Parent to Source

This button is equivalent to manually parenting the "tracked-to" (child) clip to the "tracked" (parent) clip after tracking.

Note: This option is available only when tracking in a composite.

Before using the Tracker, examine the relationship between the objects tracked to and being tracked. If there are no existing parent-child hierarchies, and you want the tracked layer to later respect any positioning, rotating, scaling, shearing, or pivoting adjustments that you make to the tracked object, click Parent to Source.

For example, say you need to track a small burning red coal onto the tip of a cigarette in an actor's mouth. You know that the clip will later need to be scaled and positioned, so you click Parent to Source before the Tracker begins to analyze. This ensures that any later changes made to the "actor smoking" clip will also be copied down to the child (glowing coal clip) layer.