Motion Tracking follows one detail through a video — a logo, a face, the corner of a phone — and lets any other layer move with it. A caption rides a moving product, a blur stays on a face, a callout keeps its arrow on the right button. You draw a box on the detail, the editor analyses the footage once and remembers how that detail moves, scales and turns, and layers link to the result.
This is the 2D point tracker. To recover the camera that shot the footage and place layers in 3D space, use Camera Tracking and Stabilize instead.
Where it lives
Select a layer and open the Tracking tab on the inspector’s rail. On a video layer it holds CAMERA TRACKING, STABILIZE and MOTION TRACKING; on every other layer it holds MOTION TRACKING alone.
The MOTION TRACKING section has two halves:
- TRACKS — the tracks analysed on this footage. Only a video layer can be analysed, so this half appears on video layers only.
- FOLLOWING — the link that makes this layer move with a track. It is on every ordinary layer — video, image, text, shape, MotionFast — because the usual case is a layer with nothing to analyse following someone else’s footage. Adjustment and audio layers have no Motion Tracking section.
Track a detail
- Select the video layer and park the playhead on a frame where the detail is sharp and clearly visible.
- Pick the Mode — what the tracker measures (see the table below).
- Click Draw a region to track and drag a box over a detail with contrast — a logo, a corner, an eye. A small, crisp detail tracks better than a large soft one.
- Analysis starts as soon as you let go. The frame you drew on becomes the track’s reference frame, and the track runs from there to the end of the clip.
| Mode | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Position + scale + rotation (default) | Where the detail is, how big and how it is turned — for something that comes closer or tilts. |
| Position only | Where the detail is. The steadiest choice for something that only slides around. |
| Camera / whole frame | How the whole picture moves, rather than the detail in the box — for a shot where what you want to follow is the camera’s own pan or shake. |
While it runs the panel shows the progress. Stop & keep ends the analysis and keeps the usable part; Cancel throws it away.
The first track you run downloads the tracking engine once (about 10 MB). It is cached, so later tracks and app updates do not download it again. Analysis runs on your own machine.
A track is analysed once and stored with the layer: the preview, every export and the render server all read the same stored motion, and nothing is recomputed while rendering. It is stored in the footage’s own time, so trimming, splitting or retiming the clip keeps it aligned with the picture.
The tracks list
Each track is a row under TRACKS, named Track 1, Track 2 and so on. The row shows its time span, how many keys it holds and how many gaps it has, and a barely tracked warning when the tracker lost the detail almost immediately — usually motion blur, low contrast or a box drawn over a flat area.
The row’s buttons, left to right:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pencil | Renames the track. |
| Reference frame | Parks the playhead on the track’s reference frame — where a follower’s offset is set. |
| Crosshair | Adjust — correct the track by hand, frame by frame. |
| Circular arrow | Re-anchor — continue the track after a loss. |
| × | Deletes the track. Layers following it stop moving with it. |
Click a track to select it and show it on the canvas.
The confidence strip
Under each track runs a strip across its whole length: teal where the lock held, amber where the tracker was unsure, and a gap where it lost the detail. On the canvas the tracked box turns amber on the same unsure frames, and the path is drawn dashed where a stretch is guesswork.
Select a track and brackets appear on the strip. Drag them to choose which part of the track is used — anything outside them is kept but not applied to followers. The panel shows the Used span and key count, and Use all puts the whole track back in use.
Show on canvas
The eye in the section header chooses what is drawn over the footage: Box + path (the tracked box and the whole route it took), Box only, or Hidden.
Follow a track
Select the layer that should move — a text layer, a shape, an image, the footage itself — and open FOLLOWING in its MOTION TRACKING section.
- Pick the track in Source. It lists every track on a video layer that shares the frame with this one, as “layer name · track name” (or This layer · Track 1 for the layer’s own tracks). A track whose layer no longer overlaps this one in time is marked (no overlap): the link is kept but does nothing until the clips overlap again.
- Picking a source parks the playhead on the track’s reference frame. Place the layer where it should sit on that frame.
- Choose what the link does with the three-way switch under Source (see the table below). Following another layer’s track starts in Ride along; following the layer’s own track starts in Lock.
| Behaviour | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ride along | Adds the tracked motion to the layer’s own transform, about its own anchor. Where you placed the layer at the reference frame is the offset, and its own keyframes keep working on top. |
| Pin to point | Puts the layer straight onto the tracked point, every frame — nothing to line up by hand. Move it afterwards and it snaps back; use Ride along to keep an offset. |
| Lock | Cancels the tracked motion instead of copying it: the thing you tracked holds still and the footage moves around it. Offered only when a layer follows its own track. |
Then tune the link:
- Position, Scale and Rotation switch each part of the tracked motion on or off — turn off Rotation to keep a caption level while it follows a tilting phone.
