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Add text and stickers that follow a person or object

Make text, stickers and blur masks that stay with a moving person or object: track it, link it to the track and fix it if it slips.

When a name stays above someone walking, or an arrow slides along with a product, that’s a tracked title. In Weditra it takes two steps: first track the object, then make the text or sticker follow that track. Masks such as face blurring are linked to a track the same way.

1. Add the text or sticker

  • From the Text panel, drag a style onto the timeline and type your words.
  • From the Stickers panel (arrows, speech bubbles, marks, badges, emoji), click one or press + to add it at the playhead. A sticker goes onto an empty layer above the video and lasts 3 seconds.

Its position doesn’t matter yet; once it follows the track it will move with the object.

2. Track the object

  1. Select the video you’ll track and open the Tracking sub-tab in the Video tab and use the Object tracking section.
  2. Choose Draw box or Draw ellipse and drag around the object in the preview. Press Esc to cancel.
  3. Press Track. The object is followed frame by frame through the clip.
  4. Look at the Tracking confidence strip: Good, Weak, Lost. In weak or lost stretches, fix the box and press Re-track from here; frames you corrected by hand are kept.

This is an image-processing algorithm, not AI: the texture and corner points inside the box are tracked. Plain, featureless or fast-spinning objects are harder to track.

Pick a person or hand instead

You can also do it in one click instead of drawing a box. In Smart tools, use Follow a person (pick a person) or Follow or hide hands; click the person or hand in the preview and it’s followed through the clip. Detection uses a small model on this computer, and the video is never sent anywhere. Automatic detection can be wrong, so check the confidence strip.

3. Make it follow

  1. When the track is ready, go to Follow track.
  2. Choose your text or sticker clip from Items on screen at the same time.
  3. The linked item moves with keyframes that follow the object. Preview and export are the same.

For a mask, use Make a mask follow. If you want to hide a face or a plate, there’s a New blurred mask (hide a face or plate) option.

4. Fine-tune placement and style

Once linked, edit the text’s or sticker’s size, colour and animation like any clip. For a gentle appearance, give it one of the In presets in the Motion tab (text) or the Animation tab (sticker).

If you want the camera to follow too

When you turn landscape video vertical and the frame has to follow the object, use Camera follow in Smart tools; you can pick the same track as its source, so one track serves both jobs. See the 9:16 video guide.

Common situations

  • The track was lost: the object may have left the frame or been blocked. Go to the start of the lost stretch, fix the box and re-track.
  • I changed the clip: if the clip or track changes, linked items can be left following the old track; use the reapply option to refresh.
  • Track limit per clip: if there are too many tracks, delete one first.

All the tracking tools are described on the Pro tools page.

FAQ

Will the text follow the object perfectly? Automatic tracking can be wrong. Check the confidence strip and correct the box if needed.

Is the video sent anywhere? No, tracking and detection run on your computer.

Is there a watermark on the output? No.

Weditra is free; the Windows version is in the works, and you can follow it on the Download page.

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