance I'm going to track the basketball so I want to encompass the

3:30

basketball inside the green border and so you can grab the handles and you can

3:36

make the rectangle or square as big or small as you want. So now that I've

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encompassed the basketball fully within again the green border I'm going to go

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back into the motion tracker filter and I'm going to choose analyze. Now in

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many instances once you click analyze the tracking may not work perfectly the

4:04

first time around. In this instance as you can see I just skipped over the

4:09

algorithm dropdown and I'm just choosing the default which is the CSRT

4:15

algorithm but if you find that when you click analyze it's not tracking your

4:22

object as closely as you want it to be go ahead and choose one of the other

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algorithms here and then click analyze again. So before I allow the motion

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tracker to analyze the movement of the basketball what I want to do is I want

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to name this file or a dissection and so I'm just going to name it basketball

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but if you leave that blank what happens is the motion tracker filter is just

4:55

going to assign a name to it odds are it's going to name it tracker one in this

5:01

instance I just want to name it basketball so that it's explicit and I

5:04

know what to look for when I begin utilizing it with other filters. So it's

5:13

named basketball now I'm going to click analyze and now a new line item in the

5:19

jobs window is going to show up and so there's going to be here a little status

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bar let's just wait until this thing finishes the last time I did this it

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took about a minute and a half okay it just finished analyzing so once the

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filter finishes analyzing you can test how well the tracker track your subject

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in this instance the basketball by just pressing play and you're going to see how

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well the green border the box with the green border tracks the basketball as

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you can see here it did a pretty good job on the first try I don't have to

6:01

worry about that anymore it did a great job tracking now before I move on to

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the next step there's one thing I want to show you so as you've seen from the

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beginning of these steps the box with the green border is around and what that's

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meant to do is to show you how well the filter is tracking your subject the

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problem is if you leave this preview checked this green box is going to show

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up after you've rendered your video and so if you don't want to see the green

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box anymore I suggest you click this checkbox that says show preview and so

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you can toggle it on and off to see how well the tracking works but

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ultimately you're going to need to uncheck that and so I'm already going to

7:01

uncheck that now so that I don't have to worry about it I already know that it's

7:05

tracking the basketball pretty well one more thing I just want to explain to

7:10

you what the filter just did so when I clicked analyze what it did is it tried

7:21

to follow the ball as closely as possible but more importantly what it

7:26

did was recorded the tracking on keyframes and once you recorded the keyframes you

7:36

then have the ability to share that keyframe or the keyframe information

7:42

with another filter another appropriate filter whatever whatever currently works

7:48

with motion tracker in this instance I want to share the keyframe information

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from the motion tracker filter with the size position and rotate filter and so

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that's my next step I'm going to go ahead and click the plus button again

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and I'm going to choose size position and rotate now I'm going to leave this

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alone and what I'm going to do is I want the size position and rotate to

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use the saved keyframes that was generated by the motion tracker and to do

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that you go to this button here that says load keyframes from motion tracker a new

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window pops up and it's going to ask you which motion tracker do you want to

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use so as you remember while I was in the motion tracker filter I saved the

8:45

motion tracker file as basketball the other thing is it's going to ask you

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whether or not you want the keyframes or the motion tracking from the beginning

8:57

of the file or just where your current position is if I happen if my cursor

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happened to be in the middle of the of the video I typically usually select

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from the start so that I have all the motion tracking keyframes and I can always

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edit that later and then lastly for the effect that we're going for I want to

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choose offset position once I've chosen all the settings and it's all correct

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I'm going to click apply once you click apply shotcut is going to think for a

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little bit it's going to seem like it crashed or it froze but really what it's

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doing is it's thinking the difficult thing about it is there really isn't a

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timer or an indicator most of the time that tells you that it's processing the

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only indicator that you're going to have is once you go to the keyframe all

10:07

of a sudden keyframes are going to show up that didn't used to be there so now that

