Hello, this is Cristi from Graphicious.
In today's video, I'm going to show you a method to track an object in Camtasia 2021. Now
you'll say yes, Camtasia doesn't have tracking, motion tracking, so yes, it's true, it doesn't.
And I don't know if they're going to introduce that anytime soon, but I want to show
you how you can actually still do it to maybe acceptable level, depending
on the movement you want to track. And it is a manual process, I'm warning you. It is
a manual process, but maybe if you're stuck or you are in a bind or you need, you know, you need to
do a tracking on an object to follow something. You know, you can still do it using
plain old animations in Camtasia. So I'm just going to walk you through a few things
that you can use to make this job easier. And then I'm going to show you how to track movement
across a video clip with another object. So the idea is that we are going to create
an annotation that we're going to use to move around the screen, tracking an object. And
I'm going to show you a few tips to make that easier and to improve the tracking, as
it were, tracking to achieve this effect. So I'm in Camtasia 2021 here,
and I have a video clip of some drifting, racing cars
just coming across the screen. And notice this orange car is always on the
screen. So I want to track this image, this car in this video, I want to track it and I want
to have a text, kind of follow this car around. So I'm gonna go to the start of my video clip
here, and I'm going to place an annotation on the screen. So notice that the car is not yet on
screen. So obviously I have to go to the point where the car comes in, which is about here. So
now I want my object to start tracking this car and yes, I did say we are tracking it
manually, but I'm going to show you some things to make this tracking more realistic, because
if you think about it, even in Adobe Premiere or other video editing programs that do have
tracking, what happens is really, the tracking is the same. Just like here, the object
is moved frame by frame to a new location, and all that the tracking does is really just
follow something, and notices the shift in pixels to make sure that it's moving that
object to the new coordinates. So ultimately, even these more professional
video editors do end up generating key frames for every single frame. So what we will be doing
here, we will be approximating the movement of the object from frame to frame. But, maybe,
depending on your movement, we can get away with not actually doing it frame by frame, because
Camtasia can make all the frames in-between. So the first thing to do is we need to change
the easing, the default easing for the animation. The reason for that is, by default in Camtasia, when you move one object from one point to
another Camtasia creates what is called easing, and it doesn't create linear easing. It
creates a exponential in and out, I believe. What this means is if I move an object from one
point to another, let me just give you an example. Let's go to annotations and I'm
going to add this annotation here. And if I add an animation to it, let's go
to Animation, custom. We're not tracking the object right now. I'm just going to
demonstrate what happens with the annotation. I'm going to turn off my video track and I'm
going to move this object from there to there. So watch what happens during the
animation. You notice the object speeds up and then slows down at the end, in the
middle of the animation, the speed is maximum and at the start, and at the end, the animation
speeds up and slows down. This is called easing, to make the movement a little more realistic.
Well, we don't want this because we don't want it to accelerate and decelerate between
key frames. So if you right-click on this, you can say Enable easing, and put it to
linear. Now because we don't want to do this for every single segment of animation we will be
creating, we want to change the default behavior. So we want to go first to Edit, go to
Preferences, and we want to change this option here. Program options, default
easing type. This is the default easing to auto, which I believe is similar to exponential
in and out. And we will set it to linear. So now any new animation we create is
not going to have this effect of speeding up and slowing down at the end of the
animation and the start around the key frames. So watch this, I'm going to delete this
animation here, and then I'm going to add another custom animation, the same thing,
just moving the object from point A to point B, but now watch what happens, the
animation is going to be linear. So there is no more speeding up and slowing
down. Now we're ready to create our tracking. Let me delete the animation again and
turn on the video track again. So this is my video track. Obviously, if I play
it now, my annotation stays in one place. What I want to do is I want to say just
put a text here, driver one, I don't know. So we want this annotation to move and
follow this orange car. Now, even in more professional video editor software, you want to choose a point or a few pixels from
the source object that you're trying to follow. You want to focus on those points and tell
the software to follow those points around. Like, for example, if you want to blur a
car license plate, you're going to frame the license plates in a mask or on a selection,
and then tell that software to track that and that software is going to analyze those
pixels and follow them on screen. Well, Camtasia doesn't do this.
Maybe they will add this later. So we will be doing that manually. We
will be following that object manually, but because we want it to be as accurate as
possible, we want to choose a particular point on the object that we're going to follow with
our, object so that every time we move that, it stays in the same place on the
object, so it looks like it's following. So what we want to do is, now that we changed the
default behavior of the animation, what we want to do is we want to do the extremities first.
