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How to mask and track an object in a video

Open Effects → Mask & Track. Add a shape — a circle, a box, a band, a mirror or a pen path — and choose what it does: Reveal shows the clip only inside it, Adjust grades only inside it, Blur hides what is inside. Then track a subject and let anything follow it. All of it runs on your computer, free.

1. Add a shape. In Effects → Mask & Track pick Circle, Rectangle, Linear, Mirror or Path. It appears on the picture with handles.
2. Choose the job. Reveal (the clip shows only inside), Adjust (exposure, contrast, saturation, tint inside only), or Blur (a censor). Set Feather for a soft edge and Invert to swap inside and out.
3. Shape it. Drag the shape to move it, its handles to size and turn it. A Path is drawn with the pen: double-click a segment to add a point, Alt-click a point to remove it, drag the handles to curve it.
4. Track the subject. Press ＋ Track a subject and drag a box round what should be followed. It reads the whole cut — forward and backward from the playhead — and follows size and turn as well as position.
5. Make things follow. On a mask, a title or a layer choose the track under Follow a track, and pick Position or Position · size · turn.
6. Animate by hand. Masks take keyframes too: move the playhead, move the shape, and a key is written.

Blur every face

One press finds every face in the clip, tracks each one and lays a soft blur circle on it — on your computer, nothing uploaded. Each blur is an ordinary tracked shape afterwards: resize it, soften it or delete it.

Combine shapes

A shape can add to, take away from, intersect or exclude the one above it, so a box minus a circle, or two ellipses as one region, is one mask. An Adjust region can also give everything outside it a look of its own.

Undo is Ctrl+Z, and one history covers the whole project.

Open the editor

Questions

Last reviewed 22 October 2026.