[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":161},["ShallowReactive",2],{"howto-add-a-circle-in-clipchamp":3},{"slug":4,"family":5,"title":6,"metaDescription":7,"h1":6,"targetQuery":8,"intent":9,"datePublished":10,"dateModified":11,"intro":12,"sections":15,"faqs":126,"howToSchema":139,"related":144},"add-a-circle-in-clipchamp","editor","How to Add a Circle to a Highlight Video in Clipchamp","Clipchamp ships with Windows and has 120+ vector shapes, but its circles come filled. The outline workaround, the static-marker reality, and what to do instead.","how to circle a player in Clipchamp","task, DIY","2026-08-14","2026-08-17",[13,14],"Clipchamp is already on your PC, it exports 1080p without a watermark, and its content library carries over 120 vector shapes including circles. On paper that is everything this job needs. In practice there are two problems, and you should know both before you spend an evening finding them yourself.","The first is that Clipchamp shapes arrive filled — a circle drops onto your footage as a solid disc, which covers the exact player it is supposed to point at. The second is that a shape you place stays where you put it; nothing in Clipchamp's documented feature set moves an overlay along a path over time. So the realistic outcome here is a static marker over a held frame, not a ring that travels across the field with you. That is still a perfectly good result for recruiting film, and this page shows how to get it.",[16,34,42,49,89,96,111,117,122],{"kind":17,"id":18,"heading":19,"manualTitle":20,"manualPoints":21,"circleOnTitle":25,"circleOnPoints":26,"honestNote":31,"handOff":32,"caption":33},"fastPath","fast-path-strip","Eight to ten minutes before your first marker lands; the whole reel here takes about five","Already on the PC, with two catches",[22,23,24],"It costs nothing, exports clean 1080p, and does not limit how many videos you turn out.","Its circles arrive filled, and one opacity slider governs the interior and the outline together, so a genuine ring means a Frames & Borders asset or a PNG made elsewhere.","The first clip runs eight to ten minutes; later ones three or four. Keyframes are absent from the published feature list, so the marker holds wherever you left it.","The ring is already hollow",[27,28,29,30],"Your footage reaches the editor as a YouTube address, with nothing to install.","Point at the athlete once per play. The marker comes out hollow, and it lands above the picture without being told.","At each point the export halts the picture near 1.2 seconds and draws the animated outline on it.","One pass through the reel is about five minutes, first clip included. Free here means one export monthly, a 5-minute limit on the film going in, and the download carries a watermark; $4.99 once buys a clean file from source as long as 20 minutes.","Everything starts from a YouTube address: Clipchamp reads the MP4 off your drive, CircleOn needs it uploaded, with unlisted being enough.","Below: the three routes to an outline in Clipchamp, and the six steps that put one on a held frame.","An outline that arrives hollow, over a pause that arrives with it.",{"kind":35,"id":36,"heading":37,"paragraphs":38},"prose","the-filled-shape-problem","Start here: Clipchamp circles come filled",[39,40,41],"Open Content library, then Visuals, then Shapes, and you will find circles across several categories — basic, rounded, geometric, callout, pattern, organic and hand drawn. You can resize them, stretch them, rotate them, flip them and recolor them with a solid or a gradient. What you cannot do is empty the middle out.","This is not a rumor. It came up on Microsoft's own Q&A forum in January 2026, where a user asked for a no-fill option for shapes and was told the fill and the outline share a single opacity setting, so they cannot be controlled separately. Drop the opacity to see the player through the circle and the outline fades by exactly the same amount, which leaves you with a faint wash instead of a marker.","Knowing that up front saves the twenty minutes most people lose hunting through the color picker for a transparency option that is not in there. There are three ways around it, and one of them needs nothing but Clipchamp.",{"kind":35,"id":43,"heading":44,"paragraphs":45},"three-ways-to-get-an-outline","Three ways to get an outline instead of a disc",[46,47,48],"The in-app route is Frames & Borders, which sits alongside Shapes under Visuals in the content library. These assets are built with see-through centers, so one dropped over your footage behaves like a ring. Search it for a circular or round option before you commit to the approach — the forum thread that surfaced this workaround named square and rectangle outlines specifically, so check what your library actually offers in a circle. The trade-offs are real either way: frame assets tend to lock their proportions, offer less color control than a plain shape, and give you no way to set the line thickness.","The second route is a translucent disc, and it is worse than it sounds only if you overdo it. Place a plain circle, drop its opacity until the player is clearly readable underneath, and pick a color that contrasts with both teams. It is not a ring, but it does tint one athlete differently from everyone else on the field, and a coach scanning a wide shot will find that instantly. Keep it light — around a quarter strength — or you have re-created the original problem.","The third route is to bring your own graphic. If you have PowerPoint, insert an oval, set its fill to No Fill, give the outline a color and a weight you like, then right-click it and use Save as Picture to write out a PNG. Import that PNG