So I want to create a key frame at the start of the animation, and another one at the very
end, when, so I'm creating a starting point where my object comes into the scene, and another
point when the object leaves the scene completely. I don't want to create these in-between
yet. So if you watch my video here, you're going to see that I want to start tracking
right here, when the car is on the screen here, and I want to stop tracking this car. You notice
it's coming in the screen, and it's going going, and then it turns around and goes right here.
So the clip ends and the car doesn't leave the screen. So I'm just going to stop tracking
it around here almost the last frame. Right? So the first thing is I want to make sure that my
annotation, the object that's going to follow my car around, stays on screen for this entire
duration. And also, I want to add a custom animation to the object and stretch that animation
for the entire duration of my clip. I'm not moving it yet, so it just sits there. So now you can
see that my object is going to be on screen for the entire duration of the video or the entire
duration of the video clip that I want to track. Right, although it's not moving. The second step
now is to move the object at both points at the end and the beginning where my object is going to
be at these two points. We're going to the start. And you notice with my selected
object, I can go back to the first frame when the car comes in and this is what
I'm going to do: I'm going to take this object and, notice I told you, remember, I told you that
we're going to focus on one point on my object. Well, the car is kind of small here
and blurry. I can't see it exactly, but I'm going to approximate the tip of my arrow
here. The tip of this annotation, the pointy bit. I'm just gonna put this on top of the car for
now. Now you notice part of the text is outside. That is fine, it just gives it a bit of realism.
And then I'm going to move to the very last frame. And again, we see a car on the screen here and the
objects moved up because it was up there before. And I'm going to take the object
again and place it on top of the car right there, just very accurately. So now my
object is going to be at the start and at the end exactly on top of the car. Obviously when I move
it now it's not following the car. It's just, it's just moving around in a straight
line. So this is one downside of Camtasia: anything that moves in Camtasia
is moving in a straight line. There is no shape animation, there is no
following object or anything like that. So we will have to now build the
animation in-between the steps. So one thing that I think is
a good idea is to always go halfway through the animation and move the
object in the right place, then move again, halfway between those, move the object again
in the right place and keep repeating that halfway, halfway, halfway, until
we get all of the motion animated. And the way to do this is you don't even have to
worry about creating these animations, because, since I already have a full animation, you
know, taking place from the very first frame to the last one, if I move somewhere in
the middle, let's suppose I'm moving here, and I place the play head in
here with my clip selected, if I move my object, Camtasia is going
to automatically introduce a key frame at this point, and record where my object
was in that moment. So watch, watch this, my play head is somewhere in the middle of
the animation. I'm moving this object. Again, remember I've chosen this point. Notice
the top of the car has a little black dot. I think that may be a radio antenna or something.
I am going to point the very tip of my annotation at that point. And that is going to be from now
on, the point I'm following. Notice what happened on the timeline: Camtasia created a new key frame
from the very first frame to here and from here, it's going to have a different
animation to the end. So watch this now. If I play it, the object
doesn't move in a straight line anymore. It moves in a two line kind of thing. First, it
just moves in the point where I pointed just now, and then it just loses the car
and moves at the end again. So what we need to do is keep breaking these
animations in half, every time, every time. And then Camtasia is just going to create the
key frames in between. So this is really, again, I know it's a manually involved process,
but actually, every other software that does tracking does exactly the same thing, follows
the pixels and creates key frames along the way. So depending on the movement, I'm going to go
again and break down into half the rest of this animation, right? So I'm going to go here and
keep moving the object in the right place. Yeah. There's nothing to it. Just go halfway in here,
move the object to the right place. You may want to have to use the arrow keys if you want the
movement to be more precise. So that's fine. So then let's move in here in the middle again, move again the object on top of the car,
move to the next half, move the object again on top of the antenna here, move again here.
So I keep doing this halfway through every key frame animation until I have my animation.
So watch this, now let's see. Play. Okay. The object kind of loses its place,
but it's already following the car closer to where it should be. And notice at
the very end there, because the movement of the car is sort of constant and my animation is
constant, then it kind of follows the car around in the right place. So, for the second part of
the animation, I don't think we will have to add so many key frames because watch, you know, it's
almost following the car in the right position. What we need to deal with is the first part,
which is, you know, the car's moving faster and it kind of drifts. So again, let's go
back halfway between two key frames. Again, move the object ever so slightly, move again,
halfway here. The reason for halfway is because we're trying to keep a constant speed between
the key frames and the object moving at an equal, you know, equal speed, the same pace all the way. So again, I'm going here in the middle and
adjusting my position. You notice here, it's slowing down a bit. The car is
behind here. Point at the antenna. Again, you can use the arrows. And keep doing
that, keep moving it, here we go. Like this. Sometimes you don't even have to move it
vertically, just horizontally. So that's another tip. If you don't want your
objects to kind of jump up and down, up and down all the time while it's kind of riding
some waves, try and keep it at the same height, which is why I told you to try and attach yourself
to a point that is always visible in the scene, in the clip, on that object
and travel with that point. So again, let's see what I've done so far. Almost my object is moving with the car.
