How To Do The Trail Effect in PowerDirector [Video]

The Trail Effect in Video Editing Software
This is a cool effect shown to us by the charismatic Maliek Whitaker who runs a YouTube channel where you can find tons of tutorials on video editing.

He uses PowerDirector for this particular example.

You gotta work a little for it - a photo editing software is also needed - but it's worth it. I use the free Inkscape whenever I need to trace and crop segments of an image - and that's exactly what you need to do here.



The premise is simple: you need a static shot (on a tripod) and a subject that travels trough the shot. If the subject is contrasting against the background, it's even better.

Then you pause the shot at, say, three different keyframes - you also mark those frames in the timeline using the marker tool. You export each frame an image, you crop out the subject from the picture and you save the new pictures with the transparent background.

After this, you simply overlay the pictures onto the video footage, each at its own marker (time point). As the subject travels across the frame, each picture will remain as a trail (for a second or two - you figure out the fading) behind the subject. So each image will be a freeze frame of the moving subject.

So get PowerDirector and impress your viewers with this cool effect!

The following video tutorial will teach you how to cut out shapes in Inkscape:



Cheers!


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