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My question may just be about semantics. I'm not even sure what to search on to figure out what to do.

Let's say I have a video of my son playing a sport. I want to crop the view to only show him, and then I want to keep him in the center of the shot.

My googling led me to Motion Tracking and Image Stabilization, which seems like the right direction, but clearly this is used for many things, and I'm not having luck finding what to do for this simple scenario.

Am I using the right terms, and if so, how the heck can I accomplish this? Thanks!

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  • $\begingroup$ You need to scale the video, and animate its position. Both of these are in the properties thing in the right-hand half of the Sequence Editor, under the Strip tab -> Transform panel. $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Commented Aug 17, 2022 at 2:44
  • $\begingroup$ maybe he's looking for a way, like a tracker, to do it more automatically $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Commented Aug 17, 2022 at 4:06
  • $\begingroup$ yes motion tracking is your solution. and then you have to decide on a certain "center" point on your son and add a tracking point on it and somehow get it to center in your new video output. $\endgroup$
    – Harry McKenzie ♦
    Commented Aug 17, 2022 at 7:15
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the tips! I tried animating the values and that worked decently well. Little seasick at times but I can work it out. Motion capture looks like the right way, but also seems way more intense for my purposes. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – IronicMuffin
    Commented Aug 18, 2022 at 16:08

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On the right-hand side of the Sequence Editor, there is this properties area. Under the Strip tab (with the video strip in question selected), under the Transform panel, there are the settings you need.

the properties thingy

Set Scale X and Y to equal values to get the zoom you want (hey, you could even do a quick Copy Driver / Paste Driver to link them), and animate Position X and Y as needed to keep the desired area in frame (you can animate the Scale too, which would make the aforementioned driver setup quite handy).

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    $\begingroup$ Had to watch a video for animating values, but was able to make.it work. Many thanks! $\endgroup$
    – IronicMuffin
    Commented Aug 18, 2022 at 16:09

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