PricingCamera tracking is the look where one thing stays perfectly still and the world swings around it: a dancer’s face, a fighter’s head, a wheel while the camera circles the car. It used to mean placing a tracking box by hand and fixing keyframes. Now you write it in your brief, and Shorty does the rest.
Lock the Shot on Any Subject
Write “camera tracking on his head” or “keep the shot locked on her hand,” and Shorty moves the footage itself, frame by frame, so that one detail stays on the same spot of the screen. The background slides, swings and passes by. Your subject doesn’t move.
It works on the details editors lock in CapCut: a face, a cap, a hand, a logo, a wheel. The subject stays where it sat when the shot began, or wherever the director places it in a vertical frame.
How It Works
The director reads your brief and picks the smallest distinctive detail on your subject: the bridge of a pair of glasses rather than the whole face, the logo on a cap rather than the person. It zooms in on that detail to place the tracking point, the step a CapCut editor takes by hand before tapping Track, and checks it again across the shot.
From there, a frame-by-frame tracker follows the point to a fraction of a pixel and keeps it pinned. If the subject turns away or the track starts to slip, the director’s check-ins catch it and set it back on the subject.
Shorty then zooms in just enough that no empty edges ever show, like CapCut’s Fit canvas. Ask for it and the subject can also keep the same size as it walks toward or away from the camera, like Lock object size.
Side by Side with CapCut
We took clips that had already been tracked with CapCut’s Camera tracking and ran the raw footage through Shorty, locking the same detail to the same spot on screen. Then we measured how far that detail still moves from one frame to the next.
Shorty held the detail steadier on every clip. Locked on a man’s pink cap, it moved 0.36 pixels per frame in Shorty and 0.71 in CapCut, measured on a 960-pixel-wide frame. Locked on a presenter’s raised hand, 0.35 in Shorty and 0.57 in CapCut. The zoom needed to hide the edges came out the same: 1.18× and 1.09× in Shorty, 1.18× and 1.11× in CapCut.
Try It in Your Brief
“Camera tracking on his head, like CapCut. Keep him locked while the world moves.”
“Lock the shot on the logo on her cap.”
“Track the center cap of the front wheel so the car swings around it.”
“Keep the camera locked on her right hand while she explains.”
Good to know
How do I turn on camera tracking?
Ask for it in your brief: “camera tracking on his face,” “lock the shot on the wheel” or “keep her hand pinned in the frame.” When your brief asks for camera tracking, the director tracks the shots where your subject appears.
What should I lock on?
The smallest detail that stays visible for the whole shot: glasses, a cap, a logo, a hand. For a person who turns around, the head holds better than the face.
Does it work across cuts?
Each shot is tracked on its own. If your clip has a cut, Shorty locks the subject in each part separately.
Does Shorty also straighten the tilt?
For rigid, textured details such as logos, signs and wheels, it can. For faces and heads it leaves the angle alone: a head turning away from the camera looks like a tilt to any tracker, and correcting it would rock the whole frame.
How long can a tracked shot be?
There is no length limit. Longer shots are tracked at a slightly lower internal resolution so they stay fast.
Pick a subject, write “camera tracking,” and watch the world move around it.
The Shorty Team
Lock the shot on what matters.
Upload your footage and ask for camera tracking in your brief.
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