into Clipchamp and it layers over your video with its middle genuinely transparent, which gives you the sharp colored ring the built-in shapes will not. Any app that exports a PNG with a transparent background does the same job.",{"kind":50,"id":51,"heading":52,"intro":53,"schema":54,"steps":55},"steps","clipchamp-steps","Putting the marker on the play","Roughly eight to ten minutes for your first clip, and three or four for each one after that. These steps assume you have picked one of the three outline options above; the sequence is identical whichever you chose.",true,[56,61,67,72,78,83],{"name":57,"text":58,"detail":59},"Import the clip and cut it to the play","Open Clipchamp, start a project, and bring your footage in through Import media. Trim the clip down to the single play before you add anything on top of it — a six-second highlight is easier to mark accurately than the thirty seconds of build-up it came from.",[60],"Clipchamp runs both as the app that ships with Windows and in a browser, and projects behave the same in either.",{"name":62,"text":63,"detail":64},"Hold the frame where the coach needs to look","Move the playhead to the moment just before your involvement and create a still there, then trim that still to about a second. Several 2026 walkthroughs describe right-clicking the clip on the timeline and picking Create freeze frame, which does the whole thing in one action; Clipchamp's own feature pages do not document it, and guides written a few years back describe splitting the clip and dropping in a saved image by hand instead. Try the right-click menu in your build first, because the shortcut saves real work when your version has it.",[65,66],"A second is the target. Longer and the pause reads as a mistake; shorter and nobody registers the marker.","Audio keeps running underneath a still, so split or mute the audio if the sudden held picture over live sound bothers you.",{"name":68,"text":69,"detail":70},"Drop your circle onto the timeline above the clip","Add your chosen graphic — a frame asset, a plain shape, or your imported PNG — and place it on a track above the held frame. Clipchamp draws upper tracks on top of lower ones, so track order is what decides whether your marker is visible at all.",[71],"Line the graphic up with the held section, not with the whole clip.",{"name":73,"text":74,"detail":75},"Fit the ring around one body","Work from the corner handles in the preview, never the side ones — a side handle squashes the circle into an oval, and an oval marker looks like a mistake rather than a choice. Close it in until you sit inside the ring with a margin of clear frame all round, then drag the whole thing over yourself.",[76,77],"Judge the placement against the held frame you made in the previous step, not against a moving preview.","If you went with the translucent disc, set its opacity here and check it at full size — a wash that reads well on a small preview often disappears in the export.",{"name":79,"text":80,"detail":81},"Fade it in and out rather than snapping it on","Give the graphic a short fade at each end. A marker that pops into existence draws attention to the edit; one that arrives over a few frames reads as part of the video. Clipchamp's fade controls apply to overlay assets the same way they apply to clips.",[82],"Keep the fades short — a few frames each, not half a second, or the marker spends its whole life arriving.",{"name":84,"text":85,"detail":86},"Repeat per clip, then export at 1080p","Copy the finished graphic and paste it onto the next held frame rather than building a new one, which keeps the ring the same size across the whole reel. When every clip is marked, export at 1080p — the free plan covers that resolution without stamping anything on the file.",[87,88],"Consistency between clips matters more than perfection on any one of them.","Watch the export end to end before sending it. Overlays that looked aligned in the editor sometimes sit a few pixels off in the render.",{"kind":35,"id":90,"heading":91,"paragraphs":92},"can-it-follow-the-player","Will the marker move with the play?",[93,94,95],"Plan on no. Clipchamp gives an overlay a position, a size, a rotation, an opacity and fades at either end, and those values hold for as long as the asset sits on the timeline. Keyframes do not appear in Clipchamp's own feature announcements, and in August 2025 a user posted a request on Microsoft's Q&A forum asking for exactly that capability — custom motion and keyframes for images — which is not what you would expect to see if the feature already shipped.","There is a crude way to fake short movement: chop the overlay into several pieces along the timeline and nudge each piece to a slightly different position. It works over a second or two and falls apart over anything longer, because the marker jumps between positions instead of gliding. For a moving athlete across a wide shot it is not worth the effort.","Which is why the freeze is doing the heavy lifting here rather than the circle. Hold the picture, mark the player, release — that pairing is the standard convention on recruiting film, and it is fully within reach in Clipchamp. Our guide to the \u003Ca href=\"/how-to/freeze-frame-effect-highlight-video/\" class=\"text-primary underline hover:no-underline\">freeze-frame effect on highlight video\u003C/a> covers why a second of held picture is worth more than a marker that moves.",{"kind":97,"heading":98,"pros":99,"cons":105},"prosCons","Clipchamp for this job: what stacks up",[100,101,102,103,104],"Already on Windows 11 and also runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install or pay for.","The free plan exports 1080p without a