So now if you want to have more control, you can zoom in CTRL key and mouse wheel
zooms into the timeline, so you can more easily place your play head in the,
in between the two key frames and again, adjust your object ever so slightly. Just
so if you move it, at least one pixel, camtasia is going to add a key frame because
it means there was a position change in there. So if you don't need to make a big change, just, just use the arrow keys and
just tap it left or right, just a little bit, to generate the key frame there, just adjust it
a bit because Camtasia is going to interpolate, it's going to create all of the frames in
between. So only adjust where you need to adjust. And if you can help it, keep the object at the
same level, because that's going to actually make it, the animation more smooth. So notice
here, I'm using the arrow keys to just slide the object left and right, because the top of the
car there remains pretty much at the same height. So all I'm doing it is I'm just really bringing it
back home every time it just strays away from the car, move the key frame in between the next two,
move the play head and just adjust your object. So sometimes you don't even have to do
anything. So just bring it back there. So this does take a while and
depending on your video clip, it may take longer or shorter. Depending on
that, you may have to do more of these movements, and that is a nice tip to change
the easing for these animations so that they don't look like they're
coming in in bursts and stuttering. So here we go, let's play it again. You can see already, my annotation is pretty
much on top of the car most of the time. And what you can do is you can take your play head
and just scroll back to the problem areas. So if you play this and you notice that at some
point, the annotation, the object is too far away from the car, you can actually go frame
by frame by using the comma and the dot keys, to move one frame up and down. So
you can go frame by frame if you need to. So in this case, look, I'm going frame by frame,
and I got to a point where there is no key frame, so I can just switch to the arrow keys
and just nudge the object slightly. Then use again, the dot key to move further,
and then again, use the arrow key to adjust the position. One more frame, two more frames, left.
So what happens is, Camtasia just creates the frames in between. So really, if you have the time
and you want the smoothest motion, you can just go one frame and then adjust, one frame, adjust, one
frame, and then you just keep watching that point. Keep watching that object point that you've chosen and just adjust the object. So you can
use two hands, just go frame by frame using the arrow keys and the dot and comma
keys, and you can do this. Now, depending on the length of your video, obviously this may
be too tedious to do. So, I don't know, but like I said, all of the other software does
exactly the same, except it does it automatically. So you can just go frame by frame like that and
just slightly adjust your object. And you notice on the timeline, you notice Camtasia creating
those key frames for me. So I'm not even, I'm not even looking at the timeline, I'm just advancing
my playhead and getting my object to follow that little point on top of the car that I chose. So this is another way to do it, just frame
by frame, just tracking the object yourself. Now, this is very important because,
one tip I have to just so you know, you want to do this when your video is in
the right place and you're not going to make any more cuts to your video because
then you're going to mess this all up. If you then have to move the video around, the
animation is not going to be in the same place. So watch what happens now, play it. So my object
is tracking. Watch the part, what I've done it manually. It just stays locked to the top of the
car and doesn't even move. Isn't that cool? So if I don't want to make this video anymore any
longer, but really finally, when you've got your animation in place and the object is roughly
in the right position, then you can go really deep into it by going frame by frame tracking,
make sure your object is selected and then just go one frame at a time and use the arrow keys to
just adjust the position. So then, really, pretty much your object is going to just follow the exact
point of where it has to be. So just use the keys, move forward. As soon as you notice it's kind of
moving away, just adjust it like this, frame by frame, make small adjustments until everything
is done and you've gone over your entire clip. This is one way to create manual
object tracking in Camtasia. Obviously, you need to decide on a specific point to follow,
and there you have it. You have a tracking object tracking another object. So this can be useful
if you need to maybe blur out some areas in your clip somewhere, you have some confidential
information or something that cannot be seen like someone's face or something else that you want to
track across a video clip, depending on the length of that, just create your object and just keep
moving it. And if you need to blur out some areas, you may not even need this much of, accuracy on
tracking. You just need it to be roughly in the area it needs to be, and just keep moving it with
the keys and create these frames automatically by enabling that easing that is
linear. So it just keeps going. I hope this tutorial was useful. I know Camtasia
doesn't have tracking and it's not automatic, but if you really need to do it and
incorporate this in your project, this is one way to do it. I
hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thank you for your time. If you
have any questions about this video, or any Camtasia questions in general, let
me know in the comments and I'll have to, I'll try to answer your question and try and help
you, and maybe I'm going to even create a tutorial about it. I'm looking for
ideas, so let me have it. Thanks very much. See you next time.
