Something Final Cut Pro users have been asking forÂ
for awhile are built in tracking features and with  the newest update, we got just that! Now we canÂ
track titles, text, effects, images, onto our  footage without any 3rd party plug ins needed.Â
Hey guys my name is Dylan and let’s dive into  how to use this awesome new feature as well as goÂ
over some issues that may come up when you use it. Okay so let’s start with tracking something fairly  simple and then I’ll show you some moreÂ
difficult tracking examples because the  tracking isn’t perfect. But beggars can’tÂ
be choosers, I’m just happy we have it. So let’s track a title from mTitle cinematicÂ
from MotionVFX onto her. There’s two ways we  can go about doing this. The first method andÂ
probably the way you should do it most of the  time is just by literally dragging your title,Â
effect, generator or whatever you want to track,  directly onto the viewing window here. NowÂ
what’s nice is that if you’re tracking a person,  Final Cut will identify their face for you andÂ
lock on. It will also try and lock on to objects.  This isn’t always perfect and I’ll go over someÂ
examples that show it not working towards the  end of this video. This one however does work.Â
So we’ll click analyze here. And you’ll notice  that even though I started in the middle of thisÂ
clip, it will quickly track to the end and then  jump backwards to track the rest of the clip.Â
So I don’t have to manually go back to where we  just started tracking and click the backwardsÂ
analyze button. That’s a really nice feature.  From here I can just extend the duration of theÂ
title and you’ll see it’s tracked to our subject. You’ll notice that the text is kindÂ
of rotating though and I’ll go over  how to fix that in a second. Let meÂ
show you the other way to go about  tracking things first. So you could alsoÂ
just drag the title over the footage,  hit the transform button, and you’llÂ
notice we have some new shiny buttons here.  If we hit tracker, now we can adjust our trackingÂ
grid to fit over what we want to track and then  just hit analyze. This is a more manual way to doÂ
it. Now here’s how we’d fix this rotating text. Open your inspector window with the tracked titleÂ
selected. Head to transform, and you’ll notice by  the hide and show button we have this new trackingÂ
button for our transform points. Hit that and  we’ll turn off rotation here. Now our text won’tÂ
rotate on us. If you want to move your text on  the screen, just use the on screen controls toÂ
position it or you can hit the transform button,  hit transform and then move it. Doing thisÂ
won’t change your tracking data so don’t  worry. You can move it anywhere without havingÂ
to worry about having to re-track your subject. So that was a fairly simple track, so now letÂ
me run through some more difficult ones to show  you some problems that may come up for you.Â
So here, we’ll go through the same method,  dragging what we want to track onto theÂ
viewing window here and we’ll have Final  Cut just select her whole body to track sinceÂ
her face isn’t showing up. We’ll click analyze.  Now we’ll need to turn off the rotationÂ
like we talked about. So inspector window,  head to that tracker button we identified andÂ
we’ll flip off rotation. Now while we’re in here,  we’re going to turn on scale. Since our shot isÂ
moving forward, which means she’s appearing to get  bigger in the frame, ideally we’d want our text toÂ
do the same. To get a little bigger as the camera  pushes in. So we’ll turn on scale. Now here’sÂ
the problem I’ve noticed when playing around  with this. For whatever reason, sometimes the textÂ
or object or whatever you’re tracking will distort  when you turn on scale. Usually it’ll just getÂ
smaller and you’ll have to adjust the size again,  but sometimes it’ll stretch out in a weird way.Â
So until I figure out a better way to handle this,  what I’ve done is go back to transform and adjustÂ
the distortion with just the transform tool.  Then it looks a lot better. If you happen to knowÂ
a way to combat this, let me know in the comments. Let’s try something a little different. Stay withÂ
me because this is another method to track things.  Say I want to track something on this shot as heÂ
comes off this ramp but I don’t know what yet.  Since I don’t know what I want just yet, I’llÂ
select the clip, go to the inspector window,  head down to this new button here that saysÂ
trackers. We’ll click the plus icon and we’re  shown the tracking grid we’re familiar with now.Â
I’ll adjust the shape of it and hold shift to  adjust the size of the whole thing equally, andÂ
then hit analyze. So now this is tracked. Let’s  say I’ve decided I want to track this smiley faceÂ
to his head. I’ll go through our normal method,  I’ll drag it to the location on screen, exceptÂ
this time, I’ll hit this little drop down menu  and instead of staying on the object trackÂ
I’m on, I’ll switch to this first one.  Now you’ll notice it’s locked onto that track weÂ
