Put an arrow, a box, a numbered step, or a blur over part of a video
The Editor's Marks row lays an arrow, a box, a circle, a numbered step, a spotlight, a blur, or a pixelation over any stretch of a video.
01Open the Captions tab
Open the video in the Editor and go to Captions. The MARKS card comes right after TEXT AND TITLES. Play to where the mark should appear.
02Pick a mark
Arrow points at something, Box and Circle frame it, Step puts a numbered badge on it, and Spotlight darkens everything but the part you choose. Blur softens a part of the picture, a face or a number plate for example, and Pixelate turns it into coarse blocks. Each one goes on the Marks row under the preview, from the play position, for 3 seconds, around the middle of the picture.
03Place it on the preview
The preview switches to the picked mark. Drag an arrow to move it, or either of its ends to aim it. Drag a box, a circle, a spotlight, a blur, or a pixelation to where it should sit, and a corner or an edge to change its size. A step is dragged to its place.
04Choose how it looks
COLOUR has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white, and black for an arrow, a box, a circle, or a step, and the next mark takes the colour you picked last. LINE is Thin, Medium, or Thick. A step has SIZE (Small, Medium, Large) and NUMBER, one less or one more, and each new step takes the next number. A blur or a pixelation has STRENGTH: Light, Medium, or Strong. COMES AND GOES is At once or Fading; a blur and a pixelation always come and go at once, so what they cover never shows through for a moment.
05Time it on the Marks row
Click a mark on the row to pick it, drag it to move it, and drag its edges to change how long it stays; a mark lasts at least half a second. Marks that overlap in time lie on lines one under the other. Double-click an empty spot on the row to add an arrow there. Remove, or the Delete key, takes the picked one off, and Cmd+Z or Ctrl+Z brings it back.
06What covers what
A blur or a pixelation is made from the video itself, so text, captions, the time code, and other marks over it stay sharp. Arrows, boxes, and steps over a spotlight stay bright. Marks lie on the finished picture, after the crop and the zoom: a mark stays where you put it while a zoom moves the picture under it, so play a zoom through to check that a blur still covers what it should.
07Export
Marks are drawn the same way as the marks on your screenshots. They keep to the moments you put them on after the trim, the cuts, and a speed change, and a mark that lies wholly in a part you cut out is left out. The Marks row of WHAT THE EXPORT WILL DO counts them, for example 2 arrows, 1 blur. Marks belong to this video: APPLY TO MORE FILES does not repeat them, and opening another file starts without them, so export first. A video with marks is always re-encoded, and Blur and Pixelate work on 32-bit Windows too.
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