Tips & tricks for a broadcast-ready tracer.
Everything here comes straight out of how CaddieStudio actually reconstructs a flight path — the footage it likes, the clicks it trusts, and the shots that need one extra bit of guidance.
Give yourself footage worth tracing.
Handheld is fine — changing where you're standing isn't
CaddieStudio compensates for camera movement automatically, and that covers panning, tilting, and zooming while you film — all fine, even handheld. What it can't fully correct for is the camera itself physically relocating: walking with it, stepping side to side, a slider or gimbal move. On some clips that will throw off background tracking. Plant your feet and pan/tilt/zoom to follow the shot instead of moving toward or around it.
Background tracking looks off? Switch to the Comet preset
Already have a clip where the camera moved and the tracer seems to drift against the background? Switch its style to Comet in the Tracer Style panel. Comet's trail fades out in well under a second instead of holding one long line across the whole clip, so small tracking drift is far less noticeable than it is with a persistent Band-style tracer.
Frame for the whole flight when you can
If the ball leaves the frame early, you're asking the software to reconstruct more of the shot from less evidence. Pull back or reposition so launch, apex, and landing are all in shot where the hole allows it.
A faster shutter beats a blurrier ball
Heavy motion blur turns the ball into a smear, which makes it harder for you to click its true center. If your camera lets you push shutter speed up, a sharp ball is easier to trace accurately.
How you click matters as much as where.
Start with Auto Tracer's three clicks
Click Auto Tracer on the main bar, then click where the ball is struck, once on the way up while it's clear against the sky, and where it lands. If it can't find the ball near one end, it asks for one more click there. The points it finds are ordinary points: right-click to remove a bad one, or add your own to fix a stretch.
Can't see the landing? Use Add Target Instead
If the ball comes down out of frame or out of sight, click Add Target Instead when Auto Tracer asks for the landing, then click where the ball came down. Auto Tracer follows the ball down onto that target.
Click the ball's center, not its brightest edge
Under strong light, the lit side of the ball can visually outweigh the shaded side — and clicking that bright edge instead of the true center carries straight through into your tracer's path. Snap clicks to the ball (Settings → Editing) moves each click onto the ball's center for you.
Cluster a few clicks at launch and right before it vanishes
A handful of points close together right after impact, and again right before the ball disappears into trees, sky, or the edge of frame, gives CaddieStudio a confident read on real speed — not just position. Two lone points far apart force it to guess at how fast the ball was actually moving.
Use Track Ball, but actually check what it finds
Track Ball (right-click a shot in the Shots panel) searches near your existing points and asks you to confirm each candidate before adding it. Treat that confirmation as a real checkpoint — a quick glance catches the rare bad match before it shapes your curve.
Handle the shots that fool a straight line.
Mark the apex on shots that arc back over themselves
A high ball that climbs, peaks, and comes back down near where it went up can look ambiguous from just its start and end points — the gap alone doesn't say how high it really got. Add Apex marks the true peak in one click and removes the guesswork.
Don't leave a long invisible stretch with only two endpoints
If the ball is genuinely out of view for a long run — behind trees, lost against the sky — one extra click partway through keeps the curve honest instead of letting it take the shortest path between two points, which is rarely the path the ball actually flew.
Give the final clip one more look.
Preview the whole flight before you render
Play it start to finish with Preview. A rough patch is a thirty-second fix at this stage and a re-render after.
Match the tracer to the footage's lighting
A bright, thin tracer that pops against blue sky can wash out over trees or a grey overcast background. Adjust color, thickness, and glow to the shot in front of you, not a default that worked on a different clip. On a Multi-Color Line, Auto Sky colors just the parts of the flight against the sky.
Pick the export that fits your edit
Transparent ProRes 4444 drops straight into an existing Premiere, Final Cut, or DaVinci timeline if you're compositing over your own footage. A direct MP4 export is the faster path when the tracer clip is the final deliverable on its own.