made earlier. So we’re all set with the tracking.  I’ll adjust the size and location of theÂ
smiley face by using the on screen controls  and transform button if I need to, and trim thisÂ
title to where I’d like. Now you might be saying,  well Dylan why didn’t you turn on the scale likeÂ
we did for the last shot, since he’s coming closer  in the frame and getting bigger. And here’sÂ
why. When I do turn on scale, the track is too  difficult apparently and the smiley face distortsÂ
and stretches throughout the track. It ends up  just looking better with it off in this specificÂ
shot. Just a word of warning that the tracking  won’t always work so you may need to try outÂ
different methods to see what gives you the  best result. And keep in mind, the more detailedÂ
and high contrast the area you’re tracking is,  the better it’s going to track. It also obviouslyÂ
helps to not have crazy camera movement. When the tracking is prettyÂ
difficult like in this shot,  it may lead to some issues where the trackÂ
doesn’t seem to lock in. It may stutter or jump  a bit. What I’d do is go back to that pointÂ
and re-track. See if that takes care of it.  You can also right click your clip, headÂ
to show tracking editor, and it gives you  options to quickly analyze and deleteÂ
sections just by dragging to select. Another way that you can possibly fix a jumpyÂ
inconsistent track is by changing the tracking  analysis method. Automatic will let FinalÂ
Cut choose the best option but there is a  chance that the method chose isn’t the best forÂ
your shot. They mention this in the user guide.  “If you’re using the Machine Learning method andÂ
see jitter on the motion track, try switching to  the Point Cloud method. Its bounding rectanglesÂ
are much less susceptible to quick changes.”  So by switching to point cloud it seems we gotÂ
rid of a little bit of the jitter in this clip.  And like we’ve mentioned before, we’ll clickÂ
on our title, head to the inspector window,  and turn off rotation here. Let’s do one more example, but thisÂ
time we’re going to utilize tracking  for color grading. This is really cool andÂ
something I’m excited about. By the way,  if you appreciate the video so far hit that thumbsÂ
up button when you get the chance. It means a lot. So in this shot I want to make her stand out aÂ
lot more. We want her to be more of a focus in the  shot. So we’re going to drag a color correction inÂ
the effects window onto our viewing screen here,  and track. Now what I want to do is essentiallyÂ
brighten her up and darken her surroundings.  This is something I do a lot in my color gradingÂ
tutorials where I use shape masks to shape light  a little more in post. If you haven’t seen thoseÂ
I’ll put some links to some in the description. So  here, if I was to go to shape and start to formÂ
my shape mask, it would also affect the tracking  grid. As I change the size of the shapeÂ
mask, it changes the tracking grid area.  So I’ll undo this by pressing commandÂ
Z and I’ll click this link button here.  This breaks the link between the tracking gridÂ
and the shape mask so now I can form the mask how  I want and the tracking points will stay the same.Â
This is important. You’ll need to select this when  using masks like this. So I’ll form the mask andÂ
add a bit of feather by adjusting this outside  circle here. We’ll head into the color board andÂ
you’ll see down here the inside of the mask is  selected. So I’m going to raise my highlightsÂ
a little which will brighten her up a tad.  Click on the outside and lower my midtones. I mayÂ
actually lower the highlights a bit more and give  the mask more feathering. I’ll make a few moreÂ
adjustments to the inside and outside of the mask.  And now we created a nice little vignette to makeÂ
her more of a focus in the frame and it’s tracked  to her body. Something else that’s cool aboutÂ
this tracking feature is that you can create  multiple tracks in the scene and also renameÂ
them. So just double click to rename the track  and type in what you want. This can help you toÂ
stay organized so you know which track is what. Let me in the know in the commentsÂ
if you guys are happy about this  new addition to Final Cut Pro and if you’reÂ
interested in learning a bunch of different  ways to make edits in the software,Â
check out this video here. As always,  I hope you have a great day! AndÂ
I will see you in the next one.
Thanks. Saving for later.
I just bought a 14" MBP and found out about this feature within minutes of each other. A good day indeed!
I watched a Ripple video demonstrating it and was blown away at how fast the tracking is on the base M1. Can't wait to see how fast it is on the M1 Pro!
My 16gb M1 Mac Mini is dropping frames on HEVC 4K video with the new update and it was cutting through it like butter prior to the update. AITOO?
Ugh still no auto rotoscoping tool in 2021..smh
I'm having some major issues with Tracking. It crashes my library every time I try to use it. I've tried resetting preferences. Maybe it's plugin interference?
Here's what's happening: https://vimeo.com/637299278
-M