Add shapes, arrows, and stickers over your video

Shapes and stickers are elements that sit over your footage. A rectangle can frame a detail, an arrow can point at it, and a sticker can add a bit of personality. They all work the same way on the timeline, so what you learn with one carries over to the others.

Place a shape

Open Elements in the left panel. It shows four tiles: Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, and Arrow.

1. Click a tile to pick it. A blue ring marks the pick, and the arrow keys move the ring across the grid.
2. Drag the tile onto the timeline and release it at the moment the shape should appear.

Dropping the tile places the shape. It arrives centered in the frame, in white, and three seconds long, and it sits on the element rows above the video.

Style a shape

With the shape selected, its panel opens in the right panel.

• Fill sets the color of a rectangle or ellipse. For a line or arrow the row is called Color.
• Fill opacity makes a rectangle or ellipse see-through. Rectangles also have Corner radius.
• Turn on Outline for a rectangle or ellipse to get an outline Color and Width.
• Transform holds Position, Rotation, and Opacity. Rotation sets the direction of a line or arrow.

A rectangle with a low fill opacity and an outline highlights part of the picture without hiding it. An arrow points at a detail. Position is a percentage of the frame, so an element keeps its place if you change the aspect ratio later.

Create a sticker

Open Stickers in the left panel. At the top is a prompt box.

1. Describe what you want, such as a subject and a style. Type @ to reference something already in your project, or drop an image in.
2. Click Create sticker. The button shows Drawing…, then Cutting out…, then Saving….
3. The finished sticker appears in the Stickers panel and lands on the timeline at the playhead.

Creating a sticker generates an image on your DepCut account, so it spends credits.

To place a sticker you already made, hover over its tile and click the + button to add it at the playhead, or drag the tile onto the timeline at the exact moment you want. The Size slider in its panel sets how big it appears.

Time and group elements

Every shape and sticker is a bar on the timeline, like a title. Drag the bar to change when it appears, and drag either edge to change how long it stays. Each row is its own layer, so dragging a bar to a different row changes which element sits over which.

To move several elements as one, Shift-click or ⌘-click their bars, then press ⌘G (Ctrl+G on Windows and Linux) or click the button in the panel that names the count, such as Group 2 elements. Moving, timing, and animating then apply to the whole group. Ungroup splits them apart again.

Use elements with restraint

One highlight at a time keeps a viewer's eye where you want it. Time the shape to arrive just as the voice mentions the detail, and remove it as the topic moves on.

Give it a go

Drag an Arrow from Elements onto the timeline in DepCut, then rotate it to point at something in your shot.