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I have a shoot some footage of a firefly standing still on a wall at night and blinking every half a second or so. The result is very shaky including some sharp pan movements. Its mostly very dark with just the blinking spots visible.

If I could center the video over the blinking spot it might look nice.

Its possible for me to use a transform effect strip, and create position keyframes at the blinks in order to center them throughout the video. However, creating position frames in that way isnt very intuitive, and requires entering X and Y values manually.

So I wondered if instead of using the transform effect layer it would be easier to somehow use manual tracking with a marker in the Video Clip Editor. I tried it but didnt know how to create keyframes for my manually positioned marker (keyframes are auto created when Im using the "track selected markers"). What parameter/channel should I highlight in order to create a keyframe? Is there a better method for doing this task?

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    $\begingroup$ In the Movie Clip Editor, you can create keyframes on a tracker by just moving it. Use the G key and position the tracker where you want. A key frame will be created automatically. $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:08
  • $\begingroup$ Watch the wonderful Track, Match, Blend! tutorials... ;-) $\endgroup$
    – Samoth
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:25
  • $\begingroup$ @cegaton Pressing G and re-positioning the tracker does add a keyframe (I see a yellow dot on the MCE time bar) but when I move one frame back, the tracker jumps to the previous position without any ease/interpolation although previous keyframe is 20 frames back. $\endgroup$
    – ramiwi
    Mar 22, 2016 at 0:19
  • $\begingroup$ @Samoth Thanks for this amazing tutorial, but I couldnt find a way to manually use the tracker, it demonstrate how to track using the auto search buttons. $\endgroup$
    – ramiwi
    Mar 22, 2016 at 0:22
  • $\begingroup$ It's a playlist, so start after the intro for more explanation. He tracks markers more manually in the part 13 about blurry footage and I think he explains the manual process somewhere more detailled before using the auto track feature. But your question stays a bit unclear about the exact type of your footage so you might improve this description or include some examples to get some more specific help. After manually tracking a marker you can convert it into an empty $\endgroup$
    – Samoth
    Mar 22, 2016 at 9:25

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