- Smoothing (0–30 frames) averages the track over that many frames either side, which calms a jittery hand-held track without analysing it again.
- Go to reference frame parks the playhead back on the frame where the offset is set.
The chip beside FOLLOWING shows the state — following, pinned or a padlock for Lock. The section header’s green dot does too: hover it and it turns into a red ×, and clicking that stops following in one move. Choosing Not following anything in Source does the same.
The link stays live. Re-track the source, correct it or trim its used range, and every layer following it updates.
The offset rule
A track contributes no motion at its reference frame. Whatever position, scale and rotation the follower has on that frame is its offset, and every other frame adds the tracked change to it. There are no offset fields to fill in: to move a follower relative to the detail, go to the reference frame and move it there.
Stabilise footage with Lock
To hold a detail still in its own footage, select the video layer, pick one of its own tracks in Source and leave it on Lock. The whole layer then moves against the tracked motion, so the tracked detail stays put and the rest of the picture moves around it. Because the layer itself moves, its edges can come into view.
For a whole-shot correction that measures the camera’s shake and crops to hide the edges, use the STABILIZE section in the same tab — see Camera Tracking and Stabilize.
Correct a bad frame
When the tracker drifts, correct it the After Effects way — park on the bad frame and put the box back.
- Click the crosshair (Adjust) on the track’s row.
- Scrub to a frame where the box is off the detail. The panel shows the frame time and whether this frame has a key on this frame or is interpolated between keys.
- Drag the box on the canvas back onto the detail, or type exact values: X and Y (in % of the frame), Scale and Rotation.
- Step through the bad stretch frame by frame and nudge each one. Add key here keys a frame without moving it; Delete key removes a key again. Click Done when finished.
Every correction is stored as a key on that frame, right alongside the analysed ones, so followers, exports and the render server pick it up with no extra step. A key set inside a gap becomes a real point the motion passes through.
Lost tracks and resuming
When the detail disappears — behind something, out of frame, blurred beyond recognition — the tracker stops rather than inventing motion, and the panel says where: “Lost the subject at 3.40s…”. The track keeps everything up to that point.
To carry on from where the detail comes back:
- Scrub to a frame where the detail is visible again, after the track’s reference frame.
- Click the circular arrow (Re-anchor) on the track’s row. A teal box appears on the canvas.
- Drag the teal box onto the detail and fine-tune Scale (0.3–2.5×) and Rotation (±180°) so it matches the detail’s size and angle.
- Click Continue tracking.
Analysis resumes into the same track. The stretch in between stays a gap, and followers glide across it.
Tracker options
The cog beside Mode holds the engine’s settings. They apply to the next analysis, persist as your preference, and Reset to defaults puts them back.
| Option | What it does | Range / default |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis width | The size frames are analysed at — 320 px (fastest), 480, 640 or 960 px (finest). | 640 px |
| Max features | How many trackable points are looked for inside the box. | 20–400, 180 |
| Quality | How distinct a point must be to count. | 0.001–0.06, 0.008 |
| Min distance | The closest two tracked points may sit. | 2–24 px, 6 px |
| LK window | The patch size used to follow each point; larger follows faster motion, smaller is more precise. | 9–41 px, 21 px |
| Pyramid levels | How many coarser copies of the frame are searched, for large jumps between frames. | 1–5, 3 |
| FB reject | Drops a point that does not track back to where it came from within this distance. | 0.2–4 px, 1 px |
| Re-seed under | Looks for fresh points when fewer than this share of the originals survive. | 10–90 %, 40 % |
| Appearance gate | Stops the track when the box no longer looks like what it locked onto. | On |
| Gate min NCC | How close the look must stay while the gate is on. | 0–0.8, 0.3 |
Turn Appearance gate off only if it keeps cutting a track you can see is fine.
Tracks from Camera Tracking
Camera Tracking can also produce motion tracks. When you pick points in a camera solve and click Create null from N points, or send them to an existing layer with Attach to Layers, the result is an ordinary motion track on the footage plus a follow link. The track appears in the footage’s TRACKS list; the null starts pinned to it, an attached layer starts riding along (or locked, if you attached the footage itself), and either can be switched, smoothed or unlinked in its own MOTION TRACKING section like any other follower. See Camera Tracking and Stabilize.
Agents
Agents, GLEA included, can link a layer to a track you have already analysed — “make this caption ride the car”, “pin this badge to the player” — with the same Ride along, Pin to point and Lock behaviours. Running the tracker itself is done in the editor. See Agent-Driven Editing with GLEA.
Where to go next
- Camera Tracking and Stabilize — solve the camera in 3D, or steady a whole shot
- RotoScope and Magic Mask — track a subject’s outline instead of a point
- Motion Paths — move a layer along a path you draw
- Keyframe Builder — the follower’s own keyframes, which Ride along keeps
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