10:15

it's there and you can see all the keyframes I'm going to go back to the

10:18

timeline and I'm going to press play and you're going to see the effect of

10:25

what sharing the keyframes with the size position and rotate did to the video

10:30

as you can see it tries to keep the basketball around the same place and to

10:38

do that it's moving the entire video around to compensate for it so of

10:47

course leaving it at the setting is not going to make sense you're going to see

10:52

a lot of black bars a lot of black areas around so the last thing that

10:59

you want to do is you want to go to the plus button and what I'm going to do is

11:05

I want to add another size and position and rotate filter I'm not going to make

11:11

these settings in the previous size position and rotate because that that one

11:17

is for the keyframes that is for tracking the basketball now the other

11:24

size position and rotate filter that one for me is meant to change the size of the

11:34

video itself so that we can eliminate all the black bars so what I'm going to do is

11:40

I'm going to play it again and I'm going to look for a part of the video that

11:47

has the most black bars and what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try

11:53

to zoom into this video to compensate for that so what I'm going to do is I'm going

12:00

to zoom into it so that there are no longer any black bars the way I'm doing

12:07

it here is I'm just using the the scroller on the mouse you can also go

12:12

over here and also use the scroller on on your mouse here so that you can

12:20

zoom in or zoom out in smaller increments so as you can see the black bars are

12:27

starting to show up at the very top so I need to zoom back out a little bit and

12:30

just play around you can also change the settings here under size so let me

12:38

just let me just go back in here and let me just zoom in a little bit more

12:45

just to eliminate any of the black bars and so now I'm going to play the video

12:53

again and look for places just like that where there are still black bars

12:59

exposed which tells me I still need to zoom in even more so I'm going to zoom

13:07

into this video here I'm in the wrong the wrong area here okay so I'm going to play

13:17

some more to see if I can find any more black up there was one so I'm going to

13:21

backspace it a little bit just to see where that was right here again more

13:32

zoom hopefully that's it because I'm kind of running out of real estate here

13:43

okay so there's no more black bars so what I'm going to try to attempt is move

13:51

the basketball a little closer to center hoping that when I play it it's not

13:57

going to expose any black bars from the bottom which is the case right there

14:09

so if you notice that my video is a little jittery that's because I'm playing it at

14:12

full resolution let me see if I can use preview scaling it's going to be a

14:20

little bit more pixelated but at least it's going to move a little bit smoother

14:23

so now you can see the ball has kept has been kept a little bit more

14:30

center in the video now I'm going to take a risk here and see if I can actually

14:35

move the ball up even more hoping that it doesn't expose any more black bars as

14:41

it moves up and down okay so that's pretty good now if you really want to be

14:53

OCD you can always activate the grids and so that you can ensure that the ball is

15:01

centered exactly in the middle of your video but then you run like I'm moving

15:07

around and I run the risk of exposing some black areas let's see here no it

15:17

seems like it did the job so so I am now going to uncheck the grids icon and I

15:28

think it did a pretty good job and so the last thing I'm going to do is I'm

15:35

just going to export so let's just go into export and I'm just going to export

15:40

the file so once it finishes exporting this is what this video looks like and this

15:52

technique is called locked on motion tracking so what do you think have you

16:00

seen this effect before in other videos can you think of other use cases that

16:07

you would use this for if you do have some other use cases please go ahead and

16:10

share with me on on the comments in any case this is a pretty simple technique very

16:16

useful you might you might even be able to use this to further stabilize your

16:21

video if you have a video that's jittery you can lock on you can lock on to

16:25

something and you know maybe reduce some of the vibration so I hope you like

16:34

this video I just wanted to remind you that if you haven't yet go visit my

16:41

channel I'm sure you'll find tons of Shotcut related videos and don't forget to

16:48

subscribe so that you know when I drop a new Shotcut related tutorial every video

16:55

on my channel was done on Shotcut so aside from examples of what Shotcut

17:01

can do you can also visit my playlist of tips and tutorials all geared toward the

17:08

beginner visit my Shotcut tips and tricks playlist and learn all the tips

17:14

and tricks I've learned during my journey toward video editing so once

17:20

again please subscribe and I'll see you next time