watermark, with no cap on how many videos you make.","Over 120 vector shapes and a frames library, all included at no cost.","Simple enough that a first-time editor gets a marked clip out in under ten minutes.","Local files only ever leave your machine if you choose to upload them somewhere.",[106,107,108,109,110],"Shapes come filled, and fill and outline share one opacity, so a true ring means a frame asset or an imported PNG.","No documented keyframes, so the marker is effectively static once placed.","Frame assets restrict proportions, color and line thickness compared with a plain shape.","Every marker is judged by eye against the preview, so duplicating a finished graphic beats rebuilding one per clip.","Premium stock assets block the export rather than watermarking it, so one paid element can stop you finishing.",{"kind":35,"id":112,"heading":113,"paragraphs":114},"the-fast-path","The shortcut worth knowing about",[115,116],"Everything above builds one thing: a held frame with a marker on the right player. If that is genuinely all you are after, a purpose-built tool gets there without any of the workarounds. CircleOn opens your film in a browser, takes a click on the athlete wherever you want them singled out, and converts each of those clicks into a brief stop with an animated outline drawn on the player.","The circle is already an outline, the hold is already about the right length, and there is no track order, no fill setting and no frames library to hunt through. Across a twelve-play reel that difference compounds into most of an evening. It will not suit everyone — our pillar guide on \u003Ca href=\"/how-to/circle-a-player-in-a-highlight-video/\" class=\"text-primary underline hover:no-underline\">circling a player in a highlight video\u003C/a> weighs doing it by hand against the automatic route and against Hudl — but for the exact outcome Clipchamp makes you work for, it is the shorter road.",{"kind":118,"variant":119,"title":120,"body":121},"callout","honest","Two things to know first","Your film has to be on YouTube. A link is the only thing CircleOn accepts, so a local MP4 needs an unlisted upload before you can begin — a genuine extra step next to Clipchamp, which reads the file straight off your drive. And every circle is a moment marker: the export pauses for about 1.2 seconds, shows the ring, then carries on, so it is not the shape-that-travels-with-you effect either. Three price points sit above the free tier, which covers a single 5-minute-or-shorter video each month and watermarks the download: $4.99 buys one clean export of a video up to 20 minutes, $9 a month buys ten exports, $20 a month buys thirty.",{"kind":123,"title":124,"subtitle":125},"cta","A ring that is already a ring","No fill setting to fight, no frames library to search — point at the athlete and the export handles the rest.",[127,130,133,136],{"question":128,"answer":129},"Is Clipchamp free?","Yes for what this page needs. The free plan exports at up to 1080p without a watermark and does not cap how many videos you make. Premium raises export quality to 4K and unlocks the premium stock library, and it comes bundled with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. Worth knowing: premium stock assets block the export until you upgrade rather than watermarking it, so a single paid element can stop you finishing a free project.",{"question":131,"answer":132},"Can you make a shape with no fill in Clipchamp?","Not through the color picker. A January 2026 thread on Microsoft Q&A established that fill and outline share one opacity setting in Clipchamp, so lowering one lowers both. The workarounds are to use an asset from the Frames & Borders section of the content library, which has a see-through center, or to draw a circle with no fill in another app, write it out as a PNG, and import that instead.",{"question":134,"answer":135},"Does Clipchamp have keyframes?","None appear in its published feature list, and a request for custom image motion and keyframes was posted on Microsoft's Q&A forum in August 2025, which suggests the capability was not there. Treat overlay position as fixed for the time the asset is on the timeline. Two free routes do offer it: CapCut on a phone moves an overlay with keyframes, and DaVinci Resolve on a desktop tracks the graphic onto the player automatically.",{"question":137,"answer":138},"Is Clipchamp good enough for a recruiting highlight video?","For a reel of held frames with a marked player, yes. It cuts, it trims, it layers graphics and it exports clean 1080p for free, which covers the standard recruiting-film format. What sits outside its reach is a marker that travels with the play, or placement precise enough to repeat identically across a dozen clips — both of those want an editor with keyframes and numeric position fields.",{"name":140,"totalTime":141,"tool":142},"How to add a circle to a video in Clipchamp","PT10M",[143],"Clipchamp",[145,149,153,157],{"title":146,"href":147,"description":148},"How to Circle a Player in a Highlight Video","/how-to/circle-a-player-in-a-highlight-video/","The comparison page for anyone still choosing between doing it by hand, paying, or automating it.",{"title":150,"href":151,"description":152},"Add a Circle in CapCut","/how-to/add-a-circle-in-capcut/","Free keyframes on a phone, if you need the marker to move.",{"title":154,"href":155,"description":156},"Add a Freeze-Frame Effect","/how-to/freeze-frame-effect-highlight-video/","Why a second of held picture matters more than a marker that travels.",{"title":158,"href":159,"description":160},"All How-To Guides","/how-to/","All the guides in one index, split by effect and by editor.",1787244666567]