The Best Way to Motion Track in Kdenlive

I have previously written an article on how to easy use an effect to easily generate keyframes that track the movement of something in Kdenlive, but I recently discovered an even more effective way to do so with more accurate tracking and no bugs that need to be solved through nightly builds. This tutorial will also explain how to apply the keyframes to an image to mimic the movement of something that you have used the motion tracking effect on.

Follow the in the order below:

1. Import your video clip and image into you project bin in Kdenlive
2. drag you video clip into the timeline and adjust the preferred length if needed
3. go into the effect search bar and look up the Motion Tracker effect
4. Drag and drop that effect onto the clip in the timeline
5. Once the effect is applied click on the video clip and gravitate the Effect/Composition Stack panel where there are ways to adjust the Motion Tracker effect
6. Change the shape from rectangle to ellipse in the Frame Shape section
7. After adjusting the Motion Tracker effect, in the same Effect/Composition Stack scroll down to wear it says Analyse and click that
8. Once it’s done analysing a little button should appear above it that says ‘Tracking Data’ beside it, click that which should copy the generated keyframes produced by the Motion Tracker effect
9. Drag your image into your timeline and adjust it to the desired length
10. Search up the Transform effect in the effects search bar and apply that to the image
11. Click on the image in the timeline and go to the Effect/Composition Stack in the Transform effect section. Under where it shows the duration of the clip, click on the Options button that is displayed as three horizontal lines and click ‘Import keyframes from clipboard’
12. Click back onto your video clip and head back over to the Effect Composition Stack and under the Frame Shape section, change the pixels to 0
13. Then you’re done! 🙂 Play the clip and see if it looks good and you can always adjust the Motion Tracker and Transform effects to your preference

The Motion Tracker effect is extremely versatile and can be applied to numerous other things as long as the have the option for importing keyframes. It’s a great basic and easy effect to learn since it can lead to many different possibilities.